- Venue
- Camden Arts Centre
- Location
- London
Camden Arts Centre is the venue for Chantal Akerman’s first solo exhibition in a UK public gallery, presenting two installations alongside Hotel Monterey, a single screen film from 1972. The centre is a curious space in which to display Akerman’s films. Working outside the norms of length, plot, visualisation and address, they are hardly equipped to cater for the unforgiving families that invade the centre regularly. It was near impossible to view the installations without constant interruptions from parents and their hellish offspring. I have nothing against children but when one rides around on a scooter in front of a film screaming its head off it starts to piss me off.
Anyway, onto the work. Akerman’s most recent piece, Femmes d’Anvers en November (Women from Antwerp in November), from 2007, consists of two projections. On one wall a large screen displays a woman’s face (The Square Black and White Portrait) in close-up as she smokes a cigarette. Opposite, a panoramic cityscape (The Landscape) consists of five smaller screens, each depicting a different woman smoker. Reminiscent of early French and American film noir these compelling projections carry social, political and emotional implications. Drunkenness, sadness, delight, concentration and other emotions emanate from their faces and postures. Their waiting suggests availability, yet they are inaccessible due to the remoteness inferred by the accompanying silence.
Akerman’s structuring device of impossibly long takes and static camerawork is evident in Hotel Monterey, from 1972. The camera silently navigates a hotel interior, the unbearably static pace paradoxically compelling. Tension is orchestrated throughout the film’s 65 minute running time and there is an enormous sense of relief once we exit to the exterior of the building’s roof. The piece is fascinating due to its use of repetition and sameness. Nothing is ever completely revealed and it is these negative spaces that hold our attention.
Akerman has continued to push the boundaries of her practice without ever ceasing to be a filmmaker. In the 1990s she took the adventurous step of exhibiting her images in a gallery of contemporary art, spoke her own texts and made videos about artists and choreographers. It is this diversity that has acted as stimulus to create new work that continues to be relevant and vital. I found it interesting viewing work made 35 years apart. Although the new pieces were less successful, they have incredible potential which, after a career spanning four decades, is ultimately rewarding.
