The Observer
04.08.19 35
CriticsSubjectArt
A mesmerising view
from somewhere else
The French ambassador’s wife
sings bleak arias behind the
shutters of her fortifi ed residence in
Ouagadougou. Somalian refugees
perform the epic verse of their
homeland on the streets of Turin.
Rock drilling turns up great chunks
of the earth’s mantle in the Mojave
desert , alien in winter, while dancers
in their 90s turn the boulevards
of Argentina into sweltering
outdoor ballrooms – global visions
appearing on screen.
Art can take you anywhere, and
nowhere more immediately or more
variously than in the ceaseless cycle
of fi lms that makes up the Artists’
Film International programme
at the Whitechapel Gallery. The
AFI, as it is unenticingly known,
is one of the hidden treasures of
the contemporary art scene in
Britain. It is always there, always
free and perpetually changing,
with tranches of new fi lms rolling
out through the year from all over
the world. They aren’t bulletins,
although each brings news of
elsewhere; nor are they movies in
any conventional sense, although
some artists work with actors, fi lm
stock and plot.
What they are, it seems to me
from watching over the years, is
roughly the equivalent of literature
to raw knowledge: the world seen
and understood through the mind
and gifts of an artist. Sometimes
the adjustments are minimal. A riot
occurs and the camera runs, coming
to a signifi cant halt or changing
sides without the mollifying
explanatory voiceovers of television
news. Sometimes the artist turns to
pseudo-documentary, impromptu
theatre, or superimposed animation.
But what’s crucial is the prominence
of the contemporary world. Thereand chanting as an antidote to the
idea of sonic weapons as a means of
brutal oppression.
She speaks throughout, but the
fi nal fi lm in this AFI edition has
only a few words in Vietnamese.
Summer Siesta: 6th Hour Counting
from Dawn , by Nguyen Hai Yen ,
feels outstandingly remote. It shows
villagers in some far-fl ung province
with mirrors for faces, so that
each refl ects the rocks, trees and
waterfalls around them. Literally,
these fi gures are disappearing into
their own landscape.
Of course this fi lm might mean
something different to a Vietnamese
viewer, but art is a lingua franca.
The mirror refl ections start to look
like watercolour paintings of the
real landscape around them, just
as the people turn to face each
other, setting up a concatenation
of Vietnamese landscapes.
The fi lm is slow, beautiful and
transporting to watch; it brings
Vietnam right into the gallery,
while remaining mesmerising in its
utter strangeness.city on the closed border with
Turkey , you have the sense of a no
man’s land, a world lost between
two nations. Yet for each girl this
place is home, so familiar one sleeps
on a perilous window ledge and the
other folds herself into the toppled
stones of a door.
Their hands bend with the
shape of the sparkling river, their
mouths brush the wild fl owers,
their feet fi t delicately between
stone and crevasse as they part
and reconcile and part. No other
fi lm could more perfectly convey
a devastating historical impasse
simply through the choreography of
fi gures in a landscape.
It is a vivid jolt to encounter the
concept of “hydrofeminism” next,
in a fi lm by the Argentinian artist
Fannie Sosa (if such a concept
really exists ). I Need This in My
Life examines the healing powers
of sonic vibration in women’s
bodies, which contain a higher
proportion of water than men’s.
This power is revealed in bowls of
water, and then – or so it seems- in women apparently high as
kites with the direct application
of bass vibrations to their bodies.
Sosa herself is a droll presence
throughout, and her real objective is
surely to screen dramatic footage of
Latin American women drumming
There may be
recurring
themes – truth,
beauty, gender
- but all of
these fi lms
are anchored
in everyday
reality
Bringing together
images that are
both familiar and
otherworldly, the latest
collection of AFI works
is a hidden treasure
not to be missedArtists’ Film International
Whitechapel Gallery, London E1;
Tuesday to 29 Sep tLaura
Cummingmay be themes – truth, beauty,
gender – but all of these fi lms are
anchored in everyday reality.
With the latest edition comes
a tremendous new work called
Dun (Home) , by the Turkish artist
Senem Gökçe Oğultekin (born
1982). It opens with the most
startling pan across the parched
and stony highlands of eastern
Turkey, homing in on the bare feet
of a girl clambering over sharp
rocks. These rocks turn out to
be broken stones of spectacular
ruins: octagonal churches, circular
spires, the choirs and apses of
ancient Christian buildings. The
faces of saints have fallen from the
walls, leaving ghostly white ovals;
empty windows, carved of rose-red
sandstone, frame from on high the
plunging valleys below.
Another girl appears and the two
gravitate together, twining, dancing,
gliding among the ruins and the
landscape like the silent ladybirds
and chameleons intermittently
shown in close up. These girls might
be sisters, perhaps even twins –
together but opposed, alike but bent
on independence. A marvellous
sequence shows them with their
long dark hair knotted together as
they pull apart; a sibling civil war.
Even if you don’t recognise the
ruins of Ani, a med ieval ArmenianA sibling civil war...
Senem Gökçe Oğultekin ’s
‘tremendous’ Dun (Home).
Courtesy the artistРЕЛИЗ
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