An overview on Isaac Julien: Geopoetics
Isaac Julien: Geopoetics | From September 4 to December 16, 2012
A few words by the curator
The particularities of Isaac Julien’s complex oeuvre, which we have the pleasure of presenting in comprehensive way for the first time in Brazil in the exhibition Isaac Julien: Geopoetics, liken it in more than one way to the work Associação Cultural Videobrasil has done for almost thirty years now. On the one hand, its poetical-political approach, marked by postcolonial thinking, his awareness of the implications of multiculturalism and of gender issues are reminiscent of the art from the geopolitical South of the world, our main scope of research.
On the other, by exploring the possibilities of a cinema which expands from the screen onto the surroundings as it spreads narrative splinters through space, which are only composed in the fruition of each viewer, Julien reminds us of the very trajectory of video within the realm of contemporary art—a movement which our festivals and shows have been following and shedding light on, in different ways.
Representative of the last twenty years of Julien’s output as one of the artists who claim the more complex space of the art gallery for the moving image, Geopoetics features four multiscreen installations. Ten Thousand Waves (2010) is based on a tragedy involving Chinese cockle shell pickers at Morecambe Bay, England, in 2004. Fantôme Créole (2005) is comprised of the films True North (2004) and Fantôme Afrique (2005), and opposes the arid countryside of Burkina Faso, the world’s poorest country, and the “sublime whiteness” of the North Pole.
In Paradise Omeros (2002), loosely based on poems by Derek Walcott, Creole, a mixed language, is the hybrid medium in which multiple cultures and their contradictions are experienced. In The Leopard (2007), a single-channel version of the installation Western Union: small boats (2007), the opulence of Palazzo Gangi and the historical and aesthetic resonance of the Sicilian landscape provide the setting for a narrative which aims to lend a human face to the issue of immigration.
A program of films covering the greater part of Julien’s award-winning works from 1989 to 2008 will be shown on SESCTV as a complement to the show, shedding light on the artist’s inseparable connection with both experimentalism, in his handling of cinematic language, and political, social, ethnical, and gender issues.
The recurrence of the landscape as a protagonist in the narratives of Geopoetics—and the deep implications of the way in which the artist has his images moving around the world—justifies the choice of the show’s title. The educational project for Geopoetics is based around the reverberations of Julien’s work, including an international seminar and a host of mediation- and training-oriented actions targeting different audiences.
The educational curated program is meant to enhance the understanding of the works shown. In the case of Isaac Julien, it is mostly about highlighting the experience of that which the artist defines as the ‘contaminated sublime’: subverting the notion that beauty, even extreme beauty, must be limited to itself; and the ability to come up with seductive visual representations for the complex and often arid issues of the postcolonial world.
Solange Farkas
The works: installations
Ten Thousand Waves, 2010
49’, 35mm, color, nine screens, 9.2 surround sound
In 2004, twenty-three Chinese cockle shell pickers drowned in an unexpected rising tide in Morecambe Bay, England. The tragedy inspires Ten Thousand Waves. Shot on location in China, the piece poetically interweaves stories which connect the present and the country’s ancient past. Its architecture explores the movement of people who go across countries and continents, suggesting a meditation on unfinished journeys. Conceived and made over four years, TTW is the result of Isaac Julien’s collaboration with some of China’s leading artists, such as Maggie Cheung, a legendary siren of Chinese cinema; filmmaker Zhao Tao, a rising star; poet Wang Ping; master calligrapher Gong Fagen; artist Yang Fudong; acclaimed cinematographer Zhao Xiaoshi; and a 100-strong cast and crew. The original music score was written by Jah Wobble, from England, the Chinese Dub Orchestra, and contemporary classical composer Maria de Alvear.
Fantôme Créole, 2005
23’, 16mm, color, four screens
Fantôme Créole juxtaposes Arctic and African landscapes as it combines two films: True North (2004), loosely based on the story of black explorer Matthew Henson (1866–1955), who accompanied Robert Peary in a pioneering expedition to the North Pole; and Fantôme Afrique (2005), shot in Burkina Faso. Model Vanessa Myrie and dancer Stephen Galloway play the main characters, linking together the landscapes of the Arctic North and the arid South. The lack of dialogue, characters with implied interiority, and narrative connection all hint at the piece’s intellectual orientation as it focuses on the issues which connect the two regions and on the artist’s interest in promoting a “creolised” vision, engendering new ideas from the movements and connections between spaces.
Paradise Omeros, 2002
20’, 16mm, black and white/color, three screens
Paradise Omeros delves into the fantasies and feelings of what Julien calls “creoleness”: the mixed language, the hybrid mental states, and the territorial transpositions that arise when one lives in multiple cultures. Using the recurrent imagery of the sea, the film drags viewers into a poetic meditation on the ebb and flow of self and stranger, love and hate, war and peace, xenophobe and xenophile. Set in the 1960s London and on the Caribbean island of Santa Lucia in our days, the piece is loosely based on poems from Omeros (1990), by the Caribbean Nobel Prize winning poet Derek Walcott. Walcott and the composer Paul Gladstone Reid have collaborated in the music score and the text. Coscripted by Julien and Grischa Duncker.
The Leopard, 2007
20’, 35mm, color
A single-channel version of the installation Western Union: small boats, the film takes its visual cue from The Leopard (Il Gattopardo, 1963), the masterpiece of Italian filmmaker Luchino Visconti. Contemplating a cinematic afterlife, haunted by characters from other places and movies, Vanessa Myrie wanders lost through the halls of Palazzo Gangi. The interiors, opulent and luxurious in the past, are now abandoned; they contain the echo of the ghosts of decadence and grandeur, and the resonating stories of immigration to Sicily, which became a destination for Libyans fleeing war and famine in the 2000s. Choreographed by Russell Maliphant, the piece was produced amidst the debate on immigration policies and on relationships between individuals and geopolitics. The Leopard seeks to reengage with these ongoing issues, humanizing and lending poetic qualities, image, and voice to questions that are all too often drowned out by the noise of political agendas.
The works: films
Who Killed Colin Roach?, 1983
45’, Super 8/video, color
In 1983, young black Colin Roach, then aged 21, was shot to death at the entrance to a police station in London. Suspicions of a police cover-up for murder turned the incident into a cause for United Kingdom civil rights militants and black community groups. To them, Colin was a victim of racism and police violence. The documentary portrays the feeling of the street campaign.
Territories, 1984
25’, 16mm, color
An experimental documentary on the Notting Hill Carnival, an annual street fest created by London’s black and Caribbean communities. Julien relates the event and the tension between black youths and white authorities.
Looking for Langston, 1989
40’, 16mm, black & white
Langston Hughes was a revered poet of the Harlem Renaissance, a period in the early 20th century in which black literature flourished. In a lyrical and poetical take on Hughes’ life, Julien invokes him as a gay and black cultural icon, as he draws parallels between a 1920s Harlem speakeasy (a bar that illegally sells alcohol) and a 1980s London nightclub.
The Darker Side of Black, 1994
59’, 16mm, color
With their violent, nihilistic gangsta chic appeal, the more radical subgenres of rap and reggae dominate the imagery of black popular culture. The film is a provocative take on the complex issues of macho rituals, misogyny, homophobia, and glorification of guns. Shot in dance halls and hip hop clubs in London, Jamaica, and USA, the film features musicians such as Buju Banton, Shabba Ranks, and Britain’s Monie Love.
The Attendant, 1993
10’, 35mm, color
The film is set in Wilberforce House, a British museum dedicated to the history of slavery. The plot revolves around the sexual fantasies that a young white visitor arouses in a black middle-aged museum attendant. After the museum shuts down, the attendant paces through the galleries as Slaves on the West Coast of Africa (Esclaves sur la côte ouest africaine), a painting by the French 19th century painter François-Auguste Biard, comes to life.
Frantz Fanon, Black Skin White Mask, 1996
73’, 35mm, color
The author of Black skin, white masks and The wretched of the earth, Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was an influential anticolonialist writer from Martinique. The documentary was created with the mission of reestablishing to academic and artistic discourse the acknowledgement of the originality of Fanon’s contradictory nature as a thinker.
Derek, 2008
78’, video, color
Filmmaker, painter, writer, and gay activist Derek Jarman (1942-1994) was one of Britain’s most original artists ever. An underground hero who reacted to the Thatcher era with iconoclastic art, Jarman made a painter’s cinema, creating vibrant assemblages of images and ideas. He was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986 and worked with musicians such as the Smiths and ballet dancer Michael Clarke. A 1991 interview shot as Jarman faced imminent death is the core of this documentary-tribute, alongside the melancholy and fun Letter to an angel, written by Tilda Swinton, a friend and collaborator of Jarman’s.