5 posts tagged “london”
in many ways more important than my synchronous imperial college education in mid 90s london town was my nocturnal sonic education tuning into gilles peterson's weekly radio shows on kiss fm where 'joining the dots' was paramount. the joining the dots ethic is central to the joy of discovery never really knowing where, when and how one thing will lead to another.
amartya sen's argumentative indian was one of my summer's favorite reads and i am still slowly making my way through the book's sleevenotes if you will - the book's dots i'm still trying to connect include poets (tagore), historical islamic and buddhist leaders (akbar and ashoka respectively) and film makers (satyajit ray).
i think i was still reading sen's book one sunny afternoon at the bfi this summer where i had arrived early to meet some friends for some south bank food and vino. after checking out susan pui san lok's faster higher (which was great and timely as i was soon to leave for beijing) i wandered into the excellent bfi store (a sunny summer afternoon at london's south bank really makes you want to move to the great city!) and randomly picked out one of the satyajit ray films on sale to buy.
satyajit ray's pratidwandi (1972) 'the adversary' is a dark claustrophobic neorealist and at times surrealist piece of psychological film making. young intelligent and once idealist siddhartha spends the whole movie seeking work (he had to drop out of medical school when his father passed a few years ealrier) whilst dealing with his cute younger sister flaunting her sexuality to effortlessly land a job and a promotion. in one of the many signs of a massive generational chasm of traditions, she could care less when her boss' wife visits her mum complaining of morally dubious behavior that threatens to sully the family's good name.
set in a bubbling revolutionary calcutta to soumendu roy and purnendu bose's dark almost monochromatic cinematography, society's transformation is met with confusion and india's hopelessly desolute economy weighs down on the frustrated ("i don't understand the youth today, it's like they were born frustrated" says the condescending father of the girl siddhartha falls for late in the film) young and bewildered and confused elders alike. poverty, destitution and desperation are the context in which siddhartha is slowly about to be snapped into place: 'a cog in the bureaucratic machinery'.
siddhartha struggles to deal with what it means to be a young man in this new world, challenged by 'smart, hard-working' and sexily empowered women (and confused by the unshackling of his sister's sexuality), by the draw of a culture that pays for sex and robs red cross charitied change and abuses positions of power to take advantage of said emancipated women, by humiliating interviews for jobs he's too smart for, by a world offering almost nothing but slammed doors and corrupted dreams.
the camera focuses in on a copy of bertrand russel's the history of western philosophy (weird moment as my copy was in my hands at the time) in of the film's later scenes as siddhartha grabs his certificates on his way out to his final interview where he erupts from 'thinker' into 'doer', charging into the interviewers' room enraged at how the interviewees have been kept waiting in the heat for hours with no seats - 'treated like animals'. he doesn't get the job.
finally siddhartha ends up taking a sales job in a small village, resigned to leaving his beloved calcutta but heartened by his recent aquaintance of a girl he connects before he leaves.
satyajit ray has a whole chapter dedicated to him in amartya sen's enriching collection of essays 'the argumentative indian' on which i plan to write more soon.
like still life which i also watched a few days ago the film at times suddenly veers off to the surreal inner worlds of its hero (rather than those of the filmmaker jia zhang-ke in still life), hallucinatory digressions into childhood memories and fantasies of rage.
a taut film on the darkness of youth and a dark commentary on society's economics of desperation.
one of the best indian movies i've seen. looking forward to making my way through the ray filmography.
David Kaufman reports in last month's Wallpaper* on the emergence of what Mercer calls Global Nomadic Expatriates (GNEs): 'These are career expats'...'They move from country to country with no particular loyalty to a home nation'.
Could easily be referring to the original tribe Tyler Brule set out to reach when he launched Wallpaper* back in 96.
These GNE's differ from the traditional expat in the way that they reach out and ingrain themselves in local society for a few years before picking up and repeating somewhere new. over and over and over. This Bidoun lifestlye has always appealed to me on a conceptual level although looking back over my first thirty years I am surprised at how non-footloose they have been. Maybe life at forty will mean jetting between seven different buy-to-let hotel rooms in stimulating cities around the world. Starting out with The Jones.
Mitra Tabrizian: This is that Place
4 June – 10 August 2008
Tate Britain, Level 2
Millbank, London
Admission free. Open daily 10.00-18.00, until 22.00 on the first Friday of the month
In June 2008, Tate Britain will open the first major exhibition in the UK of the work of the Iranian-British photographer and film director, Mitra Tabrizian. Born in Tehran, Tabrizian’s primary concerns are contemporary issues and debates and her interests range from post-feminism and post-colonial theories and the effects of late capitalism in Britain, to the shifting realities of life in post-revolutionary Iran. Bringing together more than 17 works from the last eight years, this exhibition will focus on themes of the rise of corporate culture, ageism, nomadism, migrancy and notions of homeland.
Tabrizian’s particular conceptual approach to constructed picture-making will also be revealed. Combining documentary techniques with those of film to make elaborate photographic tableaux, her photographs are carefully staged so that the images operate as condensed narratives. Sometimes these narratives span a sequence of stills, as in the series The Perfect Crime 2003-2004 and Lost Time 2004, while in other works such as Silent Majority the storyline is concentrated within one frame. The themes of these works echo earlier pieces such as Beyond the Limits 2000 in offering a challenging critique of corporate culture and contemporary life.
In her most recent works, including Border 2005-6 and Tehran 2006, Tabrizian has been influenced by New Wave Iranian Cinema. This has transformed Iranian film in the last two decades and according to Rose Issa, curator of this exhibition, its cinematic language “champions the poetry in everyday life and the ordinary person by blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, feature film with documentary”.
Tehran 2006, a large panoramic photograph of a run-down residential area in the outskirts of the capital, is populated by a disparate group of people with all the characters playing themselves: the crowd is a mixture of people who are struggling and have been let down by the promises of revolution; a taxi driver, factory worker, builder, cleaner, dress-maker and servant. Border, a group of photographs from 2005-6, shows real people, immigrants who have left Iran and crossed borders in search of a better life, in everyday settings. They are shown lost in thought having brought their borders with them, remaining divided between their present circumstances and their longing for home, or their desire to feel at home in their new surroundings.
Tabrizian has exhibited in museums and galleries in Europe, Asia and the USA, including most recently a solo exhibition at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2006). Her work was included in Veil, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (2003) and Voodoo Macbeth: A tribute to the work of Orson Welles, De la Warr Pavillion. Bexhill (2006). This exhibition has been selected by Rose Issa. It will be accompanied by an illustrated catalogue with a text by T.J.Demos and interview by Rose Issa (price £6.99).
--
