I like Phil Collins work, and I admit that when I first saw
the video of people singing Smiths songs, I thought Phil Collins was that Phil
Collins, whom I also like a lot. The new show at Bonakdar has two camper
trailers on the first floor that look very lived, in and when I showed up, the
camper featured a guy watching what appeared to be a German opera featuring sex
with full-on penetration. I didn’t feel comfortable going into the small camper
with a stranger to watch the German opera/porn, so I respectively watched from
one of the little camper windows, which quickly felt even more unseemly, once
other people entered the gallery. All this drove me upstairs to a wonderful
video of Asian skinheads adjusting their traditional skinhead outfits of British
dress shirts and denim jackets, before going out to a movie and a street fight
finishing off by lounging in a large, enclosed tiled courtyard where one of
them opens a box, and butterflies proceed to flutter around the reclining
skins. The butterflies are surreal and in keeping with the rather pleasant
Belle & Sebastian-esque sound track that accompanies the otherwise silent
video. The video was extraordinary and served as a wonderful palate cleanser,
after feeling shamed for watching German opera porn. It also begs the questions
of when Collins is going to go on from directing Mexican soap operas as in his
last show to do a full-length movie.
He also had a room of booths to listen to 7-inches made of
conversations from phone lines he set up in homeless shelter where people could
make free long distance calls if they agreed to be recorded. The recordings
were then converted into songs, but I was determined to reengage the German
opera porn, so I didn’t spend much time with the booths before returning downstairs
to the campers. Armed with a press release, I sat down in an empty camper and
watched what could best described as a live version of a German soap opera with
some interpretive dance. I read the press release, which explained that the
videos are from Collins’ own alternative German shopping network, which auctioned
off experiences like being in an opera porn, which where then broadcast the
following night on German national television. Which is pretty rad, and reading
this while watching people acting ineptly in German with strangers watching me
and watching the video from outside the camper was a pretty effective way of
getting me to ponder my feelings of being watched and made clear how little of
an exhibitionist I am. I apparently feel much more comfortable listening to British
indie-rock while watching Asian skinheads in the dark.
Through Oct. 19th
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