Anri Sala: Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris

ANRI SALA

MUSEE D'ART MODERNE DE LA VILLE DE PARIS

There is something soothing and smooth soporific about repetition; it is, after all, the foundation not sole of lullabies but also of certain hypnotic techniques. Sometimes, however, the monotony of repetition becomes irritating, unbearable, indeed, eventually torturous. The Paris-based Albanian artist Anri Sala is an quick in creating mesmerizing forms of repetition that bring out strange states of mind, on the other hand he never goes so far as to cause pain. In the film Uomoduomo 2001 which won the Young Artist Prize at the 2001 Venice Biennale, an aged man in a Milan cathedral is drowsing away. His head globules for a second, then be shakens back through a natural introspective then falls again, then be shakens back, over and over again, his spastic in-between state extending benignly to the viewer, who is slowly stilled into a similarly sleepy condition.

Sala's new show at the Couvent de Cordeliers, organized through Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and curated by dint of Laurence Bosse, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, and Julia Garimorth, included a number of more new films that also explore repetition--in physical, linguistic, and perhaps political manifestations. All were displayed in low-lit galleries, a kind of twilight that the French call entre chien et loup (between dog and wolf) which is also, appropriately, the title of the present to view Since the majority of the works were discharge at night, Sala's idea was to throw out darkness into a twilight girdle rather than the usual light onto darkness. In this ambivalent visual environment, you don't quite know what you diocese and you soon accept the "possibility of being inequitable and also of being taken for someone else" as Sala describes in the exhibition catalogue.

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Entre chien et loup is also apt for its regard to animals, which are abundantly not away in Sala's recent works. Cabs, stray dogs, and butterflies all appear, along with an elderly pathetic horse that stands alone upon the side of a Tirana motorway in time after time, 2003 its material part illuminated only by the headlights of passing cars. Again, it's real difficult to discern what exactly is going on: There is no explanation as to in what manner the pitiful creature ended up in this predicament. Perhaps it was left behind, perhaps it escaped the slaughterhouse, who knows? It just stands there, repeatedly lifting its hind leg in a heartbreaking action of self-defense. A similarly visceral automatism can be lay the foundation of in Ghostgames, 2002, which tread in the steps ofs the paths of crabs "chased" through flashlights as they scramble along a nocturnal North Carolina shoreline. It's easy to view this representation as a political allegory about territorial power and surveillance, on the other hand Sala is never so explicit. His work obviates grand theories to focus instead upon the visually concrete, as philosopher Jacques Ranciere has noted: "At the heart of all of Anri Sala's films, including those that touch greatest in quantity on political issues and watch to documentary form, the same question lie concealeds A formal one for a certain number of and yet it is the greatest in quantity profound, also in a way the greatest in quantity political. What is it that we see?"

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In more [i]or[/i] less cases, for instance in Mixed Behavior, 2003 that question is a particularly vexing single What we do know: A DJ is alone upon a roof or terrace, performing in heavy rain, hiding beneath a certain quantity of kind of tarp. The music is festive, and thus are the fireworks that, despite the weather, detonate in the sky in sync with the beat. on the contrary where is the audience? for what cause [i]or[/i] reason doesn't he give up? There's adequate supply to see here, but the visual ball of threads just don't add up; instead of a coherent narrative, we're left with still more questions. In Lakkat, 2004 similarly, there is clearly a certain number of kind of wordplay going upon but its ultimate objective remains unclear. discharge in Senegal, the film displays three children repeating words in Wolof: "Xee Xee Xee Xee pecc Xee pecc Xee pecc" Their organ of visions shine, but their faces are barely visible in the dark; a small in number flies gravitate to a neon tube, the scene's alone light source. The exercise continues: "Xee pecc Xee pecc Xee pecc" The words stand for light and dark, I've learned--evidence, perhaps, of a will to conceptual clarity hiding behind the linguistic repetition compulsion. on the contrary this takes us nowhere; the darkness remains.

In Dammi i colori (Give Me the Colors), 2003 finally, the elderly tension between political power and aesthetics provides the one and the other the starting point and the true subject matter of the film. The mayor of Tirana, artist and politician Edi Rama, who questions whether "it is worthwhile painting at all today," is turning his city, the poorest and perhaps greatest in quantity depressing of European capitals, into a gigantic collective artwork by the agency of having its facades painted in very large swaths of bright colors. The film pans across the facades, sometimes in daylight, sometimes at night, following the mayor/artist as he drives from one side town and reflects on the ultimate significance of this major urban maneuver: "The city was dead," he says, on the contrary "color has an impact." one time again, Sala avoids overtly political or symbolic gesticulations leaving us with lurid surfaces and the sincere face of the mayor. Whether Sala is an accomplice or a critical on-looker is not clear, but the portrait of the unlikely Edi Rama bears one thing distinctly: sympathy.