Freud, surrealism and crowded house

It's funny how seeing a simple Crowded House music video can start an entire thought process that traces its aesthetic heritage back 110 years. As I watched its dreamy black and white nonlinear narrative, with its doves, sleepwalkers, split images and celestial framing, it made me realize how much modern culture still ripples with Freudian imagery and Surrealist aesthetics.

 

Surrealism owes a substantial artistic debt to Freud, the man who first presented to us the concept of the unconscious, a submerged psychological iceberg full of taboo memories, thoughts and desires that ominously guides the greater part of our behavior. Some decades later, artists working in the surrealist tradition (Magritte, Ernst, De Chirico, Picabia, Dali) harnessed these groundbreaking ideas in realizing that art can be enhanced by the unconscious - both in creating and perceiving it. 

Their greatest technique was in the way that they created works of art that depicted very real objects and images but that became other-worldly through their framing or juxtaposition or immersed in some strange impossible scenery. As the mind cannot make rational sense of it, the unconscious part becomes activated, forcing us into an entire new and very pleasurable state of consciousness. 

Surrealism is dreaming with your eyes wide open. 

Wim Wenders: Wings of Desire (1987)

Who might guess that this oddly constructed film about angels in Berlin could be so incredibly moving, a piece of cinema that is a poem at every level. Wim Wenders, unlike many auteurs both before and after him seems to realize that cinema communicates through all of sounds, words and imagery - in Wings of Desire these components are so meticulously constructed and intricately woven with each other that even the mere simpleton can for a moment experience synaesthesia.

The most notable scenes are those where we drift through public spaces able to hear the innermost thoughts of Berlin's citizens in all their mundanity, isolation and beauty - a collection of unrelated simultaneously occurring inner dialogues, filmed using a continuous take. At some point in time, you realize that this must also be what human consciousness is like - a million simple anonymous thoughts that coexist, unbroken in time.



This film is truly magic.

Unconcerned, but not indifferent.

The Dada movement in art is without a doubt my favorite. There is no other collection of artists and artworks that manages to be simultaneously controversial, macabre, hilarious and intriguing - they first poked fun at the established art of time and redefined the role of the artist and the viewer. When Europe was still shattered from the destruction of WWI, the Dadaists were able to make the kind of art that slaps you, destroys apathy and forces you to engage in a conversation - they were so ahead of their time that even encountering a Dada work today will be an unprecedented and often shocking experience. For every high school misfit that broods over Dali's "The persistence of memory" there is someone like me wanting to whack them over the head and point out Dali's predecessors - true rebels that were not afraid to start a revolution that unquestionably set the stage for modern art.

Man Ray on the other hand is without doubt one of my favorite photographers. While he was a Dadaist, in many ways he was also unlike them - firstly he was a Brooklynite in a world full of Europeans, a cool observer in a world of political activists and a photographer who also had financial success amongst artistic martyrs and anti-establishmentarians.

One of Man Ray's most unusual achievements is the way he saw his subjects in a new light, ripping apart all sentimentality when it comes to the human form and reducing it all to an object or shape. This obsession saw him experiment with new techniques - placing objects directly on photographic film, negative exposures and compositions and collages that linked the human body and the object-machine. The resulting works are always aesthetic but also unsettling - mirrors that reflect back to us the contents of our mind and yet remain coolly silent about Man Ray, the artist. Unconcerned, but not indifferent (written on Man Ray's grave).

Looking through and Looking in: Robert Frank

Robert Frank took photos of Americans, and for a Swiss man, he did a pretty good job at it. "The Americans" is a collection of 83 photographs that were a result of a behemoth roadtrip by Frank in the 1950s that spanned the States coast-to-coast. It's easy to assume what these photographs would say - the erudite European flees to the States and amuses himself with the naive optimism, opportunism and ostentatiousness of post WWII America. And yet it's hard to decide how Frank feels about his subjects - there is certainly a sense in which his photos are another critique of the usual suspect-isms (consumerism, capitalism, racism, nationalism.. the list goes on) but there is an undeniable affection towards them which pulls at your heart and invites you into the photo. You find yourself staring at these photos for an unusually long period of time, fuelled by some humanistic desire to peer into their lives of these people in an empathic rather than voyeuristic capacity. You wonder about the elevator operator and what thoughts have captured her in a suspended moment that supersedes the hubbub around her, or the humor and pathos of the dour diner waitress crowned by a ruddy-cheeked Santa.

You decide (realize?) you love Americans.

The lessons you learn as a photographer are important - the people and the situations are everyday, but Frank's framing transforms the mundane into the profound little existential moments usually reserved for philosophers and lovers- is there anything more that can be achieved by an artist?

Chris Cunningham, can I have your life?

Making a music video surely must be the best gig for any film maker- it's short, there are no narrative constraints and yet you still have the structure and inspiration of the song you are working with. Let's not even mention mass appeal and exposure. It does seem to beg the question though as to why so many music video artists don't seem to run with this, instead leaving us with formulaic, forgettable cine-ditties that take a back seat to the song and function like a Fisher-Price mobile - something moving to fill our visual field when listening to the song. 

Hello Chris Cunningham. Rather than being known for a particular style or genre, this Brit hits music video nirvana by completely inhabiting the space of the song he is working with. The effect is powerful to the point that you can no longer recollect the song without a rapid synaptic short-circuit that immediately brings to mind the video. Bjork's song "All is Full of Love" for example graduates from trip-hop zen to sublime masterpiece by the milky movements of Cunningham's unusual robot make-out session video (see below). Windowlicker has a pacing and humor that exactly matches and opens up Aphex Twin's coolly discombobulated electronica. To date there has not been an underwater video that fuels up on beats like Portishead's Only You. When looking at his ouvre, it's exceedingly hard to summarize his aesthetic, technique or style, and yet this lack of the artist's ego-watermark makes his rise as one of the best director-auteurs of this era both ironic and deserved. 

Chris Cunningham: simply real damn good.

Diane Arbus: The freakshow

Art lovers, photographers and critics alike lap up Arbus' portraits like they are crack for the art-starved soul. We say she is an innovative and significant photographer - her techniques, her composition, her incisive cultural commentary make her one of the biggest and most successful names in the field. However there is one criticism that finds its way to Arbus that refuses to be ignored and that has more than anything made me think about the nature and ethics of photographing people. The question is: is it Arbus' photography that we cooly appreciate or are Arbus' unusual subjects that which we are oddly attracted to? The freakshows of the 19th century, with their bearded ladies and siamese twins were a form of entertainment for the masses in which ordinary people paid and gathered around to revel in the perverse pleasure of human anomaly. We all stare, letting ourselves be simultaneously fascinated and disgusted by that which will never enter our social world, taking comfort in our relative normality. Is this the same pleasure that we take in Arbus' photos, made legitimate by its status as art? Were it not for her subjects, how would we judge the artistic merit of these photos? These are the questions I ask myself every time I have taken a photograph of a person who I thought was unusual, whether in appearance, dress or behavior. Ultimately my interest in people supercedes both my ethics and the desire to see on portraits an egomaniacal fingerprint of the artist - question their merit if you will...

Eyes Wide Shut: seeing into a film

There is no doubt - I dislike this film. I dislike it for reasons I can easily articulate and probably for even more reasons that I am not even aware of. However like any love-hate relationship, it leaves an indelible impact that has you revisiting and dissecting it for many years to come. The film is unsettling, but many attribute this to the unusual performances by Kidman and Cruise in a dark nonlinear narrative that explores some harrowing sexual themes. For me however, it was simply the look of the film that stunned me into submission. Kubrick's use of light is unlike anything I had encountered in a film and proves to me that his ability as a cinematographer is equal (or I'd hazard to say superior to) his ability as a director. Most films are lit under bright studio lights, giving them the shiny hyperreal quality that we have come to enjoy. Kubrick eschews this tendency, such that the light seems to emanate solely from external sources such as lamps and chandeliers. Apart from being an extremely difficult and costly technique it gives the film its darkly glowing quality, and renders one of the most significant works of filmic art I have encountered.

Urban Suburbia #7 (as inspired by Henson)

This project involved taking some night shots of a suburban street and its most typical elements: garages, lights and mailboxes. Suburbia is not always what it seems.

Bill Henson: controversies and masterpieces

Bill Henson caused immense controversy when his 2007-08 exhibition at the Roslyn Oxley Gallery in Sydney opened. Both the exhibition invites and exhibition itself featured photographs of young adolescents naked, and was attacked by child protection crusaders - the exhibition closed down a week after it opened.

Are these images pornographic? Do they incite paedophilia? The controversy still rages.

The adolescents in his photos are liminal creatures existing between childhood and adulthood, between innocence and sexualization - I see Henson as a master at capturing this confused and fragile space they inhabit. Regardless of my personal beliefs or interpretations of his works, there is no doubt that Henson's photographs are exquisite, the cold light which haunts his portraits is desperately moving and his desolate nighttime urban and industrial landscapes are beautifully unsettling. Bill Henson, you are a master.

Photography in Motion: Wong Kar Wai

What is it about Wong-Kar-Wai? The man is a hypnotist - his lingering scenes, their slow movement, baroque composition and focus on detail leave you feeling like a jilted lover who has spent a night in an opium den.

Part one/The Inspiration: Brassaï

I first encountered the work of Brassaï on a cold winter's day in Paris - just another nostalgic tourist desperately seeking a Paris that they were never part of and that has long since gone. I went into an art bookstore and found this man's photographs - lonely cold streetscapes, brothels, crossdressers and lovers. This is Paris. This is Brassaï.