Detail of Boltanski’s installation Chance.
French artist Christian Boltanski is deeply celebrated. Let’s be more specific – Boltanski’s installation Chance has been hailed by critics internationally as ‘spectacular’ and ‘brilliant’, first presented in the French Pavilion for the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.
It was a good call, then, by Carriageworks to headline this work for Sydney Festival – further defining this venue in 2014 as one to watch.
Walking into the space you can not help but be impressed by the scale and technological precision of this artwork, faced with twenty-tonnes of German-designed scaffold caught between a jungle-gym, film projector and newspress. It captures the ethos of the production line, wonderfully in sync with the industrial character of the building (a former locomotive workshop), and it engages what is a rather difficult space to work with for its very scale and character.
Primarily, it is a sensory experience that first strikes you. The shrill mechanical clatter of the piece reverberates in the vast space as 600 portraits of newborn Polish babies shoot in a loop of film, diminishing the individual to mere process.
Then, a bell rings and the line slows to a halt, bringing into focus the face of a single child on a monitor. It is like the analogue moment, where the process is slowed to the point where the brain can register and remember.
Boltanski has cleverly orchestrated a micro-macro engagement and, just as you are drawn into the detail, the whirl of the reel is re-engaged and the individual is again lost to the loop of life.
This is the fourth iteration of this piece. Boltanski explained, ‘Each time I make the work, the shape of the piece is very different. To me this is similar to how an orchestra plays a piece of music’.
Standing eight-meters tall, the piece runs like a railway corridor through the main public foyer of Carriageworks, cutting the space in two. You don’t get that potency that you might have felt if immersed within the piece, physically walking through the scaffold with the film moving around you as it did in its original presentation at Venice. It is distilled by its singular viewing perspective, and I would go so far as saying that it works against Boltanski’s dialogue, separating us from the narrative.
It is a thought extended in the second component of this installation, Last News from Humans, digital LED counters positioned at opposite ends of the scaffold – one green counting in real-time births around the world and the other in red counting deaths – lost their connectivity due to the obstruction of sheer length and density of the scaffold, and as a result were viewed as isolated events.
What happens is that we find our own eddies and points of focus in this installation.
Be New, the third element of this ambitious artwork, in contrast is presented in a focused corner. The visitor steps up to a console with a button, a kind of poker-machine styled game of chance, to try their luck at the perfect genetic amalgam.
A reel of portraits divided into thirds, spin in rapid succession until the viewer chooses the moment in which to halt them. There is a one in 1500 chance of matching the face, in which case you win a signed photographic portrait by Boltanski.
It is not surprising, then, to learn that ‘chance’ connected Boltanski with professional gambler and founder of Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), David Walsh, who in 2010 struck a deal with the artist to gamble on his life.
Under the title of The Life of C.B., Boltanski agreed to live-stream video 24 hours a day from his studio direct to Walsh, the footage collected and stored on DVD. Colloquially, Botanski said he sometimes remembers to wave hello.
The real deal, however, is a monthly sum paid to Boltanski. After eight years the agreed purchase amount will be reached. The gamble is if Boltanski lives longer the payments must continue, or if he dies earlier Walsh gets a bargin!
‘Chance is about hazard,’ said Boltanski.
Boltanski believes his own birth was a bit of coin toss, born in the Parisian chaos of the Nazi occupation to a Jewish father in hiding, so it is no surprise that notions of moment and memory remain strong authors in his work.
With this in mind I can perhaps be a little cavalier and relax my criticism of the Carriageworks installation and better embrace Boltanski’s philosophy of chance. Without risk what is gained? So while I was disappointed not to relive my childhood ambitions to climb those bars of steel with the rush of something larger than me bristling in its proximity, rather this version of Chance wills us to risk in other forms – contemplation and mortality.
Chance gives us a sense of the sheer density of the human race and our appetite to procreate, an endless cycle of life. Boltanski said, ‘What is it to be born? What is it to die?’ My work can be understood by everyone because it is so simple.’ He continued, ‘A piece of art is very open each time you look at it you take from it what you need to take.’
There is no doubt this is a slick piece and it will impress and delight Festival and Carriageworks audiences.
ArtsHub TV captures Boltanski at the unveiling of his installation in Sydney
Christian Boltansky: Chance
9 January – 23 March 2014
Carriageworks (in association with Sydney Festival)
Open 10am-6pm daily (to 9pm Thursdays)
245 Wilson St, Eveleigh (Sydney), NSW 2015
