Barney and Björk Together on Film; Saskia Bos Heads for New York; Schafhausen's Plans for Cologne's Invisible Kunsthalle
BARNEY AND BJÖRK TOGETHER ON FILM
The Süddeutsche Zeitung's Alex Rühle checked out Matthew Barney's new film Drawing Restraint 9, which was shown last week at a small Paris cinema and officially debuted at the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa, Japan. The 135-minute film, which is part of a larger exhibition about the “Drawing Restraint” cycle, features Barney and his partner Björk, who also wrote the soundtrack. Shot on the Japanese whaling ship Nisshin Maru in Nagasaki Bay, the film centers on The Field, a sculpture made of liquid Vaseline that is molded on the ship's deck. "Björk and Barney arrive as guests on board the ship," writes Rühle. "During a storm, they marry each other in a mysterious ceremony, morph into whales and then swim off towards the Antarctic. In this dream-like story, nothing is really narrated."
While offering yet another perspective on Barney's "mysterious private mythology," the film also marks a return to the silver screen for Björk, who declared that she would never again act in movies upon completing Lars van Triers's Dancer in The Dark. Speaking in an interview with Rühle, the singer explained that the decision to act again was not her only change of heart. "When Matthew Barney and I got together, we swore to each other that we would never work together. And now I am acting with him in his film! But it is also something completely different, and I'm not even sure if one could call Drawing Restraint 9 a film. . . . I appear, but I am not playing a role."
While inspired by sounds found in nature, Björk also looked to Wagner for soundtrack inspiration. "Wagner invented film music," Björk told the Süddeutsche Zeitung. "He had the musicians in Bayreuth hidden behind the orchestra barrier, so that one could see only the singers on stage. The music is invisible, as in film. . . . I wanted to go one step further: The sound [in the film] comes from the things that one sees. The ship begins to resonate." The singer also reveals that she and Barney plan to sell their New York home and live on a houseboat. "Then we could go all over the place in our boat to work. . . . How do you get to Berlin by boat? I can find my own way to Hamburg—but then?"
SASKIA BOS HEADS FOR NEW YORK
Saskia Bos has been named Dean of the School of Art at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York. Bos, who replaces Robert Rindler, is the artistic and managing director of Amsterdam's De Appel Center for Contemporary Art, where she also founded the prestigious Curatorial Training Program ten years ago. In addition to her activities at De Appel, Bos curated Sonsbeek in 1986 and the 2nd Berlin Biennial in 2001, cocurated Aperto at the Venice Biennale in 1988, and has been the Dutch commissioner for both the Biennale Sao Paulo in 1998 and the Venice Biennale in 1984.
As Het Parool reports, Bos was the top candidate last year to replace Sjarel Ex as the director of Utrecht's Centraal Museum, after Ex was chosen to head Rotterdam's Boijmans van Beunigen. Bos ultimately turned the offer down because of insufficient funds for the museum's projects. "If I must go looking for funding, then I would rather do it for something I really want to stand up for," Bos told Het Parool. De Appel has begun a search for an internationally-oriented director to replace Bos, who will begin her tenure at Cooper Union this September. During the search, Theo Tegelaers will act as temporary director of De Appel while Annie Fletcher will head the Curatorial Training Program.
SCHAFHAUSEN’S PLANS FOR COLOGNE’S INVISIBLE KUNSTHALLE
Last week in Cologne, Nicolaus Schafhausen unveiled more plans for the European Kunsthalle. As the Süddeutsche Zeitung's Dirk Peitz reports, the fledging institution—founded by "Loch e.V." (Hole Association), after the group unsuccessfully opposed the demolition of the complex that housed Cologne's old Kunsthalle—still remains homeless. Schafhausen ruled out any plans to build the European Kunsthalle at the site—now a large hole—that was left when the original Cologne Kunsthalle was torn down. Instead, Schafhausen is looking to realize projects that do not require an exhibition space. Plans include a symposium about the marketing of cities that will consider the role of culture as a marketing tool. "That sounds pretty skeptical, not only with respect to municipally-sponsored culture but also with respect to the future of the exhibition venue as an institution," writes Peitz. "As cities increasingly become transit spaces for working nomads, museums and art centers will no longer be able to rely on a stable, local audience of middle class of culture-consumers." To strengthen the European focus of the invisible Kunsthalle, Schafhausen hopes to create an institutional professorship for European art history after 1945. Finally, there is indeed an exhibition in the works: An evaluation of Cologne's social structures that will culminate in a large-scale show in a public space in 2006.