LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL 2006 - INTERNATIONAL 06 AT FACT
By Kay Carson
20/09/2006
Matthew Buckingham, Obscure Moorings. Courtesy the artist
24 Hour Museum's Kay Carson is impressed as she visits FACT to see a fascinating line up of work
If you have time to visit only one venue during Liverpool Biennial, make it FACT. The cutting-edge arts centre has pulled it off again, offering an impressive line-up of exciting new commissions for International 06, which runs until November 26, 2006.
And it's not just a visual feast: greeting you when entering the foyer are piped noises - and smells - of Liverpool. If that sounds gimmicky, it isn't in reality. This attempt to capture the essence of the metropolis is OUTSIDEIN, the work of Norwegian Sissel Tolaas, but it's only an appetizer for what's to come.
There are also works by artists from Finland, Canada, Thailand, India and the USA – a veritable smorgasbord.
Anu Pennanen, A Day in the Office. Courtesy the artist
A Day In The Office celebrates the transition Liverpool is currently undergoing. The video chronicles the daily routines of seven office workers. Filmmaker Anu Pennanen uses the workers' voices to narrate the piece, some nostalgically and some with humour.
In true FACT fashion, every nook and cranny of the building is being used for the festival – part two of Pennanen's film is projected on the outside of the building.
The Godfather of Thai cinema – otherwise known as experimental artist Apichatpong Weerasethakul – has produced an eerily silent, two-screen spectacle entitled Faith (2006), charting the loneliness and heartbreak of humans, using space as a metaphor for that all-consuming feeling of isolation.
Each screen focuses on one solitary space traveller. They each lead parallel existences where, at times, their experiences intersect, and at others are polar opposites. It's slow moving – balletic, even – but absolutely compulsive viewing as we witness the gradual and symbolic disintegration of relationships.
Lightening the mood, Shilpa Gupta's untitled work invites visitors to become part of her video installation. Rather like being inside a giant game of Tetris, participants' images are cast on to a screen, where houses come flying down and land on them.
Again, it echoes the regeneration of the host city and reminds us that, no matter how permanent bricks and mortar may appear, they can be torn down in an instant. This particular urban landscape's evolution is rapidly gaining momentum.
Shilpa Gupta, Untitled C-Prints, 2006. Courtesy the artist
The most captivating piece of the festival is short film Obscure Moorings, by Matthew Buckingham. It’s a mini-masterpiece. At just 22 minutes long, not a second is wasted as we observe the fate of an old sailor returning to dry land after a lifetime at sea.
American Buckingham's work is a modern-day slant on an old, old tale – Herman Melville's Daniel Orme of 1891 – and is filmed entirely in Liverpool.
The lead character's touching portrayal of a man in quiet, cowed turmoil, surrendering himself to change, combined with such familiar surroundings – anyone who has arrived by train into Lime Street will immediately relive those steep, sandstone walls – that the ultimate effect is simply haunting.
The reason these pieces work so well is because they manage to fuse together the two faces of Liverpool: the one looking humbly inward to its natives and the one looking out towards the rest of the world – something which the Culture Capital-elect will have to develop even further as it continues to shine on the international arts stage.
