It’s hard to take audience participation seriously. When it comes to music, we tend to sing along only at those slightly unfashionable events like the Last Night of the Proms. Or Christmas. Sitting in a theatre, I seldom think that my viewing experience is enhanced by an actor plonking a hat atop my head, or someone smearing porridge on my trouser leg (both of which have happened to me at the BT). Film, well, that’s a bit difficult. Short of making obscene hand gestures in the projector, it’s hard to impose your viewing experience on a piece of film reel.
Such were my thoughts as, upon entering Modern Art Oxford, I was politely shown a collection of gold lamé jumpsuits. I was told they were optional, but I concluded that since most people had collections that day, I was unlikely to bump into anybody I knew while dressed in an outfit best described as a rapper’s condom, so apprehensively I slipped it on.
I needn’t have bothered. Common Task, I soon found out, is simply two rooms, one of which is supposed to resemble a spaceship, while the other houses a couple of gold benches and a video screen. I was scarcely in MAO for twenty minutes. There simply wasn’t enough to warrant the use of the outfits. No matter how much the programme might suggest it – and this exhibition comes with an excellent programme, perhaps better than the exhibition itself – there was nothing in which to immerse oneself. Sat watching a film dressed like an invader from a tacky planet, my overriding feeling was one of embarrassment, especially since people wishing to see the Miroslaw Balka exhibition upstairs kept walking through dressed normally, give or take a few dubious welly choices.
‘I apprehensively slipped on an outfit best described as a rapper’s condom’
Common Task is by Polish artist Pawel Althamer. One enters the exhibition directly. There are few objects in the ‘Antechamber’ (as the minimalist front gallery is described) but those that are there carry little weight. We have a sort of command centre with pretty flat screens. There is a cheap-looking mixing desk that boringly does nothing. The best object is perhaps the only piece in the exhibition resembling traditional sculpture: a sort of tribal-mask-like wooden construction painted in the ubiquitous gold, but fastened together with small strips of animal hide. Clashes of culture, and the surreal visual effect these can produce, are clearly major themes of Common Task and its central video installation. On this, a potent and virile symbol of nature and superstition, the addition of the whimsical space age gold is striking and ironic.
The work is described as a ‘science fiction film in real time’. With this dictum, they refer to the entire project, which has travelled all over the world – to Brussels, Brazil and most recently, Mali – and which continues to travel, to film, to swap clothes with tourists and tribespeople alike. Yet the focus in the exhibition is quite strongly on the video installation, which robbed the show of the sense of ‘real time’ because we were watching a condensed film of the expedition. There was no sense of the project’s ongoing nature. The formal aspects are pretty standard for a contemporary film installation: wobbly camera work, shifting focus, irritating microphone noises and an intrusive use of sounds – bongo drums, aeroplane noises – that tends to overdo the point.
‘My overriding feeling was of embarrassment, as normally-dressed people walked past’
Do not get me wrong, I found quite a bit to admire in the concept behind this project. Through observing this band of Polish neighbours walk through African villages in gold jumpsuits, swapping clothes with natives, we are forced to see simultaneously the limits of our knowledge, how our own planet is alien to us, and conversely how we, the civilised Westerners, must seem pretty ridiculous to those whom Althamer visits. There is a strong sense of comedy in the video which I like, because one is not sure whether it is uncomfortable comedy or not. It plays on our ignorance, our prejudice and our limitations, yet it also asserts our freedom both to travel where we want and dress ourselves in whatever ludicrous outfits we see fit.
Yet an admirable concept does not excuse a pretty poorly curated exhibition, and the uninspiring installations by the artist. If anything, this exhibition should have been bigger, better thought through, presented in a larger gallery reviewing the project. As it is, we are confronted by a surreal entry-hall to the larger Balka exhibition upstairs, looking like twenty-four carat plonkers to unaware passers-by.
two stars
‘Common Task’ is on at Modern Art Oxford until 7th March. Admission is free.
