In Search of the Miraculous

Art and culture

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Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1983) A brilliant, Monty Python-esque adaptation of Dario Fo’s play from 1970, directed by Alan Horrox and Gavin Richards for Channel 4 in 1983. Includes more than one ending to comply with Ofcom regulations.

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Josh Spear performs part of Argentina dramatist/novelist Copi’s Loretta Strong (1974). ‘ In Loretta Strong, an astronaut travelling to Betelgeuse murders her co-pilot and launches into a surreal, scatological monologue. As in Cocteau’s La Voix humaine, we hear one end of a telephone conversation, but the scenario is too baffling for an audience to fill the gaps. Perhaps Loretta could only be played by Copi – who did so in Paris and Washington as part of the American bicentennial celebrations, wearing just high heels and green make-up.’ (New Statesman).

A short extract from Copi’s original performance (in French) is here, courtesy of Lionel Soukaz.

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Germaine Dulac - Disque 957 (1928) ‘Dulac’s three 1929 “abstract” films, Disque 957, Αrabesques, and Themes and Variations, were the results of a long period of reflection by the filmmaker, who sought to create a “pure” or “integral” cinema that would capture the essence of the new medium and owe nothing to the other arts. Each of these three studies was designed to be played silent. The first one, Disque 957, is conceived of as a “visual impression […] in listening to Frédéric Chopin’s Preludes n. 5 and 6”. Its title and its opening shot of lightplay on a spinning record not only announce the film’s dominant cyclical motif, but also evoke one of the filmmaker’s major sources of inspiration in Loie Fuller’s serpentine dances.‘ (Light Cone)

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Headbutt (Coup de tête) (2012) by French artist Adel Abdessemed, unveiled at the Centre Pompidou in Paris on 26 September 2012. The sculpture shows French footballer Zinedine Zidane headbutting Italian defender Marco Materazzi during extra-time of the 2006 World Cup Final in Berlin, for which Zidane was infamously sent off. Exhibition organiser Alain Michaud described the work as "against the tradition of making statues in honour of certain victories” and as “an ode to defeat"; Materazzi posed with the statue in November 2012. It was taken to Doha on 4 October 2013 as part of the Qatar Museums Authority’s public art programme, but soon removed criticism from Islamic conservatives who complained that glorifying the infamous act of violence set a bad example for local youth and bordered on idolatry. It was then taken to the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha. (Wikipedia)

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Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal (dir. Robert Kramer & Philip J. Spinelli, 1977) Robert Kramer and Philip J. Spinelli's Scenes from the Class Struggle In Portugal maps out from a left perspective the complex evolution of politics as a nation transforms itself in the wake of a revolution. Weakened by the costs of maintaining its colonial power, Portugal's fascist government succumbed to a bloodless military coup in 1975. At the moment of the revolution, the people joyfully joined the army in the streets. But in the months that followed, the reemergence of class struggle dissolved this appearance of unity. Different political parties participated in the new government, which was eventually dominated by the right and oriented towards the interests of foreign capital.

But alongside the back and forth motions of parliamentary politics, the revolutionary process continued. There were occupations of unused land and houses, and a popular power movement arose outside of the confines of any party, even the communist party, which had committed itself to a reformist line. The army was particularly divided, with one wing supporting the most conservative elements of the nation and the other wing throwing itself behind the working class. The film lists off the various obstacles to the success of the class struggle: a large peasantry untouched by the revolution and even hostile to the left; a bourgeois state whose basic structures had been left largely unchanged; the continuity of the power and practices of the bureaucracies and the church; the relatively small number of workers in industry or agriculture, who might become organized, and a large middle class.

Kramer and Spinelli's film documents the left's intense fight with these barriers, paying especially close attention to the operation of politics in everyday life. The film is as interested in the opinions of old women, many of whom are interviewed, as it is in the more refined statements of various political and military leaders. After highlighting the continued potential for struggle, the film ends with some gloomy - but still timely - notes on how the now dominant right, aligned with the "imperialist" interests of the World Bank and the IMF, has attempted to market a plan of "austerity and sacrifice" to the nation as "patriotism." (Brian Rajski)

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Katalin Ladik performs at the Bucharest International Poetry Festival in 2019

Legendary Hungarian poet, performance artist and actress Katalin Ladik (1942, Novi Sad, Yugoslavia) performs White Bird, Four Black Horses are Flying Behind Me and Ice Bird at Euphonia, an evening of experimental poetry curated by Simona Nastac at the Bucharest International Poetry Festival 2019. English translations of the poems below.

White Bird The beautiful white bird rose from the bones, flew high, and this is what she sang: Mother killed me, Father ate me, little Sister, my little Mary Jane collected my ossicles, tied them up in a silk scarf, placed them at the foot of an elder tree, it hatched, it hatched, here it is! Here! What a pretty bird I became! This they heard and put a beautiful hat on her head. (Translated from Hungarian by Emoke Z. B’Racz and Josef Schreiner) Four Black Horses are Flying Behind Me Black-eyed mother, quench your thirst from the dark room. The evening comes, I cover you with glowing ashes, close all windows, sit you in the blind. White dove flies, has no doors and no windows. Seven times I count my fingers, seven times I beat my wings together. Warm wind blows in my back, look back, mother, what do you see? Four black horses so skinny that I feel cold. Cut, mother, cut off your arm and put it in my mouth, I want to fly to you. Eyes, mouth, nose, ears, where are you? Here, in the hot ashes. White dove flies, takes the door, the window with her forever. This is what I sang in the dark room when my mother died. (Translated from Hungarian by Lóránt Bencze) Ice Bird Yeeek! Yeeek! Whooo! Qvrtz. Qvrtz. Shoo! (Translated from Hungarian by Josef Schreiner)

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Harun Farocki - Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet at Work on Franz Kafka’s ‘Amerika’ (1983)

This film is at once a self-portrait and an homage to Jean-Marie Straub, Farocki's role model and former teacher at the Film Academy. Farocki's admiration for Straub was so great that he said of Between Two Wars: "Perhaps I only made this film to earn Straub's recognition."

In this observation-driven film Farocki documents the fulfillment of his wish. The film shows Farocki, under Straub's direction, rehearsing for his role as Delamarche in the film Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations, 1983), based on Franz Kafka’s incomplete novel Amerika (1911-14, published posthumously in 1927). Anyone who has seen Farocki's documentary of the shoot will never forget these short scenes. The directing technique of Jean-Marie Straub and his wife Danièle Huillet is so repetitive and detail-obsessed that the performers are made to rehearse the scenes to the point of exhaustion.

Straub manages his actors like a theater director. The very fact that it is unusual among filmmakers makes it well worth having captured Straub's working methods on film. Farocki filmed a work of resistance against traditional cinema, against which his own films rebel.

(Tilman Baumgärtel)

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Albie Thoms - Rita and Dundi (1966) An experimental documentary about two young Paddington dress-makers,Rita Georgin and Dundi Lasclo. It was screened widely in Thoms’ native Australia, and made through the Ubu Films collective that was active from 1965 to 1970.

An interview with Thoms (1941-2012) can be found at the Senses of Cinema site.

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Theodore Ushev - Tower Bawher (2005) Tower Bawher is a Constructivist-style abstract animated short by Theodore Ushev, set to ‘Time, Forward!‘ by Russian composer Georgy Sviridov, used as the theme music for the Soviet state evening TV news in the 1980s. The title is an allusion to Tatlin's Tower, an unbuilt structure conceived by Vladimir Tatlin as a tribute to the glory of the proletariat. In the film, Ushev celebrates constructivist art while also critiquing the use of art in the service of ideology. (Wikipedia)

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Amazing Grace depicts Wangechi Mutu walking slowly into the ocean while singing the Christian hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ in her native Kenyan language Kikuyu.  Referred to by Trevor Schoonmaker as a “meditation on the African slave trade and the travails of displaced populations,” the haunting sounds of Amazing Grace echo throughout the exhibition space.  Presented to viewers on a flat-screen digital television hidden behind a felt blanket-lined wall, the short excerpt of the 59-minute Amazing Grace is a digital file that plays on an external hard drive connected directly to the television screen. (Ubuweb)

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Still from Tragic Love (1993) by Russian performance artist Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe (1969-2013).

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French director Romain Goupil discusses his first film, Mourir à 30 ans (translated into English as Half a Life), which won the Caméra d'Or and Award of the Youth (French film) at the Cannes Film Festival, and the César Award for Best Debut. The film is a biographical black and white documentary about Michel Recanati, a militant leader during the May 1968 riots in Paris. It tells the story of two friends in left-wing groups in Paris between 1966 and 1978 when Michel goes missing and it is later discovered that he committed suicide. It also documents the history of the CAL [Highschool Student Action Committee] and the LCR Revolutionary Communist League. (Wikipedia)

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The idea that only these men who take the ‘passive’ role in anal intercourse are really homosexual is extremely widespread, and brings to light the immediate association, in the phallocentric mind, between gay men and women. ‘The “active” partner in anal intercourse is essentially homosexual; so the “passive” partner belongs to the opposite sex. But the other sex is female, and so only the “passive” partner in anal sex between two men is homosexual, and the homosexual man is a woman.’

In its patent absurdity, however, this male supremacist view reveals, when considered from the gay and critical standpoint, how homosexual men who get fucked are closer to transsexuality, and tend to overcome the polarity between the two sexes. If the rediscovery of transsexuality involves the liberation of anal-eroticism, as well as homoeroticism, it is also true that only the present and long-standing repression of Eros leads us to think of the concepts of transsexuality, anality, homosexuality, bisexuality, etc, as separate. In actual fact, liberation means overcoming these presently divided categories, which only reflect conceptually the alienation of the human species from itself by the work of the capital-phallus. Liberation leads to the conquest of a new manner of being and becoming, both one and many, whether from the individual standpoint (the aspects of sexuality no longer being repressively separated, or in a state of mutual exclusion), or from the universal standpoint, since liberation leads to recognising individuals in their community (one and many) and in the world, and thus to resolving the contradiction between self and others, self and non-self. The revolutionary liberation of Eros and life cannot take place without a collective explosion of the unconscious, which is in very large measure itself a collective one. And the explosion of the id expands and ‘dissolves’ the boundaries of the ego. In other words, the ego no longer arrogates to itself the monopoly of subjectivity. Life is seen as reciprocal and communal. In the darkness of our underlying being, there lies dormant a species that is transsexual, and the desire for transsexuality and community. Communist intersubjectivity shall be transsexual.

From Towards a Gay Communism, the English translation of Elements of a Homosexual Critique (1977) by Mario Mieli (1952-83). Translated by David Fernbach and Evan Calder Williams (Pluto Press, 2018).

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Kirill Protsenko - Penalty (2005) In this performance, Ukrainian artist Kirill Protsenko (1967-2017) swapped roles with legendary Dynamo Kyiv and Ukraine goalkeeper Oleksandr Shovkovskyi, playing with the idea that anyone can be an artist. Protsenko was the ‘goalkeeper’ in front of a white canvas, at which Shovkovskyi kicked painted footballs, creating an original work of abstract art. Protsenko missed every shot, proving that not everyone can be a goalkeeper.

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Anne-Mie Van Kerckhoven - Messages (1989) Computer animation made for ‘(Tele)communicatie in kunst' or 'Telecommunication in art' - a festival about new communication technologies – mainly fax, video, television, telephone, slow scan picture phone, and independent radio – in the arts. It took place at V2 in Den Bosch in 1989.        

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What does a victorious or defeated black woman’s body in a historically white space look like? Serena and her big sister Venus Williams brought to mind Zora Neale Hurston’s “I feel most colored when I am thrown against a sharp white background.” This appropriated line, stenciled on canvas by Glenn Ligon, who used plastic letter stencils, smudging oil sticks, and graphite to transform the words into abstractions, seemed to be ad copy for some aspect of life for all black bodies.

Hurston’s statement has been played out on the big screen by Serena and Venus: they win sometimes, they lose sometimes, they’ve been injured, they’ve been happy, they’ve been sad, ignored, booed mightily (see Indian Wells, which both sisters have boycotted since 2001), they’ve been cheered, and through it all and evident to all were those people who are enraged they are there at all — graphite against a sharp white background.

For years you attribute to Serena Williams a kind of resilience appropriate only for those who exist in celluloid. Neither her father nor her mother nor her sister nor Jehovah her God nor NIKE camp could shield her ultimately from people who felt her black body didn’t belong on their court, in their world. From the start many made it clear Serena would have done better struggling to survive in the two-dimensionality of a Millet painting, rather than on their tennis court — better to put all that strength to work in their fantasy of her working the land, rather than be caught up in the turbulence of our ancient dramas, like a ship fighting a storm in a Turner seascape.

The most notorious of Serena’s detractors takes the form of Mariana Alves, the distinguished tennis chair umpire. In 2004 Alves was excused from officiating any more matches on the final day of the US Open after she made five bad calls against Serena in her semi-final match-up against fellow American Jennifer Capriati. The serves and returns Alves called out were landing, stunningly un-returned by Capriati, inside the lines, no discerning eyesight needed. Commentators, spectators, television viewers, line judges, everyone could see the balls were good, everyone, apparently, except Alves. No-one could understand what was happening. Serena, in  her denim skirt, black sneaker boots, and dark mascara, began wagging her finger andsaying “no, no, no,” as if by negating the moment she could propel us back into a legible world. Tennis superstar John McEnroe, given his own keen eye for injustice during his professional career, was shocked that Serena was able to hold it together after losing the match.

Though no-one was saying anything explicitly about Serena’s black body, you are not the only viewer who thought it was getting in the way of Alves’s sight line. One commentator said he hoped he wasn’t being unkind when he stated, “Capriati wins it with the help of the umpires and the lines judges.” A year later that match would be credited for demonstrating the need for the speedy installation of Hawk-Eye, the line-calling technology that took the seeing away from the beholder. Now the umpire’s call can be challenged by a replay; however, back then after the match Serena said, “I’m very angry and bitter right now. I felt cheated. Shall I go on? I just  feel robbed.”

From Citizen: An American Lyric (2014) by Claudia Rankine.

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Želimir Žilnik - Black Film (1971) Even within the context of the Yugoslav Black Wave, Želimir Žilnik’s (b. 1942) Black Film is unusual for the direct and spontaneous approach that its creator took to draw attention to a major social problem. As the filmmaker’s site describes the film, “One night, Žilnik picks up a group of homeless men from the streets of [the Serbian city of] Novi Sad and takes them home. While they enjoy themselves in his home, the filmmaker tries to ‘solve the problem of the homeless’ carrying along a film camera as a witness. He speaks to social workers, ordinary people. He even addresses policemen. They all close their eyes to the ‘problem.’” (National Gallery of Art)