- Venue
- FACT: Foundation for Art and Creative Technology
- Location
California; a mediator between popular culture and individual experience or a concentrated America burdened by the debris of the American dream, or alternatively a landscape littered with self conscious attempts to disguise the other California.
This alternative California is the subject of New Zealand artist Terrence Handcomb's new work which I came across at the Stranger than fiction exhibition that took place at Fact in Liverpool during the Biennial. The exhibition seemed to be confronting the gap between our personal and collective understanding of cultural and historical events as well as attempting to articulate the ambiguous space that operates between the two. As viewers we are asked to examine our position in relation to the alternative realities that the artists present, while also challenging us to decipher truth from fiction and the significance of certain mythologies.
Handcomb's work Der Himmel uber Kalifornian seems to examine the psychological unbalance that underlines Californian culture and its self conscious attempts to redeem itself in the face of cultural and individual failures. Although a single channel video, the work has an all encompassing menacing presence that resonates throughout the dark room in which it's shown. It encapsulates the wider mood of the exhibition as well as creating its own mystique and asserting a unique vision upon the viewer. Oblique and austere, it operates as a pastiche of a mythologised alternative California, one that simmers beneath the surface and has uncertain connotations. As a viewer you are confronted with an array of pop cultural and cinematic references touching upon the underlying fears of an insecure and paradoxical culture; one that advocate's plastic surgery, excessive exercise regimes, sci fi spirituality and the pursuit of fame and adulation.
The video is divided into five parts, which although differ in content, make up a larger work that lasts approximately 13 minutes. Each part functions on its own but also operates within a wider narrative that both entices and eludes the viewer. Its structure almost reminds me of a piece of music that's parts intuitively link together but sometimes uncomfortably rub up against each other. Although, perhaps this association is enhanced by the haunting, discordant sound track that runs throughout the course of the video. On closer inspection I began to make out the near inaudible melodies of the beach boys, perhaps a tongue and cheek reference to the superficial kitschy associations we make with California or alternatively an unsettling reminder of Brian Wilson's mental collapse and the hindrance of some of his more Avant Garde sensibilities.
The titles of the video seem to use the language of German expressionism, bringing to the work an ambiguous relationship between Californian culture and the difficulties Germany faced in the 20th century. Der Himmel uber Kalifornian is a play on the original German title of Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire. In Handcomb's Artists Statement he describes how in the film Wenders retraces the difficult psychological trajectory Germany followed in its own self-conscious re-emergence from National Socialism to an ethically redemptive political, cultural and economic credibility. Handcomb draws parallels with this and the egocentric, over sexed Californian lifestyle that's dissected in his own work. In his statement Handcomb also implies that there is a kind of sadomasochism that lies inherent in this lifestyle. The first image of the film reinforces this idea. The viewer is confronted by a hazy black and white close up of a skull and cross bone tattooed on anonymous back. Possibly symbolizing the mark of a cult or a motorbike gang, fetishizing the body in some ceremony of initiation. Or maybe it could even be read as an attempt to initiate the viewer into this other California and draw on their own perverse fantasies.
I found the first part of the video (Teil 1 as it is sub titled in German) the most interesting and so I shall go on to talk about this at the greatest length. It begins with a black and white photograph of a child and a German voiceover that seems to be announcing a date or perhaps even a time. A series of similar images and voiceovers follow, all with an unnerving and sinister appeal. The images left me with a strange set of contradictory responses. I felt guilty and voyeuristic but somehow energized and compelled by the mystery and the enigma of the photographs. Were they missing children? What does the date refer to? And most of all why do the photographs look so alive? This last question may seem unusual but it was certainly what was going on in my mind when first viewing these photographs. There was something uncanny about the images, as if these nameless children were staring right back at me. I concluded that that artist may have slightly animated the eyes and mouths of the children to give a strange sense of disorientation and otherness. On further reading I discovered that these were indeed images of missing children (the dates referring to day they went missing). I was struck by how well Handcomb articulated the sensationalism of such images and how even a photograph of a missing child becomes a public mystery to be solved and a drama that must be played out till the end. These are the faces of lost Californian children forgotten, because they were the ones who disappeared and never came back to tell a good story.
The mood of all five parts of the film is enhanced by the children's PXL vision 2000 video camera that Handcomb uses. It has a unique quality that works especially well in the second and third parts of the video (the second being a grainy homage to sci fi mythology and cults) There is a crudity to medium that adds an otherworldly texture to the images and resonates with the mood of film noir. The third part of the video features the circumcision of a banana; a disquieting and humorous examination into the relationship between body enhancement and self harm. The PXL vision 2000 gives it a home made, DIY feel that reflects the nature of the work and adds to its elusive appeal. The final part of the video is an image of a sun setting over the ocean, perhaps representing the many contradictions of this abstruse Californian vision. Handcomb's California is a bright utopia littered with urban malaise. A vast schizophrenic territory that both opens itself up to and closes itself off from the rest of the world.
