On Cohabitation: Films by Yael Bartana

by Tarin Hughes

Begin to Google “are we breathing …” and the most popular search finishes the statement with “the same air as Jesus.” Shared realities, coexistence, and collapsed time and history are some of the primary, existential inquiries of humankind. There’s an affirmation and fragility in knowing that we share our physical spaces, even on a molecular level, with people and events both past and present. Curator Ana Paula Cohen considers Yael Bartana’s practice through theoretical notions of cohabitation, aptly outlining Bartana’s non-linear and slippery depictions of time, space and the state of being.

“On Cohabitation: Films by Yael Bartana” presents Inferno, 2013, True Finn, 2014, and Pardes (Orchard), 2015, in an effort to span Bartana’s multi-layered approach to video, exploring cinematic and pop cultural tropes while traversing spirituality, political identity and subjective reality. Cohen’s curatorial premise is anchored in both Bruno Latour and Donna Haraway’s sociological investigations into cohabitation; while Latour’s assertion are understood in worlds and multiple realities, Haraway defines the term through multidisciplinary sciences and cultural exchange. Read together, their theories comingle cohabitation through lived, and thus, subjective space positing an inquiry into the relevance of universality.

Located in the very real, and contemporary city of São Paulo, Inferno tells of the construction of the Third Temple of Solomon. Commissioned for the 31st São Paulo Biennal, Bartana became fascinated with the story of Edir Macedo, Brazilian leader of the neo-Pentecostal church, and his intentions to build, according to its description in the Old Testament and with building materials imported from Israel, the Third Temple of Solomon (the first and second were destroyed during the Babylonian and then the Roman occupancies of Jerusalem). Opening with an aerial survey of first, the rainforest and then, the vast expanse of the city, helicopters ferry sacred items to the temple; a menorah, the tabernacle and a stone from Jerusalem. As viewers, we’re generally immersed in a feeling of now, but an overlapping of signifiers confuses and conflates ritual, spirituality and cultural symbols. The Shauvot dress and festival, combined with similar Afro-Brazilian visuals like white clothing, colourful fruit and flowers and joyous music and dancing, make up a stratified, surreal collage. The interplay between fiction, reality, utopia and a post-apolocolyptic world, smacks of the Hollywood epic, from Ben Hur to the earnest, Apolocalyto, in what Bartana calls “historical pre-enactment.” But Bartana captures an aboutness of now throughout the film, in the cultural and spiritual diversity, with the high priest in drag, in the depiction of a Wailing Wall complete with a “Jewish” souvenir market and in final destruction and death, a common and familiar violence crossing histories and timelines.

Centered in a kind of cinematic amphitheatre—with textured walls, sound barriers and spongy, movable seating—Inferno is the peak of a triangulation of filmic genres: documentary, reality and epic, and socio-political subjects. Moving from the brief (22 minutes) but intense Inferno, the viewer is ushered down a hallway into another hybrid cinema, a darkened room, with graduated, sauna-esque bench seating, perhaps preparing us for the 50 minutes of True Finn or the weekly screenings of Pardes (Orchard) (71 minutes). The timing feels important, as if it is indicative of a choice Bartana makes to further reveal the symbology of the genre. The duration of her video work is just as vital as the subtle signifiers of the architectural spaces in which we view and witness the work. Both of which bring to mind ever-present conversations around artists standing between the two worlds of long form film and visual, gallery-based practices.

True Finn is a somewhat wry work with a solemn inquiry into nationhood and the constructed narratives in which we define our lives and identities. In a parody of reality TV with participants living, eating and performing activities together—think Real World meets Big Brother—eight Finnish citizens, of diverse backgrounds, occupy an isolated cabin to consider “Who is a true Finn?” There’s a certain poignancy in this work being exhibited in the territory of the Stoney Nakoda, Tsuu T’ina and BlackFoot First Nations, especially given the ongoing feeling of atmospheric restlessness reported by many of the guests and inhabitants of Banff and specifically on Sleeping Buffalo Mountain. Watching a group of people who identify under a political citizenship, and a lone Indigenous Sami woman who joins as a “guest” wrestle with contested histories, creates a space for viewers to consider their own notions of authentic history and Indigeneity.

The characters perform stereotypical activities wearing traditional costumes, even designing a new flag and anthem. Historical Finnish films and found footage undulate through the video pointing to racial and cultural stereotyping. The entire construct of True Finn feels like a circuitous series of questions around human intentionality and the manufactured narratives and constructs by which we define our existence. To understand the “truest” citizen is perhaps an exercise in examining the roles and agreements we have made in our political, social and global communities. True Finn appears to be in dialogue with somewhat more serious works around conversations with the self, like Esther Shalev-Gerz’ White-Out: Between Telling and Listening, 2002, a video installation wherein Asa Simma, a Sami woman, verbalizes her response to Shalev-Gerz’ research into Saami and Swedish languages, histories and coexistence. In a similar exploration of time and place, Asa Simma is documented in Stockholm “telling” in English, and in Sami land “listening.” Shown independently, True Finn has the potential to read as a satirical and possibly even juvenile venture into nationhood and the idea of the other. Within the context of Cohen’s curatorial premise and the triad of Bartana’s films, it becomes clear that the artist’s exploitation of supposed “reality” TV is a means to access a greater truth around our own cognitive bias, complicity and belonging.

In Pardes (Orchard), Bartana documents her friend, Michael—an Israeli artist, like Bartana—on another kind of pilgrimage. Michael embarks on an Ayahuasca trip with shaman Dona Francisca. While we wait to find out if Michael will experience a revelatory rebirth or be tormented by evil spirits, we are witness to an intimate ritual. Dona Francisca’s presence and performance, weaves through her complex spirituality as a member of Santo Daime (combining spiritism, Catholicism and animism) most noticeably through her frank, familiar singing, incorporating both Ave Maria and tribal chanting. The title of the film, and Michael’s preoccupation with a simultaneous rejection and deep thinking into religion, are symbiotic with Judaic exegesis. Pardes in Hebrew means orchard and in many languages it is the root word for paradise (including Italian, overtly juxtaposed against inferno/hell). In the interpretation of the Torah it represents the four levels of scriptural comprehension: Peshat “straight” or simple, Remez “hint,” Derash “inquire” and Sod “secret.” Pardes as a literal acronym for levels of understanding finds resonance in the stages of Michael’s journey and points to a possible paradisiac state of enlightenment.

Viewing the film is an exercise of endurance, a long lulling resulting in a cumulative but impotent tension and sensitivity to every flicker and movement. Compositionally, the film finds harmony, with Michael prostrated at Dona Francisca’s feet, the tiny shamaness towering and framed by a gargantuan tree. At other moments, Bartana’s gesture identifies a panic coupling with the wild sounds of the Amazon; as Michael interprets his trip, a close up reveals the thick and lively darkness of the forest. While Pardes was demanding, conceptually it was the most thought provoking of the three works, successful in its multiplicity of layers, without feeling overtly rooted in genre, nor too grand.

The configuration of the films and the heady existential quandaries presented in Bartana’s work reveal the artist’s own inquiries into self awareness and belonging. As Cohen writes, Bartana undertakes a visioning of transformative and cosmological coexistences. We are forever breathing the same air and walking in the same places as those who have come before us, living through shared histories and spaces. It’s always right now.

“On Cohabitation: Films by Yael Bartana,” curated by Ana Paula Cohen, is on view at the Banff Centre’s Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Alberta from June 22 to September 18, 2016.

Tarin Hughes is a curator based in Saskatoon, SK. She is currently the Executive Director of AKA artist-run.