The Resuscitation of Uplifting (Nostalgic Leisure Class Archetypes). Performers: Beata Pilch, Karl Francis, Nicole Wiesner production still from 35mm film
Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA) is currently hosting the first Scottish exhibition by LA based artist Catherine Sullivan, with two screen installations.
Sullivan initially trained as an actress and although she works in a variety of media her best-known work is her film and video work, which explores human mores and conventions and is rich in cultural, cinematic and historical references.
Ice Floes of Franz Joseph Land (2003) is a multi screen black and white projection that takes as its point of departure the Chechen rebel takeover of the Russian musical, Nord-Ost in 2002.
The incident, which ended with deaths of dozens of captives and all the Chechen terrorists has been segued by Sullivan into Veniamin Kaverin’s Two Captains (1942) a classic Russian love and adventure novel about polar expansion in the Arctic - also the musical upon which Nord Ost was based.
Sullivan recreates the ten sections of the novel through a series of forty vignettes in which actors perform pantomime like actions that are carefully choreographed and stylised to recall musical theatre traditions.
Ice Floes of Franz Joseph Land 2004
Sullivan says of her work: “Critical to the discussion of all works of mine are the devices employed to produce and generate the behaviours of the performers who execute them.”
There is a strong anthropological element to the work as actors are called upon to use their bodies as a means of expression. Ice Floes was primarily shot in the atmospheric location of the Polish American Army Veteran’s Association in Chicago and the resulting footage, which is presented on five screens, is full of the stylistic trappings found in classic film noir.
A larger screen establishes the foundational gestures of the novel while four smaller screens depict spin offs in other locations in an attempt to establish a narrative development.
Accompanying Ice Floes is a piece created in 2005 and recently acquired by Tate at the Frieze Art Fair 2006. The Resuscitation of Uplifting is part of a broader piece of work known as The Chitterndens, which first exhibited at Tate Modern in 2005.
Ice Floes of Franz Joseph Land 2004
To make the film Sullivan dressed 16 actors in conventional costumes that bring to mind stereotypes from nineteenth and twentieth century America, such as a secretary, muscle man or management executive. She then instructed them to adopt differing attitudes, emotions and reactions with each performance differing in length according to rhythmic combinations.
Again, the film is full of choreographed behavioural patterns and is reminiscent of musical notation, performance and contemporary dance.
