Special Focus: Phil Collins
8 December Saturday, 17:00
Marxism Today (Prologue)
Phil Collins
2010, HD video, 35’
Courtesy Shady Lane Productions
Phil Collins’ work in film, video and photography often provides a platform for the overlooked or the disenfranchised. Shining a light on what is generally perceived as the losing side in the political and social upheavals of the past two decades, ‘marxism today’ is an ongoing project that began by following the fortunes of former teachers of Marxism-Leninism in Communist East Germany. Collins’ short film ‘Marxism today (prologue)’ (2010) first presented at the 6th Berlin Biennale, mixes contemporary interviews with the ex-teachers alongside archive material, in which snapshots of life in the old GDR are offset with the teachers’ own recollections of the time, and their contrasting experiences after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Soy Mi Madre
Phil Collins
2008, 16 mm film transferred to video, 28’
Courtesy Shady Lane Productions
Commissioned in 2008 by the Aspen Art Museum as part of the Jane and Marc Nathanson Dintiguished Artist in Residency Program, in this work Collins focuses on the Latino and immigrant populations of Colorado, a sizable percentage of which hail from northwestern Mexico. The script, written by hired Hollywood screenwriters and supervised by the artist, is indirectly inspired by Jean Genet's The Maids, a violent exploration of the intricate power dynamic that exists between unequals. Filmed with some of Mexico's leading television stars, and including the contribution of the acclaimed production designer Salvador Parra (Volver, Before Night Falls), soy mi madre is a study in the aesthetics and politics of melodrama.
The Meaning of Style
Phil Collins
2011, HD video, 5’
Courtesy Shady Lane Productions
the meaning of style is a single-channel video projection filmed with a group of young Malay skinheads in Penang. The skinhead subculture first emerged in Malaysia in the early 1990s, and Collins was intrigued by the translation of an English working-class subculture into a South-East Asian context, finding connections to aspects of Malaysia’s British colonial history and complex racial politics. The work follows no clear narrative, taking the form of a dreamlike five-minute pop music video, set to a specially created soundtrack by Welsh musicians Gruff Rhys and Y Niwl. Its spare yet visually striking scenes focus on the role of style within the skinhead subculture, including two boys primping each other’s clothes, a street fight and a girl lighting a cigarette. In the central scene, one skinhead opens a box of butterflies that alight on the heads and shoulders of the other boys, creating a visual allegory of youth’s desire for flamboyant display.