On another topic entirely, when I have more time, I’d like to discuss Goya’s ‘Saturn devouring his children’…to be continued…

I was not disappointed.

An enthralling narrative unfolds at a wonderfully controlled pace, and Viggo Mortensen, Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel and Armin Mueller-Stahl deliver brilliant performances.

Viggo Mortensen portrayal of a particularly compelling character is beautifully directed by Cronenberg, who – through clever scripting and editing – ensures that we are never quite certain of his motives. He gives an extraordinary performance, from mannerisms, Russified english accent and even his Russian is very good (a russian speaker informed me).

The production design is superb, and through lush cinematography Cronenberg creates a hellish alternative vision of London as a modern metropolis overlayed on a medieval foundation that is never far from the surface both physically and morally. This is London: “the promised land” desired by the unnamed 14 year old prostitute whose diary is presented through several non-diegetic voice-overs . This is the capital of a empire of modern slave-trading; a metropolis of plenty and excess for those profiting from sex slaves.

In this respect, it has many similar themes to The Jammed (Australia 2007 Dee McLachlan) though it engages in them less directly.

Whilst the violence is extremely graphic and almost unbearable in parts, the film uses these brutal, deliberate attacks to convey the sharp end of the vicious and cruel economies that this subculture operates upon.

Easily one of the best films I have seen this year.

“Rather than appeal to the schizo-body or the Body Without Organs, feminism might look to its bodily questions – of eating disorders, abortion, beauty, care, rape, difference – and realise that a philosophy of the body is less appropriate than a bodily philosophy. Thought takes place in a body, as a body, and so a theory of the body in general could not be a true response to the problem of the body. This body is in some instances a body-image, in others it is a body-thing, and often a body-effect. ” (Clare Colebrook, Is Sexual Difference a     Problem?, p126)

An Ordinary Kind of Ornament

Hannah Bertram

Please join us for the closing performance of this project on Saturday 3 November @ 4pm

An Ordinary Kind of Ornament is an installation which transforms dust into an ornamental carpet. The work explores the possibility of preciousness within the incidental. By symbolically using the language of ornament – which simultaneously adds value and is functionally superfluous – it seeks to highlight the ambiguities of preciousness.

At the end of the exhibition, visitors can watch the work being swept away. Its fragile and temporary existence, seeks to shift the value of the work from the concrete object, to the transient realm of experience and focus on the preciousness inherent within the everyday.

Hannah Bertram completed her Master of Fine Art at RMIT in 2005. Her decorative artworks often transform worthless materials in temporary installations to engage in a dialogue about value and worth. Hannah Bertram is represented by Dianne Tanzer Gallery, Melbourne.

An Ordinary Kind of Ornament has been generously funded by the City of Melbourne ­ Arts Projects grant 2007.

Wednesday to Friday 12-6pm, Saturday 12-5pm

West Space
1st Floor, 15-19 Anthony Street
Melbourne Vic 3000, Australia
http://www.westspace.org.au/
info@westspace.org.au
ph 03 9328 8712

For further inquiries or media quality images please contact Mark Feary or Simon Maidment at the gallery on Ph: (03) 9328 8712 or e-mail: info@westspace.org.au

I took the following list of NY-centric links from http://www.newyorkcitywalk.com/html/Links.html:

• “FORGOTTEN NEW YORK: If you like my site, you’re going to love this one. Kevin Walsh is the KING of this nerdy urban explorer subculture that I’m proud to be part of: http://www.forgotten-ny.com
• SATANS LAUNDROMAT: Mike Epstein has a great photoblog of New York City and elsewhere. Mike is currently also walking every Manhattan street: http://www.satanslaundromat.com/sl/
• BIG ONION WALKING TOURS: If you want in-depth historical tours of the city, Big Onion can’t be beat. They are affiliated with the New-York Historical Society, and all of the guides are getting their graduate degrees in history:
  http://www.bigonion.com/
• CATRON COUNTY WALK: I’m honored to have inspired Suzanne to walk every road in Catron County, New Mexico: http://catroncountywalk.blogspot.com/
• WALKING IN LA: This guy is hardcore- a devoted walker in a city that was built for cars: http://www.walkinginla.com/
• CORRECTION HISTORY: A virtual tour of the oldest prison in New York City: http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/nycdoc/harlemjail/
• THE CENTER FOR LAND USE INTERPRETATION: http://ludb.clui.org/ex/t/tag/NY/
• NEW YORK WIKI: Every Person, Place, and Hot Dog in New York City: http://www.nywiki.com/new-york-city/index.php/Main_Page
• HOW I WALKED EVERY STREET IN MANHATTAN IN 10 WEEKS This guy puts me to shame, took me almost three years!: http://linkage.cpmc.columbia.edu/Manhattan_Walk/Walk.html
• THE CRUISE: A documentary starring Starring Timothy “Speed” Levitch. Speed is a mildly crazy romantic, and New York City is his muse. He walks around New York in a swoon, mesmerized by the people, buildings and life around him. He’s always saying stuff like “you are 3 1/2 blocks from infinity”, this sort of thing. He’s definitely crazier than me, but I truly appreciate his love for the city, and his ability to find romance and excitement in parts of the city that other people think are mundane: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0150230/
• OPEN HOUSE NEW YORK: A weekend of free tours of various sites throughout the city. A good time to plan your next vacation: http://www.ohny.org/ohny_website/start.html
• URBAN RANGER: An enthusiastic urban walker: http://www.urbanranger.com/
• NEW YORK CITY ARCHEOLOGY: http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/lpc/html/arch/home.html
  PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY: “19th Century opium eater Thomas de Quincey remains the first reported case & indeed the prototype of the obsessive drifter. With no other goal in mind than to satisfy his curiosity about what might be discovered around the next corner, De Quincey spent entire days randomly strolling around London. In the 20th century, the surrealists in the 30ties & the Lettrists in the 50ties elaborated on this urge by transforming it into a systematic practice. In the 60ties the Situationists took this activity to the next level by developing psychogeography: the science of the dérive, the drift…”: http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeography/algoeng.htm
• NEW YORK SONGLINES: Not a site about singing- Virtual walking tours of Manhattan. No pictures, but very informative: http://www.nysonglines.com/
• A WALK TO REMEMBER: An exhibition that invites a group of Los Angeles based artists to conceive and carry out guided tours through neighborhoods and areas of the city with which they have a particular relationship or affinity and that deal specifically with the rich cultural history of the city: http://www.artleak.org/AWalkToRemember.html “
  

…But this is obviously just the latest in a long history of urban walking:

Baudelaire wrote a collection of poems on Parisian flanerie called “Les Fleurs du Mal”, and Walter Benjamin published a two-volume work called the Das Passagen-Werk (The Arcades Project) which discussed Baudelaire’s poems…

…what are the politics of loitering? the agency of those who loiter?
Makes me think of Mallboy (Australia 2001 Vincent Giarrusso)…

For example:

• lanes and alleyways, and gaps between properties that have been constructed in different periods.
• electrical wiring covers in the footpath
• telstra telephone wiring covers in the footpath
• MMBW covers in the footpath
• drainage outlets
• keg holes around pubs
• etc

sometimes you get the feeling the entire city is like a piece of honeycomb…..its very worthy of further investigation. In fact, a documentary or cinematic exploration could be quite interesting. In a similar genre, Subway (France 1985 Luc Besson) explores the underground spaces of the Parisien metro (and the quirky characters who live in these spaces).

Recently, I have been reading Mongo: Adventures in Trash  (see this book review),

There is a particular aesthetic of this subcultural movement, and a variety of political motivations – for some, its simply out of necessity (homeless, poor, students); others its a way-of-life (a reaction against consumer capitalism).

Hard rubbish collections have been particularly fruitful resource for me over the years – this year, I have recently picked up some wonderful chairs that I will repair over summer. A couple of years ago I found a great block-mounted poster of Elvis (although I am not a fan of Elvis, i had to have it). It always amazes me what people throw out.

The 3-man theatre company, The Suitcase Royale (see photos below) claim that every single piece of their set and all of their props have been found through hard rubbish collections. (Incidentally, these guys produce superb, original theatre).   

Understandably, I was completely inspired when I saw The Gleaners and I (Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse) (France 2000 Agnes Varda). [Check out this interesting review at Senses of Cinema] 

The legalities (and consequently the politics, or vice-versa) behind gleaning are quiet interesting. For example, local councils make it very clear that those who “glean” from hard-rubbish collections are “stealing” council property. The policing and enforcement of these sorts of laws are far too costly and time consuming anyways; and I would think that most people would be happy for their discards to find new homes and new uses where possible, so long as the gleaners dont make a mess.

Its amazing that dumpster diving is considered such a political statement really….

Let’s be positive to begin with. The things I liked included:

• the aesthetic – the reality of the diegesis is intricately and intelligently realised through exceptional art design and production (simply breathtaking)
• the cinematography - captures the action and the reality surrounding the action in a beautiful manner (as Slavoj Zizek mentions, there is a wonderful tension between foreground and background throughout the film)
• the action sequences – unnervingly close to our contemporary reality (terrorist bombings, car-jacking, militant uprisings) 
• the film’s indirect dialogue with contemporary issues of migration, terrorism and the rise of military state.

And yet, with so much to like, I still found the film unpalatable for several reasons; so which I could immediately identify, and others that emerged from greater reflection.

Things that immediately annoyed me: 

• having great actors playing horribly underrealiesd two-dimensional characters
• corny pathetic dialogue
• use of cliched (and boring!) diegetical devices such as: romantic lovers torn apart and reunited for a common goal (please!); a succession of mother-like older women guiding/assisting the young fertile woman (come on, really!?);
• that the film works so hard to achieve a gritty realistic feel through multiple devices [eg, the incredible long-takes during action sequences, magnificent set pieces and creation of atmosphere through incredible attention to background detail], and then it completely destroys this finely achieved sense of diegetic reality (that is a lovely uncanny to our contemporary setting) through lame moments [eg What the hell is with Owen and Moore passing a ping-pong ball? And the soliders all stopping to watch the baby? That scene could have been executed so much better to maintain the sense of realism....]   

This film makes me so frustrated!!!

There is so much to like about its production aesthetics, the incredible detail, visual style and cinematic production values. It is visually stunning. Yet, incredibly, the basic story (the underlying foundation of any film) does not do justice to these other superb elements of the film. It has very interesting concepts and ideas that are poorly executed through weak (thin) characters, lame diegetic architecture, and internal contradictions.

Having voiced my concerns, Children of Men certainly provides one with a lot of different things to discuss….I feel that Paul Virilio’s quote (p 73 in “A travelling shot over Eighty Years”) accurately caputes the atmosphere that Cuaron has sort and achieved: “The intensity of automatic weaponry and the new capacities of photographic equipment combine to project a final image of the world, a world in the throes of dematerialization and eventual total disintegration, one in which the cinema of the Lumiere brothers becomes more reliable than Junger’s melancholy look-out who can no longer believe his eyes.” (p73). Cuaron’s vision is certainly quite apocalyptic.