We Live Here
A Darling Pearls & Co Video Art Programme
https://fabfilmfest.org/adarlingpearlscovideoartprogramme/
At The Fabulous Festival of Fringe Film
July 11, 12 & 13 at the Durham Art Gallery
251 George St E, Durham, ON N0G 1R0, Canada
We Live Here presents video art pieces by an international set of artists in which architecture-based rituals were performed and recorded as acts of resistance or reflection on situations that are part of their daily lives. Their practices are each, in their own unique way, intertwined with these urban spaces, thereby also creating a personal site-specific documentation that subsequently becomes part of art history.
The films showcased include: “The Last Days of Pearl Street” (2007, New York City, 15’26’’) by Colette Lumière (edited by & co-created with Rainbaud aka Jason Tallon) copyright Colette The Artist, “Hex In The Park” (2017, London, 11’38’’) by Stewart Home (action in collaboration with Liz Rever and the St Luke’s Community Collective), “DIY Haircut” (2012, London, 20’05’’) by Itziar Bilbao Urrutia, “TRIP Paulista” (2012, São Paulo, 5’46’’) by Marcia Beatriz Granero and “Ways of Seeing (A Day in the Life)” (2016, London, 26’41’’) by Warren Garland.
“The Last Days of Pearl Street” (2007) Colette Lumière – 15’26’’ – (edited by & co-created with Rainbaud aka Jason Tallon) copyright Colette The Artist. In 2007, New York pioneer multimedia-interdisciplinary artist Colette was abruptly forced to leave her Pearl Street atelier in lower Manhattan after residing and working there for 30 years, without proper warning. This video captures the demolition process of the building that previously housed her “Living Environment” (circa 1972-1982) and the tableau vivant performances by the artist in front of it as the demolition unfolded. Since the 1970s, the French-Tunisian artist had transformed her home/atelier into an immersive artwork known as her “Living Environment,” adorning its walls, ceilings, and furniture with soft muted color rushed fabrics. This legendary “Living Environment” was dismantled in 1983, and its fragments were stored away. However, Colette continued to transform her atelier into an ever-changing dream installation, each reflecting her current “living personas” until she vacated in 2007. The performative personas she has embodied throughout her career include Justine of the Colette is Dead Co. (NYC; 1978-1983), Mata Hari & the Stolen Potatoes (Berlin; 1984-1985), Countess Reichenbach (The Bavarian Adventure; 1986-1991), Olympia (House of Olympia; 1990-2000), and Lumière (Laboratoire Lumière; 2001-now). Her early street works and her reputation for” Breaking the Rules” earned her the title of “Art Pirate,” her poetic occupation of space established her as a recognised pioneer of installation art.
In December 2020, a Kickstarter campaign organised by independent curator Kenta Murakami successfully raised funds to secure storage for the “Living Environment”, once again endangered of being lost. The campaign achieved its goal, garnering significant press attention, and Colette (now Laboratoire Lumière) also reached a new audience. In November 2021 through February 12, 2022, Kenta Murakami curated “Notes on Baroque Living” at Company Gallery NYC. The saved fragments and other multimedia works created during the time of the living environment were restored and exhibited in a large-scale presentation across three spaces. The rest is History !
Hex in the Park (2017) by Stewart Home, Liz Rever and the St Luke’s Community Collective – 11’38’’ – was a Halloween 2017 ritual curse on property developers in the EC1 area of London in the form of a witches demonstration; while simultaneously being a protective action for two local parks (St. Luke’s Gardens and Fortune Street Park) that will have massive amounts of sunlight blocked from them if proposed developments go ahead. It was organised by Stewart Home, Liz Rever and the St Luke’s Community Collective. The film was edited by Owen Oppenheimer and the soundtrack is by Bioni Samp. Those involved in the protest were opposed to the construction of Taylor Wimpey’s The Denizen in Golden Lane which is scheduled to replace 110 social housing units for key workers with 99 luxury flats being marketed to overseas investors who won’t live in them or even rent them out (they’ll be empty ghost homes), with no social or affordable housing provision on site. The demonstration was also against the then current design for the new Finsbury Leisure Centre on the other side of Old Street which would block sunlight from St Luke’s Gardens and Burnhill House (a social housing tower). The witches wanted no reduction of on site leisure facilities and for the proposed housing block St Luke’s Mansions to be moved from Helmet Row – where it would overshadow the park and Burnhill House – to the west side of the site against Central Street, where it would cause no harm. The video works as a spell and builds on the original Halloween working. There is more info on Hex in the Park here: https://reclaimec1.wordpress.com/2017/11/12/hex-in-the-park-cursing-out-ec1-ghost-homes/
DIY HAIRCUT (2012) by Itziar Bilbao Urrutia – 20’05” – is an homage to the lost squatter communities of London, where the classic squatted house DIY aesthetic and intervention in the building suggest an alternative to capitalist, patriarchal notions of art, architecture, home, family, and kinship. The intimate scene, redolent of Dutch masters’ paintings with its natural light and interior setting, captures the powerful significance of hair cutting as self-expression, bonding, and rebirth. Haircuts are significant sculptural agents of identity and agency in Itziar’s work, often hinting at their eroticism, symbolism, and subcultural relevance.
Warren Garland, Ways of Seeing (A Day in the Life) – (video still), 2016, London
Ways of Seeing (A Day in the Life) by Warren Garland – 26’41’’ – Shot on iPhone through the POV standpoint Ways of Seeing (A Day in the Life) is a humorous look at a graduate artist in full time employment and their application of art theory to their surrounding environment. The audio of the film is taken from the 1972 BBC essay film titled Ways of Seeing by John Berger (who is sorely missed and whose voice is even more magnificent now). The text from this film has been used in the majority of art schools across Britain for the last thirty years and explores the essay of Walter Benjamin: “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, but Berger pushes Benjamin’s theories to seeing art works on the screen, and investigates mystification of art in art theory.
TRIP Paulista (2012) by Marcia Beatriz Granero – 5’45’’ – Synopsis: “After a night troubled by strange dreams, Jaque Jolene awakens to her enigmatic routine as she drinks her coffee and ingests a few psychotropic medicines. Her hallucinations serve as an invitation to a pleasant stroll through the bustling streets of São Paulo.”. She sunbathes at Terraço do Trianon under the iconic building designed by Lina Bo Bardi, which has been home to the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP) since 1968. A rendition of the love song “Don’t Make a Beggar of Me” potentially symbolises the relationships between a female artist and an institutional space. In the following years, the artist continued to produce video art pieces and photographs featuring her autobiographical persona, Jaque Jolene, resulting from art residencies in various art institutions and spaces. These works primarily focus on the economics and history of these locations. A notable characteristic of these films is that the protagonist does not speak; instead, storytelling occurs through cinematic construction and actions within the architecture of these spaces.
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A prominent figure in the downtown New York scene since the 1970s, Colette’s multimedia work has influenced major artists and musicians, including Cindy Sherman and Madonna. Colette began working on the streets of SoHo, creating constructed photographic works that functioned as pastiches of painting genres, and lavish installations of bunched fabrics, pushing Victorian or Rococo interiors to postmodern extremes. In all of her work, Colette worked under the guise of performative personas that explore issues of the body, gender, and representation. Wearing extravagant costumes, she performed, live, and slept in her installations; she even once staged her own death at the downtown Whitney Museum. “I thought of myself as ‘post conceptual’ because I persisted and believed strongly in the power of symbols,” she said. “My work was putting less emphasis on the intellect alone. I sought unity of body, mind, and soul, in my life and art”. – https://colettetheartist.mystrikingly.com/
Stewart Home is the author of more books than he can remember writing. He was born in Wimbledon (London) in 1962 and last lived south of the river in Kennington in 1984. Since then he has spent a lot of time in the London boroughs of Hackney, Tower Hamlets and Islington. Home started doing music reviews as a teenager to get free records and onto gig guest lists. After trying his hand at factory work and art-class modelling, he settled down to life on the dole, and when he wasn’t watching exploitation movies spent much of his time reading and eventually writing books. His work to date includes the novels Pure Mania, Defiant Pose, Red London, Blow Job, Slow Death, Come Before Christ & Murder Love, Cunt, Whips & Furs, 69 Things To Do With A Dead Princess, Down & Out In Shoreditch & Hoxton, Tainted Love, Memphis Underground, Blood Rites Of The Bourgeoisie, Mandy Charlie & Mary-Jane, The 9 Lives Of Ray The Cat Jones and She’s My Witch. Some of Home’s short stories can be found in No Pity and Amputee Sex, while his collected poems are entitled SEND CA$H. Non-fiction books include The Assault On Culture: Utopian Currents From Lettrisme To Class War, Cranked Up Really High: Genre Theory & Punk Rock, Confusion Incorporated: A Collection Of Lies, Hoaxes & Hidden Truths, and Re-Enter The Dragon: Genre Theory, Brucesploitation And The Sleazy Joys Of Lowbrow Cinema. Stewart Home is also a visual artist with work held in institutions such as the Arts Council Collection and National Art Library. – https://www.stewarthomesociety.org/
Itziar Bilbao Urrutia is a visual artist, activist and pornographer based in London. Her practice is linked to its many sexual subcultures. Her interest in the disobedience of the Monstrous Feminine has led her to explore media unrelated to the art tradition, such as porn as a film genre. Since 2004, her projects have been based on an exploration of the international fetish scene as a space of identity and praxis, that lead her to establish her own fetish porn studio, The Urban Chick Supremacy Cell. Using digital adult content as a form of survival and of expression, she mixes the discourse of Femdom with the aesthetics and rhetoric of historical radical action and feminism, such as Valerie Solanas and the Baader-Meinhof group.- https://itziarbilbaourrutia.co.uk/
Warren Garland, born in Birmingham, is a visual artist, printmaker, filmmaker, and curator splitting his time between London and Birmingham. As a filmmaker, his work is twofold. He creates long-form experimental documentaries that draw connections between historical references in British documentary filmmaking and his personal background and experiences. He also produces short video art pieces using found Internet footage that he re-edits, cuts, and collages. In these videos, he often immerses himself in a self-constructed world called Baltia, a mythological island in the Baltic Sea. This world provides him with the creative freedom to parody, mimic, and subvert the real world through magical realist visual and auditory elements. His most recent project, “Warren Drawing Trees,” is an online endeavor that he began during the lockdown to support his mental health. It involves creating drawings of trees in East London and Birmingham, accompanied by text that documents memories, the area’s history, social interactions, and observations made during the drawing process. – https://www.warrengarland.com/
Marcia Beatriz Granero is a Brazilian artist, independent producer, curator and video art researcher based in São Paulo. Her projects explore the creation of a character, Jaque Jolene, recorded in videos and photographs. Jaque is the center of the work, a fictional autobiographical entity who from time to time inhabits Márcia Beatriz Granero’s body. The artist collaborates with her creation in performative actions as they visit historic buildings where cultural institutions are established. These performances result in videos, photographs, and installations. In them, cinematic language is explored not in order to undermine the fallacies of cinematic constructions but as a device for investigation and presentation of their surroundings. Her videos have been screened and exhibited at over fifty cultural spaces and Festivals & she has produced many of her films as an artist in residency in various institutions and other art dedicated spaces nationally and internationally.- https://cargocollective.com/marciabeatrizgranero
(Curator) Alessandra Falbo (b. São Paulo, 1990) is a London-based artist, curator and photographer. Her multimedia practice (video, photography, installation) draws itself from her personal experience and includes collaborative projects: the short docu-fiction A Rough Cut Of Love (2017), produced with the director Lud Monaco, has been screened in over 50 cities across Brazil, Europe and the U.S. She has curated numerous group and solo exhibitions internationally including Pining for Pearls by Marcia Beatriz Granero (Darling Pearls, London, 2019), A Moveable Feast (Platforms Project Independent Art Fair, Athens 2019), Eaux d’Artifice (IFAC Athina, Athens 2019) and Porn The Theory – Fantasy The Practice // by Stewart Home & Itziar Bilbao Urrutia (Cable Depot, London 2019), The Four Humours by Warren Garland (Darling Pearls, London, 2021); “Special Delivery” by Colette Lumière (Darling Pearls, Colette Occupies 420, London/NYC, 2021). She is the founder & director of the project space Darling Pearls & Co (London, 2018-now).- https://www.darlingpearls.co/