Wednesday March 21, 2012

Last year, American artist Christian Marclay won the Golden Lion at Venice for his 24 hour video played in real time. ‘The Clock’ was an edit of thousands of cinematic clips which involved clocks or watches, and the magical part was that If, for instance, one was looking at Harold Lloyd hanging perilously from a clock above a New York street, one knew the exact time in real life was, in fact, 6.30.

For those who are interested in the process that lay behind this masterpiece, the latest New Yorker has an extended piece on Marclay and the three year marathon making of the ‘The Clock’

Here is a trailer, one of several available on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp4EUryS6ac

But what really caught my attention was this. Last week, I talked about Mark Dion’s comment that an artist’s particular methodology should be able to be adapted to any context. Marclay started as a DJ, playing scratched and broken records, and then made works using broken records. An artwork involving a collage of cracked vinyl pieces may seem a long way from ‘The Clock’, but the impulse to edit existing material is the same.

Much as we all adore Athi Patra Ruga, one might have wished that a stronger desire for a rigorous edit had arisen in his breast as one sat through a somewhat tortuous performance of his rite of passage piece, ‘Ilulwane’, at the Long Street Baths last week.

The red lighting on the water was gorgeous. The synchronized swimmers looked good for the first fifteen minutes, after which they did not seem to be particularly energized, or in time. They were probably cold by then, poor things.

The video projection stuttered through images of piers off the west side of lower Manhattan (I think), a ceremony of robed figures, and a herd of goats, and eventually against this backdrop, the floating artist was hauled from the water and suspended above the pool, high heels casting a dramatic shadow on the wall. By then, though, the videos had become repetitious and had gone on too long.

The ability of the artist to endure has to be balanced against the desire of the audience to reach closure.

Cape Town has another new art space. For a gallery located inside a hotel, the Upper Eastside in Woodstock, it has an odd name: The Museum Gallery. This week, first time exhibitor Sally Berg opened her introspective painting show ‘In the flesh’ in the lower part of the gallery. Visit on Saturdays until March 31.