Set me free, why don’t you…

Bet you didn’t expect that as a title for a posting after over year of silence from me. Maybe I’m setting you off on the wrong foot here, but hey, a wrong foot is better than no foot at all.

Returned from Venice, and having rested my weary legs after having traipsed up and down, and down and up the narrow streets and the city’s vast amount of little bridges many times during the three days that constitute the official opening of the Venice Biennale, one of the highlights for me this time was the Icelandic pavilion.

Although the pavilion houses two distinct works, or rather facets of the artist’s – Ragnar Kjartansson – practice, I want to focus on the video installation, and leave the durational piece, which is supposed to last for six months, for what it is. My main curiosity about this second work – for which the artist will paint a daily picture of a male model wearing nothing but swimming trunks, set against the backdrop of the iconic views of the Grand Canal lined with palazzos on either side – is whether some level of boredom won’t set in at some stage, provoking either painter or model (or both) to insert the intended daily act with ever-increasing subversions. (For those who are interested in this particular work, you can find a stylised impression here). How it will pan out, only time will tell.

But, back to the video installation. It’s a work that made me slow down, smile, leave the room, but return back to it immediately, return again later, smile again, and each time leave in even better spirits. So what happens and why did it have this effect on me? It being a video installation, there’s obviously something on a visual level that compelled me to come back more than once, and that made me linger for a while on each occasion. But there’s also the aural element, that’s maybe just as compelling.

In essence the idea is super simple, and maybe it’s this seeming simplicity that makes it so beguiling. Here’s what you encounter when you walk into a relatively small rectangular space: it’s dark and you find yourself surrounded by six medium-sized projections, all of the same format. Each projection shows a snow-covered landscape, which, because of the copious amount of trees, you immediate understand to be somewhere else but Iceland. On five screens there’s one, and sometimes two figures in the foreground, mountains and blue skies and sometimes threatening clouds behind them, while sometimes they’re surrounded by trees, or an odd tree in the foreground functions as a traditional coulisse. On one screen the angle of the frame is much wider, with a lone figure and a grand piano positioned in front of an impressive mountain range, in the distance across an immaculate white snowy plane, and a small figure walking in an even further distance. The figure(s) on each screen are clad against the cold, wearing fur hats, and warm winter coats. That’s what you see.

Now, on to what you hear. Despite the wintry circumstances, all figures (or rather, the same figure and his companion) manage to play an instrument. And within five seconds you get it, you understand what’s happening. All the instruments – including a banjo, a drum set, a grand piano, a guitar, a base – play the same tune, and the series of one-, or sometimes two-man pieces, actually form a whole band together, despite being dislocated in space and real time, somehow playing in perfect sync in the work’s time. The music that they generate is of a slow, laid-back, folksy nature, in keeping with the landscape and the musicians’ attire.

There’s a clear romantic streak to it all, both on a visual and an aural level. A streak that’s inherent to the artist’s practice in general, so the press release tells me, but the nice things is that it’s not over-egged. Otherwise the artist would surely not have opted for the bright pink guitar, visible on one of the screens, or would have gone through great length to disguise the here and there clearly visible wires, mike stands and bulky amplifiers, which place it all very much into a twenty-first-century now.

So, what’s so incredibly likeable about this work? Partly I think it is the sheer simplicity of it. Don’t get me wrong though: obviously there’s an impressive level of technical accomplishment at work, with the six screens covering various instruments and images and sound somehow all adding up to a bigger whole. But it’s the adding up to the bigger whole of an in essence simple idea that seems to do the trick. That, and what seems like a refreshing lightness of touch: again not because the artist did not go through great lengths to actually produce the piece, filming in the Canadian Rocky Mountains in winter with no doubt at least a crew of several camera and sound people, as well as the artist’s companion. But it’s the compelling combination of serious undertones, a high level of production values, combined with a laid-back attitude and the simplicity that does produce something that is – like magic – much more than the sum of its parts.

What seems to add to this heady mix is the tentative nature with which the music starts, plays, peters out, and then starts again, giving the impression that it’s not perfection in the musical performance that the artist strives for. As a result it gives you, the viewer, the feeling that it doesn’t matter when in the sequence of events you walk in or leave, or how long you stay for. There doesn’t seem to be that – often implied – desire for you to experience a piece from beginning to end.

Because of the seeming casualness with which the music is played, and with which the protagonists seem to behave on screen – one of them occasionally walking into the frame or out without any clear reason, or leaning against a tree if at that moment in time his musical input is not required – the simple fact that you’ve walked into the space, looked around, and leave smiling (as most people do), seems to be enough. Used as we are to clear chronologies and (implied) narratives when it comes to video work, and the often felt pressure on our desired attention for its duration, this is quite liberating: it makes me feel relaxed and at ease. And funnily enough that’s exactly why I keep wanting to go back and stay. Just to hang out, in that room, with the six screens, the music and their bunch of casual players.

Maybe there’s something in the title that refers (possibly unwittingly) to this moment of feeling liberated, and the end to the oft-felt pressure of being a dutiful viewer. Maybe I’m getting carried away here and am I simply projecting my own experience onto it all.  Entitled The End, the work not only seems to indicate a wonderful clarity of vision, but also a trust that it all, indeed, adds up, in the end.

Some images below. The music can actually be heard as part of the YouTube clip that relates to the durational piece I referred to earlier.

For those wanting more about Venice: go read the abundance of reviews.
But, if you want to see more of actual work, you can find some other pictures, many of them actually moving, as many other Venice Biennale 2009 participations got the hang of it this year too, either via YouTube, or on dedicated Venice pavilion sites.

Here goes: Steve McQueen in the British pavilion, and for conversations with Martin Boyce (Scotland), John Cale (Wales) and Susan MacWilliam (Northern Ireland) go to the British Council website; Fiona Tan in the Dutch pavilion; Liam Gillick in the German pavilion; (About) Francis Upritchard in the New Zealand pavilion; Pae White in the Arsenale. And just for the fun and some good old-fashioned spectacle of it, Michelangelo Pistoletto in the Arsenale. The Danish & Nordic pavilion is not captured in moving image – as in essence the experience, curated by Elmgreen & Dragset, had to be experienced in real time – but is available in stills.

GvN