Harry Potter and our meaning of life

A little Viva dalliance into film previews this week:

Made in Dagenham is one of those 'feel good' Brit films where human decency triumphs over social adversity- but not a John Sayles film or Rosie the Riveter this isn't. In 1968 the women of the Dagenham Ford Plant voted strike action demanding equal pay to their male counterparts. Prime Minister Harold Wilson's Secretary of State Barbara Castle (who until 2007 held the record for female MP with longest continuous service) had a register of of social achiements during her time in office that most men couldn't even shake a carrot at. And the granting of 92% to the Dagenham girls was just one of them culminating in her Equal Pay Act of 1970.

One of the many funny, quirky touches to director Nigel Cole's film is Rita (Sally Hawkins), somewhat oblivious to the hoards of press, discreetly comparing fashion notes with Barbara Castle (Miranda Richardson) on their outfits as they emerge on the Whitehall steps after hashing out the pay deal over scotch and sherry upstairs. The film's theme song has lyrics by socialist singer/songwriter Billy Bragg and is sung by Sandie Shaw (a former Dagenham Ford worker).

Ahhh- BBC radio. While it's frustrating not to be legally allowed to see/hear much that is on the BBC iPlayer in the States, there's enough that is available (for weeks if not months) to keep one's brain alive. Midweek is as it suggests on a Wednesday and Nov. 3 had a great line-up of guests: Jane the astronomer who built a mini-observatory in her barn, Jo Wilding who wrote about running off in Iraq with the circus in Don't Shoot the Clowns.

Historian Amanda Foreman (of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire) has a new book out A World on Fire -about the 1000's of Brits who took part in the American Civil War - arguing that the Anglo-American special relationship was anything but! The textbooks hitherto were 'massaging' history yet again in to a slumber. Unless you were recipient of the Turkish bath pummeling from historian Simon Schama.

Peter Weller narrates Yony Leyser's documentary William S. Burroughs: A Man Within getting some great interviews just when you think the MAN has been done to death. Film director John Waters: "He violated the rules of even junkies worlds...and didn't respect any of the rules of the gay world [either]...he opened up to me not gay culture but gay rebels...a rap on the knuckles of poor, white, staid backyard America...he invented a style of book" never identifying with the media hype of the Beat Generation. Patti Smith (who Burroughs encouraged to sing in public): "William had a connection to anything and everything" his words developing as the Beat Shakespeare - blade runner, heavy metal, soft machine, steely dan.
Article in The Independent

Today's Special directed by David Kaplan casts Aasif Mandvi (of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) as the son desperately trying to revitalise his father's ailing Indian restaurant in Jackson Heights, Queens. A really hearteningly end of the week movie to sit back and enjoy. And not a whiff of Burroughs in the Queens night air;)

And what will non-Harry Potter fans make of the latest installment, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1?
Well, I confess to being one (a 'non' that is) though I also confess to having read the first book. And you do have to listen quite intently sometimes to grasp all the plot points. But then again, wouldn't it have disappointed fans if the film had 'signposted' everything and left them saying 'yeah, right get on with it'. What manifests itself in this penultimate installment (and what the franchise has always had going for it) is the art of wonder - perhaps giving the transitive verb 'wandering' a new sensibility with the importance of the noun 'wand' in Potter-dom.

Harry Potter has always been concerned with one's place in the world: where one's loyalties lie, 'the total eclipse of the heart', ways of seeing. And it's hard to imagine bursting into tears at the [is this where I say spoiler alert] death of a rather ugly CG elf Dobby (voice/movements by Toby Jones) but it really is incredibly moving. Am I sounding soppy girlie? Oh dear. Not so much the actual death itself perhaps, but everything that's lead up to this moment on the beach. Dobby's saved the trio (Harry,Hermione, Ron) from a tricky situation with Bellatrix Lestrange (Helena Bonham-Carter) and paid the mortal price gasping a final breath, but it is "a beautiful place...among friends" (actually Pembrokeshire, Wales).

It's the Leibniz monad theory of the many in one and the one in many that is so palpable in this film. Much of this seems due to the wonderful partnership of veteran HP director (last 3) David Yates and the world renowned cinematographer Eduardo Serra (Claude Chabrol's last 7 films, Girl with a Pearl Earing and many others). As the cast have said many times in interviews, their characters are for the first time in the big, bad world entirely away from the safety of Hogwarts. Serra exquisitely, painterly photographs nurturing symbiosis with them and the world. And one in which they must find themselves, find each other, as well as finding and destroying the objects harboring the shards of Voldemort's evil soul, the Horcruxes. Such philosophy does sound 'hokey' in description - and maybe is a bit. But the cast give it such a deep human interiority and Serra such a breadth of vision that the film is like watching a Grimm's fairy tale unfold - terrifying, romantic and sad. As is the silhouetted animation of the fable The Tales of Beetle the Bard where the Deathly Hallows symbol's origin is revealed. Definitely a film to see in IMAX cinemas.

Although not dying alone, Dobby's humble dignity, Harry Potter's characters' inner journey, and the film's almost Greek cathartic search reminded me of this poem about the town center of Sydney, Australia. The one in alone is always linked to the all of the many.

An Absolutely Ordinary Rainbow

The word goes round Repins,
the murmur goes round Lorenzinis'
at Tattersalls, men look up from sheets of numbers,
the Stock Exchange scribblers forget the chalk in their hands
and men with bread in their pockets leave the Greek Club:
There's a fellow crying in Martin Place. They can't stop him.

The traffic in George Street is banked up for half a mile

and drained of motion. The crowds are edgy with talk
and more crowds come hurrying. Many run in the back streets

which minutes ago were busy main streets, pointing:

There's a fellow weeping down there. No one can stop him.

The man we surround, the man no one approaches

simply weeps, and does not cover it, weeps

not like a child, not like the wind, like a man

and does not declaim it, nor beat his breast, nor even

sob very loudly—yet the dignity of his weeping

holds us back from his space, the hollow he makes about him

in the midday light, in his pentagram of sorrow,

and uniforms back in the crowd who tried to seize him

stare out at him, and feel, with amazement, their minds

longing for tears as children for a rainbow.

Some will say, in the years to come, a halo

or force stood around him. There is no such thing.

Some will say they were shocked and would have stopped him

but they will not have been there. The fiercest manhood,

the toughest reserve, the slickest wit amongst us

trembles with silence, and burns with unexpected

judgements of peace. Some in the concourse scream

who thought themselves happy. Only the smallest children

and such as look out of Paradise come near him

and sit at his feet, with dogs and dusty pigeons.

Ridiculous, says a man near me, and stops

his mouth with his hands, as if it uttered vomit—

and I see a woman, shining, stretch her hand

and shake as she receives the gift of weeping;

as many as follow her also receive it

and many weep for sheer acceptance, and more

refuse to weep for fear of all acceptance,

but the weeping man, like the earth, requires nothing,

the man who weeps ignores us, and cries out

of his writhen face and ordinary body

not words, but grief, not messages, but sorrow,

hard as the earth, sheer, present as the sea—

and when he stops, he simply walks between us

mopping his face with the dignity of one

man who has wept, and now has finished weeping.

Evading believers, he hurries off down Pitt Street.

Les Murray-from The Weatherboard Cathedral (1969)

Screenings of Sharon Lockhart's Double Tide (54th BFI London Film Festival video HERE) Nov 11-17 at MoMA.
Video of a Q&A after the London world premiere of Wilhelm Sasnal's Fallout

Opening Nov 9 at the ISE Cultural Foundation is Another Roadside Attraction: An Exploration Into The Contemporary Art Genre Of The Neo Grotesque. Great 'ikky' poster.
And just opened at Scaramouche, Of many, one a show of 8 Brit artists on an Italo Calvino theme

Oooh - and tonight is An Evening with Josiah McElheny, Stephen Prina, and Lynne Tillman as part of MoMA's Modern Mondays. McElheny's film Island Universe using the chandeliers of the Met Opera auditorium is so fascinatingly simple it's almost sublime. (It showed at London's White Cube 2 years ago).

Now I shall stop toying with being a 'thoroughly modern Millie' and dream of my impoverished pixies creating all sorts of phantasmagoria on that great desert island of sleep.....

VIVA: der werst blogger in the world :)

Methinks Viva is der werst blogger in the world;(

What she lacks in immediacy, though, she compensates her reader with content. I did have a very good excuse for not handing in my homework on time. Really!Ignominiously, on my NYC return, I tripped on the stairs to my apartment thence suitcase and all tumbled down to the next landing. Such was my vanity in wearing high heels when traveling! Even worse is that unless you've actually broken a leg and even seriously sprained something no one has much sympathy for you in New York City. So a hobbler I became for a few weeks.
But the grin from my last blog was elicited by an all expenses paid trip back to London. Now, while some readers may surmise that Viva's become a belle de jour it's nothing of the sort (alas''';). But women must have secrets else they die of strangeness.

Just to make you all seethe with jealousy, Viva did cred attending the Raindance Festival Film (there's an NYC course Nov 15), got balls (and weary eyes) infiltrating the 54th BFI London Film Festival sassy'd down the aisles of the Frieze Art Fair ad much more. (See Cosmic Vivace for loads of photos etc)

Still running is The White Light Festival opening (NYT article with artistic director Jane Moss): as quoted by the New York Times, Jane Moss creator of the festival said in her opening remarks that what it is really about is to serve as “an antidote to the midterm elections...a focus on the personal interior spaces “where all music starts.”

Janet Cardiff’s sound installation Forty-Part Motet - based on English composer Thomas Tallis’s 1573 Spem in Alium (surround sounds - every 4o voice from the Salisbury Cathedral given a speaker- the Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Rehearsal and Recording Studio of Jazz at Lincoln Center in the Time Warner Building until Nov. 13) - arguably the best 'chill out' room in Manhattan.
Or make someone treat you (as I did - it won't cost you an arm and a leg) - and even if it did you'd be eternally soothed by the legend that is singer Jack Jones (NYT review) - only until Nov 13

For those who fear that the art of crooning and balladeering is vanishing, fear not that books are being devoured by pixels:
The Editions Artists' Book Fair founded in 1998 by Susan Inglett of I.C. Editions and Brooke Alexander Editions. Free admission.

Books as intellectual cultural status has Mickey Smith questioning in Believe You Me at Invisible-Exports NYC

At MoMA/P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Printed Matter, Inc. presents The NY Art Book Fair take over all three floors (Nov 5–7) - 275 international presses, booksellers, antiquarians, museums, galleries, and artists from twenty-four countries.
including the special exhibition You Are Her - a collection of over 1,000 Riot Grrl zines from the '90s for reading and photocopying. Loads of other great stuff. There's even a free bus (Sat Nov. 6 from 1–5) pootling among the Sculpture Center, Flux Factory, Fisher Landau Center for Art, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Noguchi Museum.

Although it's probably grossly politically incorrect to compartmentalise male and female artists, on this site the woman go first;)

Joy Cuff discusses what it was like being the only woman working on the models for 2001: A Space Odyssey.

EXHIBITIONS CLOSING SOON:

Liz Cohen's Trabantimino is at Salon 94 Bowery (thru Nov. 11) (New York Times article) - a parallel universe to Marc Newson's Transport recently at Gagosian Chelsea
The paintings of Joy Garnett's Boom & Bust at Winkleman Gallery are sourced from photography of military events (thru Nov 13).

What with What at Thomas Erben Gallery is the first solo US show by British painter Rose Wylie (thru Nov 13)

ONGOING EXHIBITIONS:

Gladstone Gallery is showing the Early work of Marisa Merz (thru Nov.20) - a central figure and the only woman associated with the Arte Povera movement of the late 1960s and '70s.

Jo Ann Walters was hailed by William Eggleston as "one of the few independently original photographers working in color today.” These original color prints Vanity + Consolation (1985 plus) have never been exhibited in New York.

Australian video artist Tracey Moffatt's Montages (1999-2010) features in The Bronx Museum's tripartite show. The series of 7 videos explore tropes of cinema's motherhood, race, love.

Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968 at the Brooklyn Museum (thru Jan 9) incl. Vija Celmins (whose recent show after many years absence was at McKee Gallery.

STUX Gallery is showing sculptures by Sokari Douglas Camp whose work, NO-O-WAR-R NO-O-WAR-R, was short-listed for London's Trafalgar Square Fourth Plinth in 2003 and has a major public commission, All the World is Now Richer, for Burgess Park, London marking the bicentenary of the slave trade
abolition.


Shifting the Gaze: Painting and Feminism continues at the Jewish Museum (thru Jan. 30)
MoMA's Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography (thru Mrch 21)
New York Times obit of artist Sylvia Sleigh who died aged 94 NYT obit
At the Sputnik Gallery Moscow based artist Ekaterina Rozhkova's Veil of Happiness silkscreens and hand paints photos of traditional Chinese life onto Chinese patterned silk hopefully creating a dialectic between Western and Eastern representation.
Polish artist Monika Sosnowska is at Hauser & Wirth.

Luxembourg & Dayan usher back into our minds the ghosts of Jeff Koons' Made in Heaven Paintings (thru Jan. 21). Many, many critics including the NYT's Roberta Smith never wanted them around when they were alive ;): "Occupying some no woman’s land of female objectification, they are visual train wrecks."

Katrin Sigurdardottir continues at the Metropolitan Museum.

the men come second...

And now for the boys...

Press conference for 127 Hours

(L-R) Christian Colson, Simon Beaufoy, James franco, Danny Boyle

Just opened in NYC (the UK Jan 7) is Danny Boyle's (Slumdog Millionaire) exhilarating latest film 127 Hours based on the true story and book of Aron Ralston whose hand was lodged against a boulder when he went exploring in one of the crevices of Utah's Blue John canyon. Video HERE of the press conference at the 54the BFI London Film Festival. You can see star of the film James Franco's foray into art, The Dangerous Book Four Boys, inhabiting the Clocktower Gallery, Art International Radio (thru Dec. 1).

Buddy/anti-buddy road movie Due Date teams the ever watchable Robert Downey Jr with Zack Galifianakis as they hack away at each other nerves while schlepping the road to LA. I can't be the only gal who, in her time, has briefly dated a guy fitting the description of Zack's character: lovable, loyal but infuriatingly nipping away at one's heels. Perhaps because he'd rather be wearing them;) Getting equal billing is his dog Sunny but as a whole the script lacks the rapid fire wit one was kinda hoping for from director Todd Phillips of The Hangover. There's a beguiling feminine side to Robert Downey lurking beneath, though. So not all your 96 minutes will be lost.

Just opened at The Kitchen is the U.S. premiere of Adam Pendleton’s new large scale video installation BAND - a reworking of Jean-Luc Godard's classic film Sympathy for the Devil about the Rolling Stones.

Director Anton Corbijn (Control), whose George Clooney pic The American was released in Sept shows B/W portraits of musicians, artists and icons ranging from Iggy Pop to Lucien Freud to Nelson Mandela at Stellan Holm Gallery.

Trace at bitforms gallery is the first solo NYC show of Spanish artist Daniel Canogar. Dial M for Murder is a network of tape crisscrossing the gallery and ripped from a VHS copy of Alfred Hitchcock's film. A video animation is precisely aimed at these radiating geometries and appears to constantly pump like blood along the tape, much as the head in the VCR would have done.

Exhibitions closing soon:

William Lamson's A Line Describing the Sun at The Boiler uses a mirror and Fresnel lens to burn an arcing, 366-foot line in the dried, cracked desert surface -dawn to dusk. The lens focuses the sun into a 1,600-degree point of light, which melts the dirt into bluish black glass. (thru Nov. 14)

At Sperone Westwater's new 8-storey Bowery premises designed Foster + Partners Guillermo Kuitca: Paintings 2008-2010 and Le Sacre 1992 (thru Nov 6)

Gerhard Richter's Lines Which Do Not Exist (thru Nov. 18) at the Drawing Center.

Ongoing exhibitions:

The New Museum's latest exhibition, Free (thru Jan 23), is curated by Lauren Cornell, executive director of Rhizome. Also showing is The Last Newspaper (thru January 9)

Alternative Histories at Exit Art (thru Nov 24) covers over 50 years and 130 spaces that promote(d) nonconformist artists and viewpoints.

Tony Oursler's Peak (thru Dec 5) at Lehmann Maupin (Chrystie St) is apparently the counterpoint to Valley, Oursler’s inaugural show at the Adobe Museum of Digital Media (showing online).

Simon Patterson (he of the The Great Bear of 1992- a reworking of the famous London Underground map) has his first solo NYC show since 1993.

Kevin Bourgeois' SYStm at Causey Contemporary

New show at Storefront

William Villalongo is at Susan Inglett

And anyone for Erwin Wurm's installation Selbstporträt als Gurken with painted pickles as the title suggests? (Jack Hanley Gallery)

MoMA's Abstract Expressionist New York: Ideas Not Theories (thru Feb. 28) including the great New Zealand animation forerunner Len Lye and architectural projects by Buckminster Fuller and Oscar Niemeyer. In Expressionist New York: Rock Paper Scissors (thru Feb. 28) 10 sculptors show alongside their work on paper including English artist Stanley William Hayter who should be better known in the States. Also at MoMA is Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement (thru Jan 3).

At James Cohan Gallery Distillation (thru Dec 11) by Roxy Paine (he of last summer's tree atop the Met Museum roof) shows his series of 22 Dendroids interweaving industrial pipes "a meditation on seeking purity, the pure essence of something, but at the same time the piece is very impure.” “I’m skeptical about the potential for horrible consequences, consistently realized,” he said. “But at the same time we are able to feed six billion people through science and altering nature. That’s kind of a miracle.” “I’m envisioning a kind of battlefield with these elements, which in nature would be vying for the same food source.” (quotes from the New York Times)

James Cohan artist (podcast on site) Fred Tomaselli - founding settler Williamsburg-ite is at Brooklyn Museum (thru Jan 2): perhaps Damien Hirst in a parallel universe for those who don't like DH. Hirst just lost out to the Serpentine Gallery in his bid for a new gallery space in Kensington Gardens.

For a full day, start at the new show at Laurence Miller.

Onwards to John Baldessari: Pure Beauty the show from Tate Modern is at the Metropolitan Museum (thru Jan 9). On the way of 5th Ave, stop at Central Park plaza for Ryan Gander's statue The Happy Prince.

Boetti now inhabits Marianne Boesky's wonderfully atmospheric upper East townhouse.

Knoedler's new show along the way- also check out Matt Magee in their Project space.

(thru Nov 13).
The Whitney's Paul Thek:Diver, a Retrospective (thru Jan 9) may well need another day to take everything in.

Back in Chelsea, Luc Tuymans' Corporate at David Zwirner

Matthew Buckingham at Murray Guy (thru Dec 23)

Peter Blum

and Lombard-Fried have just opened at their new location.

The Raindance Film Festival 2010

The 18th Raindance Film Festival soldiered on last week through the UK economic downturn still looking pretty healthy. No off-site Raindance cafe this year, but passholders had free access to the members only Phoenix Artist Club and the very civilised surroundings of the Apollo continued for another year to give the festival its well-deserved kudos rather than lesser salubrious alternatives.

VIVA's VIDEO of the festival Q&A's:

Rebels without a Clue

Macho

Armless

Five Daughters

Huge (in 3 parts)

The folks from All I Ever Wanted: The Airborne Toxic Event Live from Walt Disney Concert Hall gigged at the opening night party and the film (shot on 8 DSLR's and one digi master cam) proved great fun in classical maestro Gustavo Dudamel spirit. If only there was an Anna Bulbrook with her viola and tambourine on every street corner the world would be so much nicer a place to live and love. The DVD is available through their website.

Legacy the following evening with Idris Elba as a black ops soldier impressed with strong visuals and performances though not always engaging to the end.

Ben Miller's Brit comedy Huge (UK distribution through Luc Roeg's company Independent) could so easily have slipped into TV sitcom turned wannabe cinema but never did and proved that Noel Clarke and Johnny Harris can act more than just mean and menacing.

Ian Vernon's 'youths hot footing on the Northern moors having stumbled on loadsa drug money' Rebels without a Clue also impressed through it's sure direction and performances. So too was the theatrical version of a BBC 3-parter aired earlier in the year Five Daughters based on the 2006 Ipswich prostitute serial murders with '5-star' performances from all the actresses.

Too Much Pussy: Feminist Sluts in the Queer X Show was Emilie Jouvet's very sensitive, totally non-exploitative doco these 7 female performers trouping round Europe. Though often sexually explicit all the gals emerged with enormous dignity and courage as they voiced both their guilty pleasures and feminist concerns.

Vampires was a definite hit working on so many levels - a 'social realist' vampiric Belgian colonialist fangy jabby comedy.

Armless proved a flawed but interesting debut (based on a stage play).

I Believe in Angels was a conventional but quite touching love story of a Croatian postman - beautifully acted and photographed.

The festival opened with fun, English frivoulous animation Jackboots on Whitehall (released by Vertigo in the UK)