Running on empty: Daniel Birnbaum on the art of Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

ArtForum, Nov, 2003 by Daniel Birnbaum

Escapism? Yes, but not of the sort that seeks a more authentic life, some less artificial or even pre-modern form of dwelling in the world. On the contrary, Gonzalez-Foerster's fantasies often conjure up a kind of tropical modernity connecting abstraction in the arts, visionary architecture, and the suggestion of equatorial fecundity. One recent example is the fifteen-minute film Plages (2001), shot from a hotel room in Rio de Janeiro that overlooks the Copacabana and accompanied by a patchwork sound track of voices, music, and exploding fireworks. In describing this work, one finds oneself falling into Gonzalez-Foerster's own elliptical manner of recitation, such is the power of its mood. We see the beach at night, with people dressed in white on the sand. The camera moves away from the water, and we see the street, lined with palm trees and full of cars. On the sidewalk there is a black-and-white wave pattern, A voice belonging to Diogenes Paixao, a Brazilian art collector, explains" "It's the biggest drawing in the world. The landscaped

gardens of Copacabana. He was very proud of it, you "know. Always saying:

'It's the biggest drawing!'" Paixao is talking about Brazilian artist and garden architect Roberto Burle Marx, and soon the camera zooms in on the abstract wave design. The people moving back and forth along the strand seem to follow the pattern. What we experience is the crowd--always the group rather than the individual person. This is a film about a collective state of mind called the Copacabana. The sun has set and it's getting dark, but the beach is lit by spotlights and small fires in the sand. A collage of voices, talking and singing, delivers a dense and poetic account of life at the waterfront: "Copacabana has no center. No ties to the golden youth ... a sort of oasis." Explosions from the fireworks get more and more volcanic, turning the screen into Turner-like cascades of color--fire and smoke produce imagery verging on abstraction. Then it starts to rain, and the crowd hides under umbrellas. "If there is one place where mankind's utopia exists ... Copacabana must be that place," says one voice. The crowd continues to move along the wave pattern, and we hear a last statement, delivered by a local fisherman: "Copacabana is wonderful. It's a wonderful city. Copacabana doesn't exist."

Plages is the last film in a kind of trilogy that also includes Riyo (1999), shot in Kyoto, and Central (2001), shot at the Star Ferry Terminal in Hong Kong. (In addition to her own films Gonzalez-Foerster has collaborated on others: Recently, she codirected two films, the aforementioned Ile de Beaute and Gold [2001] with Leccia; in 2000 she added an episode to the story of Annlee, a series of artworks about a Japanese manga character initiated by Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno; and the following year she teamed up with Swedish musician Jay Jay Johanson to produce Cosmodrome, an experiment with sound and light using precinema technologies and reminiscent of the ninteenth-century panorama.) All three films--Plages, Riyo, and Central--focus on moments of urban experience and in particular on an intensified sense of the flow of time. In Riyo the flow is both literal and impressionistic: The camera travels smoothly along a riverbank in Kyoto where young couples meet in the twilight of the early evening. Neon lights, luminous facades, and an occasional exploding firework illuminate the scene. A cell phone rings, and we hear a young woman's voice: "Hello!" A man's voice replies: "Hello ..." She continues: "Don't you remember? We met in Shirahama ... My name is Riyo ..." A telephone discussion (in Japanese with English subtitles) about recent memories, amorous hopes, and geographical distance ensues, accompanied only by the image of shining neon lights and the streaming water in the river. Flirtation in Japanese--it's different-sounding yet familiar. Nothing much happens, time is passing. Somehow the lack of imagery, the monotony of the water, and the slow movement of the camera produce a space in which time itself seems to imbue the urban landscape.