December 27, 2008

VIDEO ARTISTS STOP TRAFFIC IN MOSCOW

By Luke Harding
 

The giant plasma screen rises above an old industrial complex. On the left is the Kremlin and the fantastic coloured domes of St Basil’s Cathedral. On the right is a giant Stalin-era apartment block. Linking the two is the Moscow river. Oh, and just down the road are the offices of Roman Abramovich, oligarch, owner of Chelsea FC and — we should now add — art patron.

It is Abramovich’s curator-girlfriend Dasha Zhukova who came up with the idea of a giant video project in the centre of Russia’s unsleeping capital. In September, Zhukova opened her Garage Centre for Contemporary Art (GCCC) in Moscow — a new gallery in a renovated 1920s constructivist bus station. The GCCC’s second project, this time offsite, is a massive public video installation on top of the city’s Mosenergo building, running 24 hours a day.

The installation, called ‘Moscow on the move’, is visible from across the city. It showcases works by leading Russian and international artists — among them the French video artist and veteran avant-gardist Chris Marker. Others include the French director Agnes Varda, as well as the LA artist Doug Aitken, the Swiss duo Fischli & Weiss and the Glasgow-born Turner prize-winner Douglas Gordon. There is no common theme among their video works, which are shown here on a loop.

The most celebrated artist on show is Marker, now in his 80s. He has adapted his multi-screen video work ‘The hollow men’ to fit a single giant space. The film was first shown in 2005 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and is inspired by T S Eliot’s poem, a bleak meditation on the first world war.

The project is a collaboration with London’s Serpentine Gallery. Its curator, Hans Ulrich Obrist, says Marker — whose pioneering work also includes ‘La Jetee’ and ‘Sans Soleil’ — is a “great hero” to the other video artists on display. “It’s absolutely wonderful he could participate,” Obrist says.

He adds that the show’s aim is to go beyond using a conventional venue such a museum or art gallery for contemporary video art. “What we like about this video installation is that it can be seen from the road. It’s so unexpected. You are sitting in a traffic jam and there it is. There are so many possibilities that are exciting for artists but are not being explored. This is one of them.” —Dawn/Guardian News Service

 

Louvre Discovers Possible Da Vinci sketches
 

Three sketches possibly drawn by Leonardo da Vinci have been found on the back of one of the master’s major works, the Louvre museum said.

Describing the find as “an exceptional discovery”, the museum said in a statement that the drawings were found when da Vinci 1500s oil ‘Virgin and child with St Anne’ was undergoing routine examination in the Louvre laboratory.

“When taking down the work, an oil on wood, a curator from the paintings department noticed two barely visible sketches on the back, representing a horse’s head and half a skull,” the Louvre said.

“This is an exceptional discovery as sketches on backs of works are very rare and there is no known example of one from Leonardo to this day,” it added.

The sketches, which are practically invisible to the naked eye, had never been noticed in the past when handling the extremely heavy work.

“While the style of the sketches evokes Leonardo da Vinci, research is continuing,” the Louvre said. —AFP

 

Babylon’s History Swept Away In US Army Sandbags

By Michel Moutot
 

Fragments of bricks, engraved with cuneiform characters thousands of years old, lie mixed with the rubble and sandbags left by the US military on the ancient site of Babylon in Iraq.

In this place, one of the cradles of civilisation, US troops in 2003-2004 built embankments, dug ditches and spread gravel to hold the fuel reservoirs needed to supply the heliport of Camp Alpha.

Today, archaeologists say a year of terracing work and 18 months of military presence, with tanks and helicopters, have caused irreparable damage.

Hands on hips, and wearing a seemingly permanent air of dismay, Maithem Hamza, director of the — totally empty — museum on the site, points to the soil: “Look at this land, it is packed with remnants. They filled their bags with them.” He pushes with his foot a fragment of raw brick, with cuneiform inscriptions plainly visible. To one side of it, on soil filthy with fuel oil, lies the broken door of a Hummer, the US army’s light vehicle.

Undoubtedly the palace built on the site and on an artificial hill in 1993 by then-president Saddam Hussein drew the US military to Babylon during its invasion in March 2003.

The palace, like elsewhere in Iraq, was requisitioned as a military headquarters. The heliport is only some 300 metres (yards) from the remains of the north palace, and according to Maithem Hamza, vibration from the aircraft caused the base of the temple of Ninmah — rebuilt by Saddam in the 1980s — to collapse.

In a report published in 2005, experts from the British Museum confirmed that damage visible on nine of the dragon casts on the temple’s Door of Ishtar, and those on the cobbles of the processional way, were due to vibration caused by the passage of heavy machinery. A lot of damage done is permanent.

“That which is broken is broken... We will try to repair what we can,” said Maryam Omran Mussa, director of the site, speaking in her office near the entrance to the site which has been closed to the public since 2003.

“Many of the relics were buried near the surface. Vibration from tanks and lorries caused irreversible damage, that’s for real... From the start, we told the Americans (their actions) were a mistake. I wrote letters...

“They finally understood, and left, but it took time.” British Museum curator John Curtis was one of the first to sound the alarm over the ancient site.

“They understood when photographs started to be published on the World Wide Web, particularly aerial photographs showing the extent of the military camp there,” he said. —AFP