CILDO MEIRELES OPENING @ TATE Modern, London

CILDO MEIRELES @ TATE Modern, London
OPENING OCTOBER 13, 2008

October 14 2008-January 11 2009

Exhibit Includes: Eurka/Blindhotland 1970-5, Through 1983-9, Mission/Missions (How to Build Cathedrals) 1987 (SEE TOP), Red Shift 1967-84 (SEE BOTTOM), Fontes 1992/2008, Babel 2001, Volatile 1980-94, Southern Cross 1969-70, Glovetrotter 1991, Money Tree 1969

I had the extraordinary luck to be allowed to tag along to the Opening of the first Cildo Meireles exhibit in the UK at TATE Modern on Monday night. The artist himself appeared a zen-seeming man with cheerful Buddha eyes. I can't imagine an experience closer to that of Christmas morning. A wonderfully curated, interactive experience, the exhibit includes one room of Cildo's early work including recycled Brazilian Coke bottles silk screened with almost unnoticeable dexterity with phrases including "Yankee Go Home!" There are also several examples of the "Zero Dollar" in both Brazilian and American currency (terrifyingly apt at the current moment) and "Liberty coins" that have "In God We Trust" on one side and a Coca Cola on the other. Important to note that these are not only pieces of art, but pieces of political unrest that made made their way onto the streets of mainstream Brazil.

While it is important to see the artistic climate that Cildo has emerged from, it is his (sometimes) less blatantly political installation work that makes the best impression at the TATE today. I could gush embarrassingly over the giddy joy that I felt getting to experience a hands on exploration of my personal favorites (Volatile, Red Shift, Through, How to Build Cathedrals, Fontes) but I nearly cringe at not letting you experience the work yourself. In brief- Volatile is a sensory explosion involving a very dark room, three people you've never met, and talc up to your knees. (Word of advice- Don't wear the boots! It is integral to feel this on your bare skin!) Red Shift allows seven people into a series of three gloriously vermilion rooms that tell a story as theatrical as any I have seen onstage (Be sure to look in the refrigerator!) Through has been "safe-guarded" with a layer of plexi over the satisfyingly shattered glass, but retains enough crunch to keep it's dark danger, while Mission/Missions (How to Build Cathedrals) -both a tribute and a curse to the Jesuits who lost their lives in missions throughout Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay- seems untouched since the original installation. It is haunting, simple, and beautiful. I experienced the most joy exploring the clock and ruler maze of Fontes, and encourage everyone to find the center of the spiral before falling into the following UV version of Canal-street inspired installation, Babel.

This is an exhibit not to miss. I believe next stop is a tour to the permanent home of Mission/Missions (How to Build Cathedrals) at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, USA.

DRIFT '08 'GHOST BRIDGE' @ The River Thames, London

DRIFT '08
Illuminate Productions
London's First Annual Art Exhibition on The River Thames

Artist
Keith Bowler (United Kingdom)

Title
Ghost Bridge

Medium
Light Installation

Location
Old Blackfriars Railway Bridge

"The bridge design is simulated on top of its original supporting posts using the latest lighting technology."

Please see Iluminate Productions for information on all 7 contemporary art installations as a part of Drift '08.

Tonight I caught a second part of the Drift '08 exhibition on my way to see the Cildo Miereles opening at The TATE Modern. Especially excited about the nature of the light installation on Blackfriars, I was slightly disappointed. The concept is there, in brilliant glory, but there's no reason that they could not have carried it out in more ghostly detail. The pin straight lines of the lasers across the old supports are beautiful, but they lack a clarity of meaning to one who is unaware of the project. I would prefer for the bridge to be there, not just send us a postcard.

FRANKFURT GOOD WOOD @ Hold & Freight, London

frankfurt good wood
Hold & Freight Gallery Space
With Art by: Anne Lina Billinger, Jorman Foth, Lena Henke, Hanna Hildebrand, Simone Junker, Andrei Koschmieder, Paul Wierbinski, Naneci Yurdagul

An art exchange project between students at Goldsmiths University in London and the Frankfurt Stadelschule Dancing Class, curated by second year Art Curation MAs. To my admittedly untrained eye, it felt a bit messy and "faux nouveau," (I mean, don't get me wrong, I decopaged magazine collages onto my bedroom door in highschool too...) with the exception of a glittery gem of a short film by Paul Wierbinski entitled Ivo Burkovic- The Life of the Fake Artist as a Young Business Model (2008). Paul details his creation of the perfect bohemian artist to market work he believes to be shitty, but marketable. An eastern name, a mall photo, some Chinamen to "paint and paint and paint and paint" for dirt cheap, a young artist auction to rich buyers, and I'll be damned if Ivo Burkovic isn't the hottest thing in town and turning a far from shabby profit to boot. I can't wait to revisit the Borat of Modern Art.

SHUNT LOUNGE October 9, 2008 @ The Vaults, London

SHUNT LOUNGE
Shunt Vaults, London Bridge
October 9, 2008

What If?
Created and Directed By Shunt Artist Layla Rosa
With: Geneva Foster-Gluck, Virginia Fernandez de Gamboa, Layla Rosa

"What if?...My eyes never see what your eyes see?"is the question raised by this tight ensemble of women over the course of Layla Rosa's nightmarish odyssey What If?

Audiences are encouraged to walk around the full space, throughout the magnificent railway arches that bless the Shunt arena, touch the ropes hanging ominously from 20-odd feet about our heads, do anything but sit down immediately. This is a brilliant touch, because if I had not done do before taking my seat, I may have doubted that anything before me was a reality. Maybe it was too late for me to be there, maybe I had had too much to drink, but nothing could have prepared me for the acid experience that awaited me.

Women in full Chadors perform ariel acts that blur the lines between circus act and snuff film. A "striptease" removal of veil upon veil...upon veil...reveals new, sexy, and sarcastic boundaries. We are both relieved and terrified when we realize that we have finally come to some real flesh-- the eyes! Eyes that speak volumes and lips that are never seen and say nothing, except perhaps to sing a caberet song ('Night and Day' was it? So startling was the experience that it didn't even matter- I cannot forget the chills on the back of the neck to hear this deep sexy voice through the layers of cloth.)

"What A Wonderful World" sings Louis Armstrong as our arielist swings (joyfully? girlishly?) from her rope high above us. She may continue to swing happily when we go to black, or she may simply hang herself. Either ending would be appropriate to this fevered trip.

I certainly cannot be sure that my eyes and ears took in the same performance that the man sitting next to me, in front of me or behind me did. What a wonderful world, indeed.

THE BARBER OF SEVILLE @ English National Opera, London

THE BARBER OF SEVILLE
ENO at The London Coliseum
Music: Gioachino Rossini
Libretto: Cesare Sterbini
English Translation: Amanda Holden and Anthony Holden
Original Director: Jonathan Miller
Revial Director: Ian Rutherford
Conductor: Rory Macdonald
Original Designer: Tanya McCallin
Original Lighting Designer: Tom Mannings
Revival Lighting: Martin Doone
PSM: Alex Hayesmore
With: Julian Hubbard, John Tessier, Garry Magee, Anna Grevelius, Andrew Shore, Jennifer Rhys-Davies, Peter Kerr, Brindley Sherratt, Geraint Hylton

Let's start out with a compliment, shall we? The Barber of Seville is a lovely evening at the ENO. The acting is spot on, the slapstick as sticky and joyous as toffee and the comedic timing and vocals both pitch-perfect.

Now a question: Why did you revive this production?

Let me expound a bit. I do not think that "Because it's fun" is a good enough reason to revive a less than perfect production. There is always room for a jolly evening spent enjoying Rossini's opera. But why this production? Or to phrase the question in another way....Or 7...

• Why did you use so much plexi glass in the set that I could see all the lamps reflected back into my eyes and had to stop looking at the stage?
• Why was there no front light?
• Why did you only use dramatic cuing at the end of Act 1?
• Why didn't anyone know what to do when the automation didn't work? Surely you're prepared for this?
• Why were some of the costumes sumptuous creme puffs of goodness and others walking yawns?
• Why was there lightning inside the house during the thunderstorm? (Lighting Designers! We do notice where you place your strobes!)
• And most importantly--- Why was my bed sheet hug across the stage like a giant sail? You don't think this play takes place on a boat....do you?

I would like say that I loved the direction, but that is only true as far as staging goes. Beyond that, I got the feeling that the director and the designers never spent time in the same room, let alone teched the same piece. So, may I ask why we feel the need to revisit this production? Clearly the talent is in the world to perfect this piece. Why not explore new territory within the context of a classic?

Also a note: This is the first translation I have seen of this piece into English. It was clearly very English, but I'm not sure that it was terribly good. I would love to hear from anyone who has worked with this or another translation if you have thoughts on either. I suspect that the idea of the ENO needing pieces to be in English has become obsolete now that we have the technology to so easily display subtitles. There is a wealth in the original language that I lost at several turns over the course of this evening.

I left this production with a general feeling of homey happy cuddliness, but with a good dose of bewilderment thrown in for good measure.
Mostly, it makes me want to find a good Gilbert and Sullivan operetta in town. Anyone?

LIBERTY @ Shakespeare's Globe, London

LIBERTY
World Premiere @ Shakespeare's Globe
By Glyn Maxwell
Directed By Guy Retallack
Designer: Ti Green
Composer: William Lyons
Choreographer: Paul Harris
PSM: Martin Hope
With: David Sturazaker, Ellie Piercy, Edward Macliam, Kirsty Besterman, Belinda Lang, Gregory Gudgeon, Jonty Stephens, William Lyons, Jon Banks, Clare Salaman


I was dragged kicking and screaming into the New Globe to see the final performance of Glyn Maxwell's new verse-play, Liberty. "Haven't we been subjected to enough theater covering the French Revolution?!" I whined obnoxiously to my calmer American compatriot. To be fair, I land here in England having been freshly subjected to the musical disaster that is the production of Tale of Two Cities currently desecrating the Broadway stage. That particular production was such a snooze-fest that I carry with me a "NO REVOLUTION BUT A BOUBLIL AND SHONBERG REVOLUTION" leaflet to hand out to budding writers and composers. Thank God, I have been swiftly and sharply proved wrong.

Liberty is a gleefully directed, fast paced slice of French Soap Opera. There is music, there is madness, lust, bourgeois fallen on hardship, implied rape, fetish, and the lopping off of heads. Personally, I could not ask for much more when dealing with a production on the Globe stage, except perhaps for an exceptional minimalist design, stellar acting, and a rousing masque, all of which were offered up, to my childish excitement. Even a brief (albeit disturbing) nod to puppets! Joy!

The verse is imperfect, but forgiven since the language is lovely enough in itself to transcend this issue. I haven't heard a modern playwright capture such a biting wit in a classical tone in recent years. It makes me ponder if perhaps Richard Nelson didn't just plain need more sex to make his recent Conversations In Tusculum wake up off the page. Are we audiences so base? So yearning for innuendo? Perhaps. Or perhaps, like Shakespeare, we recognize the need to place great love, tragedy and yearning against the backdrop of a few bawdy codpiece references in order to make it recognizable to our own lives. Glyn Maxwell knows that we relish the rake who drinks and beds the girls. And yet he presents this in such beautiful language that none of us feel dirty, but rather leave the theater an elevated breed of intellectual.

Liberty has a heart and soul pounding under it's historical skin, and I wish it the best of luck on it's current UK tour. I can offer no better compliment to all involved that to say "I want to know what happens next."

DRIFT '08 'SAVED FROM DROWNING' @ The River Thames, London

DRIFT '08
Illuminate Productions
London's First Annual Art Exhibition on The River Thames

Artist
Margaret Evangeline (United States of America)

Title
Saved From Drowning

Medium
Steel Painting

Location
River Thames Opposite the TATE Modern

"The mirrored surface of this large, interactive sculpture rises and falls with the tide, and captures the activities and audience on the surrounding riverscape."

Please see Iluminate Productions for information on all 7 contemporary art installations as a part of Drift '08.

I must confess. I was interviewed about this piece, along with my fellow American "drayma" student for Korean television before either of us had even realized we were standing in front of a piece of art. This piece, on first glance, reads as something practical (trash-strainer-thing?) floating on the Thames that is accidentally beautiful. And I love it all the more for that.

I (apparently) could talk circles about the site specificity of this piece long before reading it's title or blurb. They were pretentious circles, but they came from an instant gut reaction of joy to find this moving smashed and glorious mirror floating, reflecting the gray sky, my wan face, and the rippling water all in one distorting swoop. The truth is that it is a touching tribute to the drowned, bringing us down to their level by reflecting both what we see (St. Paul's on the one side, the TATE Modern on the other, and of course, ourselves on the shore) and the waves that encompass the dead.

I love this project. Has anyone else gone on a walk through the sites of Drift '08?