Seminar IV

Exhibition Review

Isaac Julien’s Playtime

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Submitted in part fulfilment for the degree of Postgraduate Diploma in History and Business of the Contemporary Art Market

IESA/University of Warwick

February 2014

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Table of Contents  

ISAAC JULIEN’S PLAYTIME 1

BLACK BOX, WHITE CUBE 1

HOW DO WE PLAY? 3

STATEMENT OF PUBLICATION CHOICE 11

BIBLIOGRAPHY 13

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Black box, white cube

A quest for the midpoint between political consideration and aesthetic

pleasure has constantly permeated Isaac Julien’s work. The exhibition Playtime

at Victoria Miro Gallery brings about a good opportunity to understand Isaac

Julien’s oeuvre and how it reflects contemporary art’s currency– in both senses

the word suggests. Contextualising the artist’s own trajectory is also crucial to

learn how Playtime operates within a larger frame. Isaac Julien was born in 1960,

in London, therefore belonging to a generation of artists that blooms during the

1980’s; a period where the contamination between cinema, television and fine

arts became a tool for rethinking established artistic practices. Having begun

exhibiting in art galleries in the late 1990’s, Julien’s filmography has developed

much earlier. His first video, Who Killed Collin Roach? dates back to 1983,

while his first installation, That Rush!, appears twelve years later, in 1995.

In the position of a black and openly gay filmmaker, son of African

immigrants, the artist has cultivated his condition as a representative of

minorities; nevertheless, Julien has never restricted his practice to race and

gender approaches. Even if he has produced many films that fit into that context,

such as Looking for Langston (1989), Cannes Award winning Young Soul Rebels

(1991), or BaadAsssss Cinema (2002), he has been gradually introducing other

relevant concepts into his works.

Acting both as an independent filmmaker and a visual artist, Julien

entered the realm of the gallery space as ‘a reaction to both the political nature

and the change in cultural climate, that took place when the independent film

sector had been completely disenfranchised after the shutting down of

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experimental film spaces’ in London during the early 1990’s.1 Additionally,

Julien began his experiments as an artist while in Central St. Martin’s School of

Art with painting, claiming to be a frustrated painter at heart.2 This way, by

twinning the role of the filmmaker and the visual artist he seeks to reach through

the moving image aesthetic possibilities that go beyond the cinema projection

room. Even when dealing with politically elaborate issues, Julien delivers a

highly formal photography and sumptuous mise en scènes, which can be

identified as some of Julien’s signatures.

When entering the art gallery, the main aspect of Julien’s approach will

be the use of multi-screen installations, dialoguing with temporal possibilities

implied within the gallery space, and exploring memory as a construction. ‘The

multi-screen works begin to interrogate and inhabit the multi-temporalities which

the gallery offers … it meditates on the questions of vision … enabling different

ways of looking at the moving image, which draws attention to a multi-valiant

viewing situation and also enables the transgression of time that can occur in and

between frames side-by-side in relation to each other’.3 In Ten Thousand Waves

(2010), one of his most celebrated multi-screen installations, Julien spreads 3 or

more screens diagonally through the room while different perspectives of the

same scene are shown simultaneously, thus creating a visual-interconnected

multi-temporal display. In other installations, such as the duos True

North/Fantôme Afrique or True North/Paradise Omeros, a screen triptych

develops a sense of opposition or complementation, building narratives

according to the projected images.

Other distinctive features in Julien’s work are namely the interest for

cultural identity, frontiers and borders, immigration, the post-colonial discourse,

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geographical dislocations, landscape. When addressing to these topics Isaac

Julien alludes to Martinican writer Édouard Glissant, who stated that he would

rather dedicate himself to create geopoetics then geopolitics, since geopoetics

could understand the world, while geopolitics could destroy it.4 In Playtime

nearly all the fore mentioned aspects culminate, forging Julien’s most art-world

oriented project.

How do we play?

Through different media – installation, video, time-lapse, photography –

Playtime basically creates this geopoetic portrait of our relationship with art,

money, and the city. Shown in two different branches of the Victoria Miro

gallery in London, at the Mayfair building the video Enigma is displayed on the

window: a time-lapse of Dubai’s urban landscape, comprised of more than 2,500

pictures. Inside the gallery we see a selection of photographs – stills from the

Playtime video installation. The later is presented at the Wharf Road branch

along with a double-channel video, KAPITAL. While at the Mayfair gallery there

are the more commercial pieces, in Wharf Road the real Playtime takes place.

Playtime is a reference to Jacques Tati’s homonym 1967 movie, where an

edgy hi-tech Parisian neighbourhood is the scenario for six comic sketches that

critically reflect upon modern lifestyle. With a consonant operation, Julien sets

up in his Playtime a seven-screen installation that depicts different prisms of the

contemporary world, all of them related to art, lifestyle and intertwined by

capital. Staged in architecturally relevant settings, with London, Dubai and

Reikjavik being the chosen urban landscapes, it traces both a visual and

conceptual panorama of our capital-driven lives.

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Different from Tati, who apart from playing M. Hulot himself, used

nonprofessional actors, Julien works with a cast of cult personalities and actors.

At large, the seven sketches represent some of the many cases where money

meets art; but at a closer look, the actors implied in the setting depict the various

layers that constitute the art system as it is today: Isaac Julien, playing himself, is

the artist, James Franco stars as the dealer-presentator, Simon de Pury is

obviously the auctioneer, and interviewed by actress Maggie Chung, Mercedes

Cabral evokes the post-colonial approach in the figure of an immigrant maid.

Additionally, Colin Salmon and Ingvar Eggert Sigurösson parts can be

respectively regarded as analogies of the huge power financial speculation has

reached within the art market, and the constant imminence of a crisis carried on

by it.

Playtime, 2014. Seven-screen HD video installation, 69’ 47’’ – installation view

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Through this interplay between characters, another issue frequently dealt

with in Julien’s films and installations is brought up: the blurring of documentary

and fiction borders. Julien is interested in a deliberate confusion of these genres:

for him, a separation between documentary and fiction does not exist. Even when

characters are playing themselves, as he and Simon de Pury are, it is clear that

even in real life situations their roles would be those of players. A two-way

relationship between truth and fiction, between playing a role in a film and in

reality is established.

A good example is Simon de Pury: what does an auctioneer do, if not

performing as a show-business man, while trying to get the highest possible

values for an artwork? All his discourse in Playtime seems very natural, even

spontaneous, since it takes the form of an interview. Yet, Julien confesses that

De Pury’s speech was actually build up from a series of conversations they had,

that were then edited by Julien in order to build the final lines we see in the

video; and, what’s more, he never met his interviewer, Maggie Cheung. The

interview we see was also edited with video effects to put the two realistically

together. In the end, the question that may linger is if De Pury really feels

depressed after each auction…

Accordingly, when James Franco performs as what we could call the

‘dealer-presentator’ he is basically doing what every dealer does: elegantly

playing devil’s advocate. His speech gives the public an overview of how the art

market functions, but in a very ironic manner; if in the one hand it is convincing,

especially for being based in numbers and facts, on the other it leads to think if

he possibly believes in such peculiarly-toned affirmations.

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In contrast, the fantastic scenes where Mercedes Cabral is dramatically

dusting a high-class, art-collector-style apartment, followed by a sequence of her

alone in a sand desert, are clearly fictional. The metaphoric content signified

through these images is empowered by their visual and poetic strength.

Mercedes Cabral in a still from Playtime, 2014. Seven-screen HD video installation, 69’ 47’’

Among discourses on immigration, money loss, investment, bankruptcy

and art dealing, poetry and politics are unexpectedly brought together in

Playtime. When, for example, Sigurösson describes how he lost everything in the

2007 world financial crisis that erupted in Iceland, and then is seen on the

window of his unfinished housing project, and amid the smoky evaporating

snow; or even when Colin Salmon plays the sax inside an emptied skyscraper, in

an unexpected musical performance from a hedge fund manager. These

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approximations between reality and fantasy allows Julien to integrate the

beautifully constructed images from urban and natural landscapes and

choreographed acting with the more narrative lines, a combination that would

unlikely be thought of, if not in this context. Julien has, throughout his career,

questioned what he sees as a general expectation that aesthetics and politics

should be unconnected, and has attempted to relocate ‘questions of pleasure and

politics within the same frame’5, what he calls ‘reparation of aesthetics’.

Colin Salmon in a still from Playtime, 2014. Seven-screen HD video installation, 69’ 47’’

When operating within the spheres of visual beauty and formal

composition, documentary and fantasy, social and political relations, Julien is

arguably approximating Playtime from a revisited historical painting. By

poetically narrating the state-of-the-art of our times, Julien portrays it through

moving images; moreover, he is projecting a landscape of the intricate

relationship between contemporary art, capital and the social apparatus involved

in it. As a way of fruitfully embedding his inclination for painting into his multi-

media work, Julien uses some of the same concepts 17th century genre painters

did, creating a pictorial, technical and pleasant narrative about historical virtues

and misfortunes of our times.

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Ingvar Sigurösson in a still from Playtime, 2014. Seven-screen HD video installation, 69’ 47’’

Yet, KAPITAL, does not fall into the ‘poetic-fictional-documentary’

category, being exclusively a register of a debate, projected in two screens

simultaneously – here, the aesthetic value is left behind, the choreography is

completely executed by philosophy. Recorded during a public talk at the

Hayward Gallery in 2012, held mainly between Julien, David Harvey and Stuart

Hall, KAPITAL is conceivably a theoretical support for the more lyric Playtime.

The all-captions title play with the multiple meanings of the word capital, also

suggesting the importance this topic has reached, and therefore the emergence of

its discussion.

Hall and Harvey are both leftist theoreticians whose writings are largely

supported by Marxism. Hall, recently deceased, was a long time contributor to

Julien, being looked up to since the artist participated in the collective projects

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Sankofa Film and Video and Black Audio; on top of that, Julien stated that

Playtime’s conception has sprouted from conversations with him.

With KAPITAL Julien introduces into the commercial gallery space an

exclusively theoretical and political-oriented video, carried on by an academic-

level discussion about capital and capitalism – Harvey is keen to introduce the

difference between the two. The specialists agree on how the idea of capital is in

itself contradictory and hard to grasp, comparing it to gravity, which you can

only intuit exists. Isaac Julien triggers the discussion by asking why capital is so

difficult to depict. As a mediator, he goes on raising questions to the academics

on the screen, as well as to the audience in the gallery.

Both with KAPITAL and Playtime, Julien is calling the generally

specialised public, who frequents and financially sustains a gallery, to reflect

upon the speculative and profit-oriented configuration of contemporary art. By

depicting the players in the art world, Playtime also gives the spectator an

opportunity to strip bare frequently obscure financial mechanisms that sustain the

art market as a capitalist institution, consequently ruling the artistic practice.

Specially engendered in-between Franco’s and Colin’s lines, are the art market

downsides such as lack of regulation, price speculation, art being treated

uniquely as an asset, money laundering, auction buy-in, tax evasion – the list is

long, but the picture is clear. At this point it is also interesting to remember the

moment when Franco ironically asks, right in the end of his performance, if

maybe, in the future, video art will become an asset itself. And getting back to

Colin’s musical performance another question can be raised: is Julien suggesting

the hedge fund manager is an artist himself?

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Isaac Julien has used the term ‘meta-cinematic’ when explaining that as

an artist who works with film he aims to expand the cinematic language by

emphasising its relationship with the audience and the gallery space. Playtime

dilates this idea into what could be called ‘meta-art’, since the structural aspects

of art as a practice and as an institution are unveiled and pondered in its

conception. With the multiple screens, characters, landscapes, perspectives and

points of view, Julien finally shows that multiple truths co-exist within the

intricate and constantly negotiable artistic space and market place.

1 Isaac Julien, Áine O’Brien, ‘Suturing the Aesthetic and the Political – Multiple Screens, 2 Laura, Barnet, The Guardian, ‘Isaac Julien artist – portrait of the artist’, http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/nov/26/isaac-julien-film-portrait-artist, consulted on March 15 2014 3 Isaac Julien (2005), p. 50 4 Solange Farkas, You Tube, ‘A história imaginada’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqQgTZpBPM4, consulted on March 17 2014 5 Isaac Julien (2005), p. 49

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Statement of publication choice

The publication chosen to stylistically contextualise the text was

Artforum magazine. Founded in 1962, the magazine has since then been

considered as one of the most important voices in contemporary art. If in the one

hand writing an exhibition review to such an authority can be considered an

ambitious project, there are two main reasons that led me to choose this vehicle.

The first one is being able to write for a specialized public, what allowed a

deeper conceptual investigation, research and use of terminology; second, the

size of text requested in the assignment would hardly fit in a less specialized

publication where exhibition reviews tend to be much smaller.

Based in articles published before in Artforum, I have tried to reach an

extensive understanding of the exhibition, although avoiding an exclusively

academic vocabulary. Even though the terminology may be aimed at the

connoisseur, the general text outline tends to be developed in a more informal

way. This is also why endnotes were kept to a minimum, being used only when a

direct quotation was made; yet, further information about the literary sources

used to support the main argument can be found in the bibliography.

The text structure respects that of a magazine publication, as opposed to

what is expected in an academic essay structure. The division between

introduction, main text and conclusion was not made. Instead an attempt to

create a more fluid structure was made by dividing the text in mainly two parts.

The first part functions as an introduction where Isaac Julien’s career and

previously developed projects are considered. The second part develops an

argument focused in the exhibition itself followed by brief conclusion.

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Accordingly, bibliographical reference is composed mainly of articles,

exhibition catalogues, and interviews given by the artist. This led to a better

understanding of the critical journalistic approach while helping to achieve an

overlook of Isaac Julien’s own conceptions. Arguably for a publication such as

Artforum an interview would be conceded, so an attempt to correspondingly

quote the artist was made. The press release offered by Victoria Miro gallery was

also used.

Another important aspect is the use of images throughout the text, in the

same fashion applied by Artforum, creating a complementary reading of visual

aids and information contained in the text. Also as an aim to follow the

magazine’s style, captions were supplied in the lower side of each photograph.

Even though I am aware that the rules concerning image insertion in academic

essays are different, I hope the stylistic justification is plausible for the exercise

proposed.

Finally, more personal opinion than expected in a solely academic text

was given, one more time to comply with the content and tone used in

journalistic critical reviews. These are seen mainly in the use of adjectives and

subjective conclusions; nevertheless, I have tried to keep exemplification,

quotation and factual points to a maximum in order to support the arguments.

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Bibliography Aumont, Jacques, L’oeil Interminable – Cinema et Peinture (Toulouse: Librarie Séguier, 1989) Barnet, Laura, The Guardian, ‘Isaac Julien artist – portrait of the artist’, http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/nov/26/isaac-julien-film-portrait-artist, consulted on March 15 2014 Farkas, Solange, You Tube, ‘A história imaginada’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqQgTZpBPM4, consulted on March 17 2014 Frankel, David, ‘Isaac Julien’, Art Forum, February (2008) Halter, Ed, ‘Derek Jarman’, Art Forum, April (2009) Isaac Julien (exhibition catalogue, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 25 May – 15 August 2005) ed. Éditions du Centre Pompidou (Paris: 2005) Julien, Isaac, Bruce Morrow, ‘An interview with Isaac Julien’, Callaloo, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1995), pp. 406-415 Julien, Isaac, Áine O’Brien, ‘Suturing the Aestheticand the Political – Multiple Screens, Multiple Realities: An Interview with Isaac Julien’, Circa, No. 114 (2005), pp. 46-53 Orgeron, Devin, ‘Re-Membering History in Isaac Julien’s “The Attendant”’, Film Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 4 (2000), pp. 32-40 Ten Thousand Waves (exhibition catalogue, Victoria Miro, London, 7 October – 13 November 2010) ed. Isaac Julien Studio and Victoria Miro Gallery (London: 2010)