NEW YORK: PARK AVENUE ARMORY .... Taryn Simon's "An Occupation of Loss"

Appropriate any time but especially so in NY days after the anniversary of 9/11, TARYN SIMON's vast, all encompassing installation & performance on the subject of grief & loss is entrancing, memorable, moving & beautiful.    It is also annoyingly short.  

I surprise even myself in saying this. Let me explain. The Park Avenue’s huge, high 55,000-sq ft Wade Drill Hall space is filled with eleven 48ft tall colossal concrete silo-like towers which contain an assortment of 30 active, professional mourners from around 20 different countries like Armenia, Bhutan, Cambodia, Ghana, Ecuador, Colombia, China, Russia, Azerbaijan... all enacting their own funeral rites, tributes & lamentations in music and song, dirge and wailing.

So many cultures celebrating lost lives in various languages, with different instruments - horns, drums, cymbals, bells, gongs or flute - makes for a cacophony of sound.  

Visually breathtaking, emotionally challenging, physically demanding, (the darkness makes quick movement difficult) one is expected to absorb it all in 30 minutes! From start to finish. And the ending is somehow shocking too. A clanging noisy metal grill suddenly goes up & the audience is expelled from a womb-like sombre vigil onto crowded Lexington Avenue with its blaring taxis, grinding taxis & hordes of tourists.

One starts by climbing the Armory's long outside fire escape, entering the high balcony, descending a (specially built) staircase, and at last arriving on the floor. 

The view from the balcony is breathtaking. All is silence; then slowly tiny black-clad figures emerge and disappear into the base of the concrete columns. One figure dressed in red - the monk from Bhutan - was a welcome tiny spot of colour. 

It's a lot to take in, to digest.

I was also surprised by the close proximity of all the "action". The cylinders or silos are very tall but make for small little rooms, for me reminiscent of the base of medieval Scottish castle staircases which wind ever upwards. So 2 people - Ok. Four is a crowd. The doorway is very low, so visitors must stoop, (I assume these enclosures aim to contain the sound a little). I was hesitant to enter. It seemed all wrong to barge in on such a solemn ritual - but New Yorkers were not so puritanical!       

Rather like shoppers at Saks they rushed around, in and out, determined not to miss a thing (tickets start at $45 & are sold out!)

I began on the far right side where 3 musician mourners in white played exotic sounds. At the far left mourners were all in black, nearby a man from Ecuador in dark glasses played the accordion. Best by far in costume was the bird-headed, beaked, masked mourner from Burkino Faso, West Africa & the monks in red with their long gold horns ready for a 3 day festival. 

Strangely we were only given programmes as we left - so we had no idea which nationality of mourner we were looking at or hearing as mostly the languages were unknown to us.

In fact the programme itself is intensely academic with masses of unnecessary historical detail from experts on the subject, plus copies of the visas some of the foreigners eventually gained  (not all as some visa applications were refused.) No info on the actual performers at all. I would love to know - does the Albanian woman come from a long line of mourners? Did her mother do it professionally? Were the Cambodians friends? Did they come from the same town or village? Were the Greek couple married? Related? I read that the Indian women must be married, over 35 & have kids over 15. What such rules are there in Malaysia or Venezuela ? 

And why no exuberant Day of the Dead Mexicans ? (Visa problems?) or Scottish bagpipe lament to chill the spine. Why no Italian priests nor American Evangelists?  

What Simon is really talking about are funerals - be they in remote hamlets, on distant hillsides, on Fifth Avenue or in St Paul's, the scenario is the same. The more mourners, the more expensive the trappings, the more important the deceased. And any ritual or ceremony helps people fill the dreadful void; get through the next days.  

Families in Romania or Chicago, Ghana or China all try to pay for the best. In Cambodia if there is not enough money to hire the professional troupe, "they dig a grave, bury the body and then save up to invite a funeral music troupe later on."  It will all make a good, if academic, book.

I also learned, from notes from Dr Kondi of Wittenberg Uni, Germany,  that in Albania the "Funeral performance is composed of free crying & disciplined lamenting. .. The exchanged lamentation between Christian & Muslin women constitutes one of the unique features of the north-Albanian funeral ceremony."  Praise be! 

Back to the installation: so enormous, so solid, so expensive I am sure - made in collaboration with the architect Shohei Shigematsu of Rem Koolhaas's OMA (who was responsible for creating the recent stunning, celestial “Manus x Machina” show at the Met’s Costume Institute).

I will long remember this towering monolithic structure with chamfered tops so that - lit from inside- it glows in the very dark theatrical space. A sculptural installation stage set like no other: visually stunning, emotionally moving, frustratingly rushed - but NOT TO BE MISSED. 

JACKIE DONACHIE at Glasgow's GoMA

JACKIE DONACHIE at Glasgow's GoMA with her exhibition:

DEEP IN THE HEART OF YOUR BRAIN. 

Bruce Mclean would approve of JACKIE DONACHIE's use of his famous 1971 performance piece Pose Work for Plinths. 

Whereas Mclean's poses were assertive & ironic, Donachie compares & contrasts her own easy gestures & agile movements with those of her disabled sister who finds it all more of a challenge.  

Never has this concept been more effectively adapted or interpreted. 

Donachie's sister suffers from an inherited neurological genetic condition, Myotonic Dystrophy. We don't see them together, just their legs as they walk down a long hospital corridor. 

 But we hear about the problems of the disease from several patients of different ages, all sisters, one filmed on one screen, explaining about the problems of their condition, while their silent sibling sits immobile, occasionally blinking, on the other screen. 

 This very moving short 2 screen video, titled Hazel, from 2016 is at the heart of her exhibition at Glasgow's GOMA. 

Donachie has long addressed difficult social topics. This time her research was near at home, but it hasn't prevented her from casting an academic eye on the subject. 

A graduate of the Glasgow School of Art’s influential Environmental Art department which encouraged artists to work in a variety of public contexts outside the gallery space, she sets out to make a difference. 

 
She is one of a gifted group of GSA graduates who worked on the committee of Transmission Gallery, from the period around 1987-95 including Douglas Gordon, Nathan Coley, Richard Wright, Martin Boyce, Simon Starling, Roddy Buchanan etc ..... 

 All guys, with the exception of Donachie & Christine Borland, and all have made a name for themselves world wide. The pix above is from 1997 in Berlin. 

Donachie leapt from GSA to the US on a Fulbright fellowship, gaining her MFA in New York. 

Since then she has accomplished a great deal via her focus on the connection between art & science, (a great project was Tomorrow Belongs to Me, brilliantly described by Sam Stead) medicine, urban issues, car crowded towns, encouraging the use of bikes, and much more. 

GoMA's large 4th floor also contains some superb drawings (who knew Glasgow's lampposts could be so interesting!) 

plus piles of large scale sheet metal and a block or box of black gridded metal which  reference the ramps at ferries, and 2 years ago, but painted bright green, was placed as installations around Scotland including near the ferry port at Wemyss Bay. 

As I remember her, Donachie was tall, pretty, leggy, lanky even, determined, engaging, with a way way with words.

The whole GoMA installation is accompanied by bright orange structural bars - expensive to install here I am sure. Quite what to make of it all I am not sure. 

This very minimal installation does make viewers focus on the video, it's true, but the vast, almost empty space, seems to me a pity, a waste.

A public gallery situated right in the centre of Glasgow, GoMA provides a special opportunity to encourage & engage with the general public - who find it very difficult to get to grips with contemporary art. 

Donachie has a gift for words & text, and a terrific affinity for pop music. I rather wish she had used this chance to treat us to a richer experience.

However she has made an important contribution to a little known medical complaint, which will be discussed in a symposium in November. A great personal achievement to be proud of.