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photo: Darrol Hofmeister
photo: Darrol Hofmeister

French Connection

A New Wave film filter shows a constipated city

by Gregory Beatty

CINEMA<=>LIFE<=>CINEMA
DUNLOP GALLERY
UNTIL JANUARY 9
French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard turned 80 on Dec. 3. That same night in Regina, an opening reception was held for this exhibition by Jeannie Mah and Jack Anderson that was guest-curated for the Dunlop by University of Regina professor Sheila Petty. The date chosen for the reception was no coincidence, as Cinema<=>Life<=>Cinema is the concluding event in a months-long celebration of Godard’s genius that began with a symposium at the university in mid-September.
 
You don’t have to be an expert on Godard’s work to appreciate this show, but a bit of background helps. Godard was a leading proponent of French New Wave cinema. He shunned the narrative tradition of Hollywood movies and instead used film as a vehicle for exploring complex social and political issues as part of the counter-culture movement that energized Paris in the 1960s. Symbolism, language, imagination and quotation, are all mainstays of Godard’s films.
 
Inspired by their love of Godard’s work, Mah and Anderson set out to explore their hometown of Regina through what Petty refers to as a “Godardian lens.” They drew particular inspiration from Godard’s 1965 futuristic drama Alphaville.
 
Alphaville stars American actor Eddie Constantine as a secret agent named Lemmy Caution who infiltrates a technocratic dictatorship controlled by a sentient supercomputer. Love, poetry, emotion, free thought, individuality — all are outlawed by Alpha 60. As the film unfolds, Caution tracks down Alpha 60’s inventor, Professor von Braun, falls for his daughter Natacha, kills the professor, and eventually destroys the computer.
 
In his installation, Anderson presents four large-scale black-and-white photographs of sterile and impersonal locales in Regina (one building depicted is a defunct burger joint in northeast Regina) that exude an Alphaville vibe and highlight the dehumanizing character of post-industrial, capitalist society.
 
Several ornate chandeliers are suspended from the ceiling, offering a decorative counterpoint to the banal photos. Beneath the chandeliers sits a large mirrored ball which produces distorted reflections of both the photos and nearby gallery patrons — implicating us in our own society’s slide toward authoritarianism.
 
Signs and logos figure prominently in Mah’s installation. Like Godard, she treats them as a form of language that conveys meaning, both literal and symbolic. High on one wall she’s hung a small version of the red and orangish-yellow “Pool” logo that used to denote the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool before it became the publicly traded corporation Viterra.
 
On the floor opposite sits a chunk of an old Revenue Canada sign from a building in Regina that reads “reve”. In French, “reve” means dream or ideal. Read in relationship to the “Pool” sign, it functions as a lament by Mah that the co-operative spirit that propelled the Wheat Pool’s formation has been supplanted by a corporate ethos.
 
Images (one a light box, the other a video) of people swimming in Wascana Pool are installed on the remaining two gallery walls. In relation to the Pool logo, they function as a visual pun. In relation to the “reve” sign, they serve as a poignant comment on the declining support for civic amenities like swimming pools, libraries and art galleries.
 
That’s what you get in a privatized, profit-driven world. 
 
AFFRONTAL NUDITY
 
In addition to the Wascana Pool imagery, Mah’s installation includes footage of her swimming nude in the pool of late Saskatchewan photographer Courtney Milne. The video was shot by artist Joan Scaglione, who used it in a 2008 Art Gallery of Regina show called Pale Blue Dot. Because of its dream-like quality, Mah resurrected the footage to project on the back wall opposite the Wheat Pool sign.
 
Two weeks before the exhibition opened, Mah says she got an e-mail from the Dunlop indicating RPL director Jeffrey Barber had requested she rethink her installation. Why? Because at the end of the video there’s a seven-second snippet where she turns toward the camera while swimming.
 
In an interview after the show opened, Barber said, “At the gallery, we often have shows that are challenging in a number of ways. The most frequent challenge is [frontal nudity]. Because the gallery is immediately inside the library door we have to ensure that when there is challenging content people are aware of that, and that they can then choose to go in and see it.”
 
Mah says she considered shifting the video to an interior wall where it wouldn’t be visible from the lobby, and then rearranging other components of the installation. “But then I thought, ‘That’s really ugly, and defeats the purpose.’”
 
With her deadline looming, Mah decided the simplest solution would be to recut the video to remove the frontal nudity. “The body didn’t necessarily have to turn over,” she admits. “But in Joan’s footage, [I] did very gently turn over before disappearing in the water. So it related to the disappearance of the Wheat Pool and the co-operative values that sustained it.”
 
In our interview, Barber said the RPL has received complaints about previous Dunlop exhibitions. To regulate access to “challenging content,” the library has posted warning signs at the gallery door and even papered over the front window. In cases involving explicit sexuality or violence, the need for caution is probably justified, given that the Dunlop is located in a facility frequented by children and others with limited knowledge or understanding of art.
 
But in the footage Mah intended to present [which can be viewed at www.prairiedogmag.com] she’s swimming under two feet of water so the nudity is not lewd or explicit. As well, because of partitions erected for Jack Anderson’s installation, only tiny bit of the video can actually be seen from the lobby.
 
As an artist, University of Manitoba professor Sharon Alward has faced the sting of public criticism — most notoriously for a 1990 performance inspired by the deadly HIV/AIDS epidemic where she wiped up 25 litres of bovine blood and semen from a gallery floor.
 
“I remember reading a 1931 article by Bertram Brooker about prudes in Toronto who were shocked about a painting with a nude in it,” she says. “There’s a difference between nudity in the service of art and masturbatory eye candy in porn. And it’s just unbelievable that in the 21st century anyone would be upset about a short clip with a bit of nudity from a distance.”
 
Because Mah elected to recut the footage without being specifically ordered to, Barber rejects accusations that the RPL censored her work. But if administration is so concerned about the possibility of offending patrons that it felt compelled to intervene in such innocuous circumstances, it doesn’t reflect well on the Dunlop’s credibility as a gallery.
 
“Would I exhibit under those conditions?” says Alward, a highly regarded artist and winner of multiple Maclean’s magazine awards as one of Canada’s top art professors. “Absolutely not. My work doesn’t necessarily deal with nudity, but it is controversial. And the thought of someone interfering with my artistic vision like that, I can’t fathom it.” /Gregory Beatty