- Venue
- Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
- Location
Nestled at the back of the ground floor of Newcastle’s BALTIC gallery lies the Jordan Basman’s reflective and introspective ‘The Most Powerful Weapon In This World’. Somewhat overshadowed by Jenny Holzer’s maze of LED screens on higher floors, this is the American, now UK-Based, video artist’s second solo show in the North of England.
The things that draws me so intently to the exhibition is the description on the press release; ‘an exploration into the relationship between documentary and fiction’1.
At the door of the exhibition the work is introduced;
‘BALTIC presents an exhibition of recent work by American artist Jordan Baseman. Developed from the interview process that is at the heart of Baseman’s practice, the works in the exhibition use found footage and original material to accompany voice-driven narratives. Enigmatic archive footage and an original soundtrack in Inside Man, accompany a story of criminality, pride and shame. Joy on Toast tells of the dynamic life of a botanical explorer that is tinged with sadness. In Nasty Piece of Stuff, images of street life provide a frantic, agitated counterpoint to the even tones of the narrator. Questioning documentary, narrative and authenticity, the exhibition explores belief systems, human motivation and experience through three thought-provoking, poetic and moving works.’2
Directly below the blurb lies a disclaimer, warning the audience that the exhibition discusses experiences of rape and sexual assault in graphic detail. The audience’s experience of the exhibition is altered before the room is entered.
The room itself is initially submerged into total blackness. The three videos that form the exhibition are displayed in a triangular formation and the room is silent. Each screen, the size of a small cinema screen, displays a numerical countdown in a simple white text; the videos are staggered and each individual film requires 100% of the viewer’s concentration. A large round seat is located in the middle of the room in line with the two adjacent screens making the triangular set up even more implicit.
Each work consists of two components, sound and moving image. The sound is formed from a monologue, an edited recording of each person retelling their story. The sound is essentially truth. The moving image has been sourced and appropriated later by Baseman, intended to cause reconsideration of reaction and distribution of both empathy and prejudice. The relationship between fiction and reality, mirrored in the relationship between image and sound, is instantly engaging.
Curationally speaking, the triangular structure of the work forces a situation where the audience is encompassed by the work. The positioning of screens, paired with the countdown displayed on the blank screens, allows a sense of reflection from one film to another, enabling three essentially individual works to perform as one. The fluidity created allows an audience to enter and leave the exhibition at any point without ‘missing’ anything, there is no beginning or end, it is a constant narration on the themes of life, but more importantly, it allows a constant reflection revaluation on the part of the audience, and a malleable interaction with the work. The triangular structure is also an empirical nod to the idea of social infrastructure and belief systems, a physical representation of two of the main themes is tastefully realised.
In regards to concept, appropriation is at the core; only once all three films have been watched and considered do Baseman’s intentions become wholly clear. The tactics in curation increasingly highlight the two dimensional nature of the work, not only in terms of content, but concept. The narratives, once truthful, have been translated into Baseman’s own portraits ‘for the ears’3. Baseman’s ability to create, select and appropriate moving image that has hugely impactful effects on the audiences perception is a revelation. At times imagery simultaneously conflicts with and compliments the narrations we hear.
In Joy On Toast the dark elements are accentuated by momentary pieces of documentary footage. When the death of a donkey in the Conga is relived, the audience relive it visually. The rest of the time we are kept in darkness to process the subtleties of the story.
Inside Man jars the reality of sexual assault, retold by the aggressor, but to 1960’s footage of a black woman and friends dancing in a seductive but understated manner, the constant loop and slow calm movements of the imagery work in opposition to expectation, instead of distancing us further from the criminal, we are drawn to the mirrored pace of his voice and tenderness of his confessions.
In Nasty Piece Of Stuff, Alan Wakeman’s eerily calm and forgiving account of discrimination against Homosexuals in 1970’s London and his own experience of sexual assault are starkly contrasted by the fast paced animation of contemporary London, the only footage shot by Baseman himself, the pairing is perhaps the most effective. The images move in time to the speech, pauses and silence are reiterated by the screen going black, the fractured nature of the animation attempts to translate and communicate the horror and brutality on behalf of Wakeman himself.
All of these techniques are employed expertly by Baseman, and so it comes as no surprise that these are just three of over one hundred films of their kind. His videos work as a means of social commentary, challenging the way in which an audiences responds to the stories they hear, and the manner in which they are told is a direct representation for the way in which we interact with people, news and situations everyday in relation to the social constructs around us without ever feeling personally challenged or cross examined. In interviews Baseman reiterates over and over that the pieces ‘stand alone as individual works and not as one’ 4 and it is not until later reflection that I understand his determination. The videos stand-alone as reminders of how we assign blame, anger, compassion and disgust in the face of the visual, based on predetermined and socially innate constructs. The fact that within every story, there is space between how it is told and how it is received that needs to be considered as carefully as the reality of the event itself.
Baseman manages to challenge our inter ideologies without aggression or intimidation, and all the time successful retaining an heir of humility and an uncompromised sense of humanity.
1 BALTIC Gallery Press Release
2 BALTIC Gallery exhibition guide.
3 http://www.whatsonne.co.uk/gb/arts-and-exhibitions/news/portraits-for-the-ears-at-baltic [accessed 12/04/2010]
4 BALTIC BITES podcast [accessed 09/04/2010]