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Artprojx Cinema presents
Santiago Sierra & Takeshi Murata
An Artist Film & Video Double Bill
Premiere Film Screenings
Thursday 13 October
8.15pm – 11.30pm
Artprojx at The Prince Charles Cinema
7 Leicester Place, London WC2H 7BY
Tickets to both screenings £10. £6.50 for a single screening (includes BEER or POPCORN)
www.princecharlescinema.com
Book Online at
No, Global Tour
I, Popeye
Double Bill
-
Team Gallery, Lisson Gallery, prometeogallery di Ida Pisani & Galeria Helga de Alvear present
the UK premiere of
‘NO, Global Tour ’ by Santiago Sierra
(8.15pm runs 120 mins)
&
Salon 94 presents
the UK premiere of
‘I, Popeye’ by Takeshi Murata,
screened along with early works by the artist
(10.30pm runs 60 mins)
NO, Global Tour, 2011
A film by Santiago Sierra
Directed by Santiago Sierra
Filmed by Diego Santome
black and white film
120 minutes
Santiago Sierra is undoubtedly one of the most interesting contemporary artists today. He has created a body of work that rescues and renews the expressive power of minimalism and coceptualism, with a political charge that encourages reflection on the classical problems of Western art while denouncing our current situation. His recent work, NO, GLOBAL TOUR, consists of the manufacture and transportation of two monumental sculptures in the form of the word “NO”, travelling through different territories on a flatbed truck. The NO, GLOBAL TOUR has resulted in a feature film that documents the passage of this large NO through various world cities. A monumental sculpture – unchanged both in its form and immediate meaning – that gradually assumes a complex semantic load during a journey full of eventualities accidents and unexpected events. The film, full of all manner of references, does not aim for surprise but thought. Using the strict black and white that characterises his work, and with a soundtrack limited to a careful treatment of incidental sound, the film revitalises the road movie genre through a productive encounter with other languages and disciplines. By subordinating the narrative to minimalist rigours, Santiago Sierra presents in this film an exceptional portrait of an humanity that is able to assert itself everywhere and at all times by forcefully saying: NO.
NO was filmed on location in the following cities (in the order in which they were visited): Lucca, Berlin, Halle Neustadt, Bernburg, Milano, Lucca, London, Bruxelles, Rotterdam, Maastricht, Dortmund, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, Buffalo, Hamilton, Toronto, New York, Miami, Madrid, Lourdes, Marseille, Cap Ferrat, Monte Carlo, Genova, Livorno, Washington D.C., Salamanca, Carrara, Nagoya, Katowice, Francia, Rouillé and Mexico City. The complete list of sites is available here: www.noglobaltour.com
Santiago Sierra (b. 1966, Madrid) is known for his provocative conceptual projects that address structures and mechanisms of power and often expose situations of exploitation and marginalization. In past projects, he has famously hired underprivileged individuals to undertake pointless and degrading tasks in order to articulate economies of value and exchange in formal and poetic ways.
Over the past twenty years, Sierra has exhibited widely in Europe and the Americas. He has been the subject of numerous solo presentations in museums and galleries, including London’s Tate Modern; Mexico’s Museo Rufino Tamayo; the Konsthall in Stockholm; Kestnergesellschaft in Hannover; Kunsthaus Bergenz in Austria; and at Kunst Werke in Berlin. He represented Spain at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003.
The film is supported by Team Gallery, New York; Lisson Gallery, London; Galería Helga de Alvear, Madrid; prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, Milan.
‘I, Popeye’ by Takeshi Murata
(and screening of early works)
In Europe, Popeye’s copyright expired on January 1, 2009, which means his likeness can be used in comics, on clothing, and elsewhere without authorization from the copyright holder—but only in Europe, where the law protects copyright for seventy years following the author‘s death (E.C. Segar, who first drew the spinach-guzzling sailor in 1929, died in 1938). In the United States, however, copyright stands for ninety-five years after it is first registered, so uses of Popeye will have to be registered through 2024. The discrepancy in US and EU law has created an odd situation where geography determines legal constraints on the production of highly mobile images.
Takeshi Murata wasn’t aware of the copyright issue when he began working on I, Popeye (2010), but it highlights the contradictions that interest him: the possibility of “unauthorized use” with images that are as deeply embedded in the popular consciousness as a song like “Happy Birthday.” Here, Murata twists a cartoon of heroic triumph into a litany of failure—the opposite of what Disney does when adapting a tale that, in the Grimms’ telling, doesn‘t end happily. The halting, minor-key version of the Popeye theme song in Devin Flynn and Ross Goldstein‘s soundtrack and the leering, moneyed Popeye pictured on the anti-hero‘s T-shirt—a caricature of pop-culture icon as commodity—are two details that contribute the video‘s effect. But the key factor is the medium itself. By rendering the characters in the kind of slick three-dimensional animation commonly associated with big-studio production, Murata intensifies and complicates the discrepancy between the official Popeye and his own “folk” version. (text excerpt from “Free,” The New Museum, NY, written by Brian Droitcour)
Takeshi Murata
Murata born (b. 1974, Chicago, IL, USA) lives and works in upstate New York. He received his BFA in film/video/animation from RISDI. His work has been shown widely in gallery and museum exhibitions in Europe and Asia and is included in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC and the DESTE Foundation of Contemporary Art in Athens, Greece. Murata has developed painterly techniques for processing video using glitches and errors. Conjuring digital turbulence from broken DVD encoding, he carefully tends bad video compression to generate sometimes sinuous, sometimes violent flows of digital distortion. With a powerfully sensual force that is expressed in videos, loops, installations and electronic music, Murata’s synesthetic experiments in hypnotic perception appear at once seductively organic and totally digital.
Salon 94
The film is presented by Salon 94, New York. Since its creation in 2002, the mission of Salon 94 has grown from exhibiting special projects by emerging and renowned artists alike. In addition to the two downtown spaces, the original 94th Street townhouse remains as a site for visitors to experience artworks and performances in a furnished, inhabited space. www.salon94.com
Don't miss this !!!
Links
Team Gallery
Salon 94
Lisson Gallery
Galeria Helga de Alvear
prometeogallery di Ida Pisani
Frieze Art Fair
For more information contact:
David Gryn
artprojxcinema@gmail.com
http://davidgryn.wordpress.com
http://www.artprojx.com
