Video artists tap into the future with immersive installations in a brutalist London building
![4th Floor To Mildness - many beds underneath large art piece](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Ccqy6xRNpozUfhg8kbACiB-415-80.jpg)
‘Strange Days: Memories of the Future’, an off-site exhibition by New York’s New Museum at The Store X, London, takes its name from a 1995 science fiction film by Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron. Set at the turn of the millennium, the film imagines a world in which people get their thrills from watching videos in first-person view, thus trying on the recorded experiences and sensations of others.
‘In other words, it’s about the birth of virtual reality,’ observes Massimiliano Gioni, the New Museum’s artistic director and curator of the London exhibition. Unlike its cinematic counterpart, the show doesn’t involve any headsets, let alone brainwave-transmitting circuitry, but it’s addictive all the same.
Within a three-level space in the bowels of the brutalist building 180 The Strand, Gioni has brought together 21 video and film installations, each by a contemporary artist who has exhibited at the New Museum within the past decade. Ranging from Turner Prize winner Laure Prouvost to American director (and mastermind of Beyoncé’s Lemonade) Kahlil Joseph and Egyptian artist Hassan Khan, the selection is reflective of the museum’s programme: geographically diverse, visually enthralling, and thematically sound.
Grosse Fatigue (still), 2013, by Camille Henrot, single-channel video, sound, colour.
It begins, appropriately, with Camille Henrot’s Grosse Fatigue, created for the 2013 Venice Biennale (also curated by Gioni). The 13-minute piece shows a series of browser search windows alongside archival activities at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, while the background narration tells of creation myths across countries and cultures. The aim is to show the breadth and limitations of human imagination and endeavour. ‘It explores knowledge and delusions of omniscience, which is very much what this show is about,’ remarks Gioni.
The ensuing works follow the same wistful tone – Ed Atkins’ CGI work Happy Birthday!! speaks to physical and semantic disintegration, while Pipilotti Rist’s 4th Floor to Mildness invites the viewer to lie down in bed to gaze at video projections on the ceiling, imbuing poetic underwater scenes with haunting undertones. Further down, Swedish artist Klara Lidén’s The Myth of Progress shows her moonwalking through the streets of Manhattan by night, which appear eerily post-apocalyptic on the grainy image.
One level below, the show turns to explore the relationship between technology and identity, sexuality and desire. Jungle of Desire, an animated work by Hong Kong artist Wong Ping, centres on a struggling animator who dreams up a revenge plot on a client of his sex-worker wife. Bursting with colour, the piece projects a jovial tone at odds with its tale of repression. Meanwhile, Lili Reynaud-Dewar’s almost-monochrome Teeth, Gums, Machine, Future, Society (One Body, Two Souls) shows the performance artist, wearing only silver bodypaint, dancing dynamically among Bruno Gironcoli’s metallic sculptures, disrupting their stolid immortality.
Jungle of Desire, 2016, by Wong Ping
There are dramatic shifts in mood along the way – for one, Ryan Trecartin’s Item Falls, a raucous live-action piece parodying contemporary reality television, is placed next to Prouvost’s introspective Into All That is Here, which highlights a yearning for sensuality in a world of flat screens. And the snaking layout of the show encourages immersion and provides the viewer with less autonomy than a more conventional configuration) ‘It might be a little prescriptive of me,’ admits Gioni, ‘but I like shows where the viewer discovers the show and the show unravels for them.’ Judging from the lingering crowds, the viewers seem to agree.
On the lowest, and final level, the UK debut of John Akomfrah’s Vertigo Sea takes centre stage, collaging spectacular seascapes and images of violence and environmental destruction to tell the story of the Atlantic. But it’s a work by Brazilian artist Jonathas de Andrade, O Peixe [The Fish], that steals the show. The camera hones in on fishermen in northeastern Brazil as they catch and then hold their prey to their chests, in an intimate yet mortal embrace. This invented ritual, viewed through an exoticised lens, paints a complex and poignant portrait of humanity.
The Icelandic performance artist Ragnar Kjartansson is given the last word with A Lot of Sorrow, which documents a six hour concert by indie rock band The National in New York. The band performs only one song, their 2012 ballad Sorrow on loop. There is an unusual beauty to their repeated expressions of melancholy, or as Kjartansson himself put it, ‘in the saddest of songs there is happiness’. And it is on this surprisingly hopeful note that the visitor emerges in the open, ‘Strange Days’ now past.
O peixe [The Fish], 2016, by Jonathas de Andrade, still from 16mm film transferred to HD video, sound, colour.
Vertigo Sea, 2015, by John Akomfrah. Courtesy of Smoking Dogs Films and Lisson Gallery.
Grosse Fatigue, 2013, by Camille Henrot, single-channel video, sound, colour.
INFORMATION
‘Strange Days: Memories of the Future’ is on view until 9 December. For more information, visit the New Museum website, the Store X website, the 180 The Strand website and The Vinyl Factory website
ADDRESS
The Store X
180 Strand
London WC2R 1EA
Wallpaper* Newsletter + Free Download
For a free digital copy of August Wallpaper*, celebrating Creative America, sign up today to receive our daily digest of inspiration, escapism and design stories
TF Chan is a former editor of Wallpaper* (2020-23), where he was responsible for the monthly print magazine, planning, commissioning, editing and writing long-lead content across all pillars. He also played a leading role in multi-channel editorial franchises, such as Wallpaper’s annual Design Awards, Guest Editor takeovers and Next Generation series. He aims to create world-class, visually-driven content while championing diversity, international representation and social impact. TF joined Wallpaper* as an intern in January 2013, and served as its commissioning editor from 2017-20, winning a 30 under 30 New Talent Award from the Professional Publishers’ Association. Born and raised in Hong Kong, he holds an undergraduate degree in history from Princeton University.
-
‘Hedonistic and avant-garde’: Rabanne’s Julian Dossena on the legacy of the chainmail 1969 bag
Paco Rabanne’s 1969 chainmail handbag encapsulates the late designer’s futuristic, space-age style. Current creative director Julien Dossena tells Wallpaper* about the bag’s particular pleasures
By Jack Moss Published
-
Postcard from Paris: Olympic fever takes over the streets
On the eve of the opening ceremony of Paris 2024, our correspondent shares her views from the streets of the capital about how the event is impacting the urban landscape.
By Minako Norimatsu Published
-
The Mercury Prize nominees for 2024 have been revealed
Charli XCX, The Last Dinner Party and Beth Gibbons are amongst this year's nominees
By Charlotte Gunn Published
-
‘Mental health, motherhood and class’: Hannah Perry’s dynamic installation at Baltic
Hannah Perry's exhibition ’Manual Labour’ is on show at Baltic in Gateshead, UK, a five-part installation drawing parallels between motherhood and factory work
By Emily Steer Published
-
Francis Alÿs plots child play around the world at the Barbican
In Francis Alÿs' exhibition ‘Ricochets’ at London’s Barbican, the artist explores the universality of play, even in challenging situations
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
At Glastonbury’s Shangri-La, activism and innovation meet
Glastonbury’s south-east corner is known for its after-dark entertainment but by day, there is a different story to tell
By Rhian Daly Published
-
‘I am almost an anti-sculptor’: Dominique White on her Whitechapel Max Mara Art Prize show
The artist mines the ocean to explore Afrofuturism in ‘Deadweight’, opening at London’s Whitechapel and detailed in a new film
By Amah-Rose Abrams Published
-
Remembering Rusty Egan's Blitz Club: a place to 'avoid the mob and the homophobes', where the New Romantics were born
As he releases new vinyl boxset, 'Blitzed!', Wallpaper* meets DJ Rusty Egan to talk about London's scene-building Blitz club – the antidote to the late 70s punk scene and a hot-bed of experimental fashion
By Craig McLean Published
-
Suzannah Pettigrew's 'tender and ghostly' new show at Surrealist photographer Lee Miller's former home in East Sussex
London-based artist Suzannah Pettigrew's photographic stills create a snapshot of her Sussex coast childhood, conjuring up a hallucinatory world of memory
By Mary Cleary Published
-
The body, pleasure and play: Beryl Cook and Tom of Finland united in London
Tom of Finland’s homoeroticism meets Beryl Cook’s female-oriented camp as Studio Voltaire unites work by the two artists in a London exhibition
By Hannah Silver Published
-
Zanele Muholi celebrates South Africa’s Black LGBTI communities in LA and London
Zanele Muholi's portraits and sculptures are currently on show at Southern Guild Los Angeles and the Tate Modern, London
By Hannah Silver Published