All This Can Happen

9 – 15 June

2012, 50 mins, HD, 16:9, colour, sound

SYNOPSIS

“I have to report that one fine morning, as the desire to take a walk came over me, I put my hat on my head, left my writing room or room of phantoms and ran down the stairs to hurry out into the street…”

All This Can Happen is constructed from archive photographs and footage from the earliest days of cinema.  Based on Robert Walser’s novella ‘The Walk’ (1917), the film follows the footsteps of the protagonist as a series of small adventures and chance encounters take the walker from idiosyncratic observations of ordinary events towards a deeper pondering on the comedy, heartbreak and ceaseless variety of life.  Juxtapositions, different speeds and split frame techniques convey the walker’s state of mind as he encounters a world of hilarity, despair and ceaseless variety.

One important inspiration is the nineteenth-century scientist Étienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904), whose work represents one of the earliest attempts to record movement photographically.  “Each individual frame in a Marey sequence has its own character” says Siobhan Davies. “This led us to much experimentation with the tension between the stillness of a single frame and the movement in a sequence of frames. The constant interplay between stillness and movement is a distinctive aspect of the style of our film.”

“What interests us most of all is counterpoint: creating different rhythms and meanings through the juxtaposition of one thread of sound or imagery against another. We want to show how observation and fantasy, memory and speculation can all co-exist in the same mind at the same time, so that we create a ‘psychological 3D’ or ‘cubist’ portrait of a mind.” David Hinton.

Public Houses – “Later I arrived at all sorts of public houses, which produce consequences which everyone knows. Even the most virtuous person cannot dispute the fact that he is never master of certain improprieties. Luckily, however, one is of course, human, and as such easily pardonable.”

An Inexpressible Feeling for the World – “I stood and listened, and suddenly there came upon me an inexpressible feeling for the world, and, together with it, a feeling of gratitude, which broke powerfully out of my soul.”

Every Smallest Living Thing – “With the utmost love and attention the man who walks must study and observe every smallest living thing.  The highest and the lowest, the most serious and the most hilarious things are to the walker equally beloved, beautiful and valuable.”

All This Can Happen – “Do you think it quite impossible that on a gentle walk I should meet giants, do business with booksellers, dine at noon with intelligent ladies, stroll through woods, dispatch dangerous letters, and come to wild blows with spiteful, ironic master tailors? All this can happen, and I believe it actually did happen.”

All Things Must Pass – “So then everything, everything, all this rich life, the friendly thoughtful colours, this delight, this joy and pleasure in life, all these human meanings, family, friend and beloved, this bright, tender air full of divinely beautiful images, houses of fathers, houses of mothers, and dear gentle roads, must one day pass away and die, the high sun, the moon, and the hearts and eyes of men.”

DIRECTORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

Siobhan Davies

A British choreographer, founder and artistic director of Siobhan Davies Dance.  Siobhan has created over 40 works to critical acclaim (having twice twice an Olivier Award, and amongst others, Digital Dance Awards and a South Bank Show Award). She began dancing while a student at Art College and soon joined London Contemporary Dance Theatre, founding in 1982 the influential company Second Stride with Richard Alston and Ian Spink. Her curiosity has led her to extend her work through relationships with film, visual arts and crafts. She has commissioned films by dance and visual artists including Idris Khan and Sarah Warsop, Marcus Coates and Henry Montes and Lucy Skaer and Gill Clarke. Siobhan Davies Dance was formed in 1988 and in 2006 moved to the RIBA award-winning Siobhan Davies Studios.

David Hinton

A British film director who has twice won BAFTA awards for his documentaries. His dance films have also won many awards, including a Prix Italia, an Emmy and the IMZ Dance Screen Award. He worked for ten years on the ITV arts programme The South Bank Show, where he made documentaries about artists of all kinds, including painter Francis Bacon, film-maker Bernardo Bertolucci, writer Alan Bennett, and rock and roller Little Richard. He has also made films about Dostoyevsky, visual comedy, and the Cultural Revolution in China. He is well known in the dance world for Dead Dreams of Monochrome Men and Strange Fish, his film versions of stage shows by DV8 Physical Theatre. He has also directed television films with Adventures in Motion Pictures, the Alvin Ailey Company and the Royal Swedish Ballet, and he has collaborated with several choreographers to create original dance works for the screen. He teaches dance film workshops all over the world.

THANKS

Robyn Cabaret, Siobhan Davies Dance.

The production of the film was supported by Arts Council England and the Siobhan Davies Commissioning Fund, in partnership with the British Film Institute.

Mutual Dependency

26 May – 1 June

Mutual dependence , Eulalia Valldosera’s 2009 film (originally conceived to be screened as part of an installation in the gallery), follows Liuba, a Ukrainian cleaner at the Archaeological Museum of Naples as she goes acerca her job. Liuba is first seen distractedly gazing at the passing crowds as she waits for her shift to begin. The visitors file past the statues deep in conversation, occasionally glancing at the precious artefacts, always keeping a respectful distance. Once the crowds have left the museum Liuba begins her job polishing the statue of Emperor Claudius, intimately caressing the objects the museum where visitors kept at a distance from ropes and guards and by convention.

Liuba” tells us who she is and how she has managed to place herself along many women in precarious work to entangle. Who carries the cleaning tasks in private and public spaces of each country? Where do they come from? ”

– Eulalia Valldosera

The Following is a text written by Spanish Eulalia to Accompany the work:

Tales of Power

“Seduce is to die as reality and illusion produced as … / / … if production knows only produce real objects, real signs, and it gets some power, seduction produces nothing but illusion and gets her all powers, among which is the production of forward and actually its fundamental illusion ”   Baudrillard

0. Description

I asked my domestic worker Neapolitan gallerist act in my place. Ukrainian origin, as many of the girls who clean the houses of the wealthy class in southern Italy, this woman “paperless” converted into the alter ego of the artist, you have to clean the statue of a Roman Emperor kept in the Napolitano Archaeological Museum. The pride male figure is subjected to mechanical gestures of someone without voice. As the action progresses ghosts of female libido emerge thanks to bold light treatment to submit as anodyne action.

Several satellite works were born of this first gesture: a short documentary video, photographs, and a simple yet powerful video installation by hand rotating mirror. Between the cleaning lady and exhibit media object: a Leading cloth background of this sample, the cleaning rag that turn cloak, veil and screen fabric that hides or reveals hidden meanings. Mobil projection of a weightless hand wiping the walls of the gallery opens the exhibition. The gallery becomes a screen and stage ritual that transforms things (the works presented in her immaculate space) as they are mere objects. In the video we see documentary covering the head of the protagonist, and wipe now becomes ritual veil, symbol of the carnal union. The cloth hiding the female face is a metaphor for the union in the photograph.

. 2 Context: The Museum Guard

The premise that “the personal is political” is now expanding the realm of the social, understood as a fabric where labor relations and personnel exchanges hatch patterns that affect our identity and social status, straining the meaning of which is the “normality” as a mediator axis, if not limiting, of the entire cultural community. I’m talking about our relationship to cultic objects for the museum, and therefore the role that conservative, curators, directors and restorers, and anyone who performs a task, or simply to be important in the art space. They are caregivers, as I prefer to name the category of maternal roles, without distinctions of rank, responsible for maintaining and upgrading the memory alive of our visual imagination.              

 . 2 author: the Artist as a cleaning lady

What place of the artist within the art gear? I am referring to the mechanisms underlying labor power in all gears. That is why in the documentary I appropriate the voice of the protagonist when he says “my one has made me a contract.” I am not making a portrait of “otherness” but in tune with her to the extent that identifies me.

Report relations allows me to actually talk to staff when raised to the category of ritual gestures that often hide or be relegated to the private sphere, gestures emanating a certain moral decency and are usually moved to the area the subalteridad. True to draw the woman or dependent sectors work, but if we place the issue within the individual sphere, the subalteridad implies that a part of the individual himself not accepted, secretly working. The service to the needy, care and nurición, dealing with debris and detritus produced by the human being are integral parts of the human being which, among others, the woman was a true master and shape. Also the secret art of making bridges linking us to the everyday objects that populate our homes has been part of his wisdom. Those who have been tissue identity has them with his art of networking from silent gesture and buried by the great battles that narrate the history books.

. 3 performance: mutual dependence

This action perhaps linking the two opposite ends of the social classes that are within our psyche: powerful with junior * establishes a relationship of mutual dependence. A role needs the other so that everyone can justify its place in the world. I do not separate, I argue no, I claim from the perspective of gender, but speak of how the mechanisms of power are fed by this sexual tension. I mean the way of understanding female sexuality, through its ability to reveal and subvert poder.O roles we may be facing old erotic power from a new angle.

4 art object. In. The power needs

All statues are objects of power figures for worship. The statue comes from a charismatic depository institution in Italy to collect valuable objects that once trafficked powerful. The action of cleaning a piece that is part of the historical and political legacy in this country ironically notes that the burden supposed glorious past to the profound changes that the Italian company has outstanding to assume. However there is an identical statue to elect, with the face of another emperor, which speaks of mass production of more than one size. There is a work of art such as we understand it today, nor thought to decorate before a symbol, but rather an object produced for a place in the temple. Have we overcome this form of worship? Only those who are most lacking in social rank are allowed to touch the symbols of authority, the other person would be sullying. Even today, in the space to the museum we can look untouched.

 . 5 This documentary video: Woman with voice

Liuba tells us who he is and how he came to take the place of so many women in the Italian labor framework. Promptly returned to his country to marry, and he compares his life story with his recent marriage event marked the completion of the performance with me.

Who carried out the cleanup in private and public spaces in each country? Where did they come from? Why working blond hair migrating south Italy dye their hair? The gallery owner who works for does not appear, it is mentioned, but mutually dependent relationship comes to light: the emancipated woman needs the services of the subordinate to exert his own work. I also wear it as a tabajar artist under me becomes an extension of my desire. I would be her, the cleaning, while also am your lady.     

6. Photographs: Unearthing or manipulate

The cloth becomes veil when covering the female face, and reminds us of the spiritual integration of budgets seduction that occurs. The nun does so when rutualmente home with God. Our women, their status as instrument, as a cleaner, so symbolically joins the statue. Printed images are continuation and conclusion of the action filmed. They own actions become clear and clean literal and digital operations reveal that usually remain invisible but have profoundly affected the environment since the abandonment of the analog system.

 . 7 installation: the gallery as an object of power

Tuning into the cyclical nature of this piece, finished with the work that opens the exhibition: a hand mirror rotates projecting a hand rubbed with a cloth playing surfaces. Heir to the mechanisms that produced my most monumental works, this is the simplest for me on light installation. Designed to fit into any space, even if it is full of images or objects, intended to invade and transgress the place to come to inhabited perceive it as an object in all its conceived and designed appearance. The gallery is also an object of power. The series mirrors Flying leads us to the image as a bringer of light, the principle by which the filmic device is possible, evokes the birth of cinema and its magical trap.

* Spivak (Calcutta, 1942) launched in 1988 the following question, “Can the subaltern speak guy?” (Can the Subaltern Speak?) To analyze the routes of the silence of the subjects that have been written out of history and affirm that women occupy this place for its double radical womanhood and colonial subject.