Drive

A still from Drive, directed by Nicolas Refn, 2011 [image source]

How do you write about a film in which the lack of language is one of its most striking characteristics. Drive, by Nicolas Refn lives in a space that makes speaking about it difficult. As I groped for the words that I was trying to use to put thoughts to the general sensibility I walked away with after seeing the film, as an actual 35mm  print on a large Hollywood screen, I did the required amount of due diligence and investigated what other folks had been formulating as the meta text of the film. Reoccurring mentions of noir, pop, and ultraviolence filled the link landscape. However correct, I feel that these so not get to the core of the film. Perhaps that is because there might not be a core to get to, no final destination. The main character, a man with no name (in the cinematic tradition of primary male characters with no name) drives. It is more than what it does, it is who he is. He is the driver, a person in constant motion with no finite beginning or end - a life of almost endless surface streets (a statistic which our character notes at the beginning of the film).

He is a anithero in the old fashioned sense of the antihero, McQueenish in reserve and stylishness. He is not a Tony Soprano or Walter White, the contemporary anithero which has become burdened with mortgages, psychiatric disorders, and the knowledge of both their pasts and futures.  He is instead, a character that is without any binding story, and almost through some type of magical intervention has divined his place on 21st century streets.  His contemporary parallel appears at first to be the blank slate of a questing video character more than of films history's cowboys or samurai.  This man out of nowhere concept is even alluded to by the Driver's boss, who mentions that he the Driver seemed to appear out of nowhere  and ask for a job one day.


Though there is a narrative heist plot line it feels like it is there because Hollywood filmic conventions (and producers) require it;  the film actually is a character study focusing on what makes people more than an empty shells wondering the streets - what makes them human. Time and time again within the film, we see charecters' human desires become their Achilles heel.  The mob boss Nino wants to be considered a full mobster, not a lesser west coast Jewish imitation. The driver's boss, Shannon, wants to be more than just a mechanic; he wants to  get ahead and have some impact in the world through whatever form it requires to full this potential. Within the story of Irene, the main female love interest within the film, we hear the tale of how she met her ex-con husband including a pickup line so terrible it denotes trouble from the instant she meets him, but she develops a relationship nonetheless. 


However, it is the Driver's story (the camera barely leaves him during the entire film) and his foray into humanity is the most tragic.  Though he is man of rules, few words and sparse living, early in the film he is placed in a grocery story,  a hallmark of being a real person. This where the Driver sees Irene and her child, and seems to have a Pinocchio moment where he desires to be a real person with a wife and child, to have a normal life and live in a normal world.  This is what brings forth the massive path of destruction and violence - a desire for greater humanity, a straying from rules into emotions.


Refn creates a world that is a constant state of the present.  And while the characters in this study have to deal with the end results of their emotional landscapes, we understand the characters through  the summations of their actions, not of their deep inner thoughts.  Lives are very cause and effect based.  In many ways this film seems to be the opposite of current societies 2.0 living where all is contemplated and discussed and little is actually done.  In several interviews that Refn provided in relationship to Drive, he often cites John Hughes and pop music  as some of his inspirations, an almost ode to the 80's.  However, in the state in which this film actually dwells, I think the video game is the through line from the 80's to today.  A place where the uber masculine can exist without having justify it's presence, where action is the path success (or at least a redo) and to much thought or hesitation will often end in death.  In this way, Drive is perhaps the most refined and interesting filmic contemplation on gaming culture and character based identities that I have seen and a cross medium concept that feels successful because of its strange occupations  of the edges (not quite a video game, not quite a traditional genre narrative, not quite a big budget Hollywood film, etc...), not in spite of them.

Hammer Projects: Carlos Bunga

Installation view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Photo by Brian Forrest. [Image Source]

While visiting the Hammer Museum late last year to attend the L.A Rebellion Symposium, I noticed the work by Carlos Bunga being installed and pondered "I wonder what this will turn out to be?" At the time it was bare cardboard filling the unique and often fascinating space of the front stairwell of the Hammer museum. I imagine this to be a difficult space for an artist to either work within, produce upon, or make relevant: the scale is huge and the positioning in a main entrance both bestows a place of importance and also a negation by viewers as they pass this work to "go see art".

As I was back at the Hammer this last weekend to see Now Dig This! I passed by the now completed cardboard structure and was first underwhelmed. "This is it - for all of that scaffolding and labor?" However this first impression really did not do justice to the work; when viewed with the supporting pieces in the smaller gallery off of the lobby, they actually make a compelling collection of thoughts and images on contemporary re/use of materials, scale and the oppositional and supportive forces of the interior and exterior within architectural construction. Bunga in this work, Landscape (2011), both creates a surface that is decorative and decayed, taming the entirety of the unruly staircase space with subdivided cardboard spaces. The wall becomes a surface exposed, as if someone had torn of the drywall of the Hammer and reveled it to be merely cardboard underneath, which could not be possibly strong enough to hold the building together but somehow the walls are still standing. The cardboard envelopes the railing for the staircase, which both further unifies the work into the structure and also entangles our safety and the sturdiness of the cardboard structure together.

In the lobby adjacent gallery of smaller objects (which is not hard to do because almost everything is smaller than the lobby of the Hammer) Bunga has provided a collection of mixed media creations dating from 2002-2008 that tie in thematically to the large cardboard creation. Small models are roughly created; tape and paint holding a world together. Items are in transition, destroyed, created, improved upon, taken apart.

Though I have a strong bias toward moving image art, in many ways the single channel video outside the gallery had an equal weight to the large cardboard construction. Within the video Lamp (2002 1:34 min. duration), the artist smashes a light bulb and then meticulously gathers all the pieces and with tape "reassembles" the light. While reassembled, the light will never work, and it is not the same object that it was before, though it is easy to still use the term "light" to describe it. Our society is in a constant path of construction and reconstruction, and what we take apart is never the same, but yet somehow it is not different. Bunga, in this way, feels like his abstractions get to the core of a very real and reoccurring phenomena in society.

Now Dig This!

Betye Saar, Black Girl's Window 1969 [image source]

I would love to suggest that everyone go see Now Dig This! at the Hammer Museum, but I can't. Not because I did not think the exhibition was good - it was excellent, but for the mere fact that I, like many many others on Sunday, thronged to the museum on the last day that the exhibition was open. This was the first exhibition to close (that I am aware of) of the first push of Pacific Standard Time retrospectives that opened last fall, and one that had been on my "to see" list since I had initially heard of it. The exhibition, curated by Kellie Jones, illuminates a portion of art that had been under-noted, which is African American Los Angeles Artists from 1960-1980.

Though many forms and materials were represented, the work that resonated with me the most were the sculptural forms, often combining shapes, planes, spaces and emotions. The sculptures taunted me in the galleries, begging me to touch their various materials and complex shapes, with their often found object assemblage speaking to an understanding of an era that could not been understood through observation alone. Soft materials, such as women's nylons in the sculptures of Senga Nengudi become full strength and rigidity while still retaining an allure of softness felt on the skin, while David Hammons' Bag Lady in Flight becomes a moment of visual music, with forms repeated, multiplied, abstracted but never completely leaving the memory of the grainy paper of the brown bags on fingertips after the never ending chore of shopping for food.

Though the selection of sculptures in the exhibition were strong and often dominated the gallery spaces, there was also a smart selection of paintings, drawings and other 2d work included. After many years of seeing the work of Betye Saar within other exhibitions usually as just a single painting within a group show, it was exceptionally nice to see a fairly substantial grouping of her work. The pieces of Sarr's represented in this exhibition are primarily 2d (but not limited to it), and as a grouping take on the magical and delicate quality of the multimedia works of Joseph Cornell's collages.

Overall, my biggest complaint is that I wanted more - more works and more space dedicated to each work. The galleries seemed a bit too full, making me feel as if I need to make sure I saw everything instead of feeling like I need to take the time to see each piece in its own right. I will have more time to contemplate the legacy of each these works with the hefty exhibition catalog produced - perhaps the largest of any the PST exhibitions, which is wonderful and necessary as so many of these stories had gone under historicized until now.

Quick Notes on the Egyptian's 7th Annual Focus on Female Directors

Still from Cross by Maryna Vroda [Image Source]

In an attempt to get out of the apartment more and actually make it to more art events, I went to the 7th Annual Focus on Female Directors last night at the Egyptian. The program was all shorts, mostly narratives, and for the most part young directors that I have never heard of previously. As always with programs of mostly short narratives, it was a mixed bag, but there were a few gems.

Highlights include:

"Cross" by Maryna Vroda, a smart look at the story of a boy at a point in his life where he is dealing with the decisions that he wants to make and those that are trust upon him.

Saba Riazi's "The Wind is Blowing on My Street" which is a sweet contemporary story of a brief moment in the life of a contemporary young woman in Iran.

"No Use Walkin' When You Can Stroll", a surprisingly touching short doc by Penelope Spheeris about her mother.

"Zergut" a food fantasy film by Natasha Subramaniam and Alisa Lapidus, who are friends of mine. It is always nice to have a chance to see beautifully shot work projected large on a high quality screen.

Hello 2012!

I cant believe that it has been five years since I took up (and then abandoned) this blog. Somehow it has been on the back of my mind. And with the beginning of the new year, I have decided to take up writing about art and art related topics once again. Here is to more thinking, more writing and more viewing in the new year!