Summerhall, Edinburgh,
until November 24th 2012
4 stars
The path-way from
Johnny Cash to Bob Dylan is a tellingly symbolic one in the two most
straightforward of seven big shows exploring the relationships
between sound and vision in very different ways. The images of these
two icons of popular music may be a short stroll from a dark room to
the basement, but, captured at their creative peak, these two pop
cultural giants mark out the co-dependent leap from blue-collar
street-songs to the avant-garde. In 'A Hero of the True West, Jim
Marshall's images captures the Man in Black in transit via thirty
black and white shots of Cash in concert and with his family in the
late 1960s. When Cash peers through the grille of a van en route to
Folsom Prison, so stony-faced is he that it's as if he's in as cell
of his own making.
If Cash appears on the
run from his own demons, the image of him with Dylan is a kind of
baton-passing. Because, as captured by celebrity snapper Barry
Feinstein in 'Don't Follow Leaders – Bob Dylan in the 'Judas'
Years, Dylan revelled in his people's poet status. Looking impossibly
hip against a bombed-out back-drop of crumbling houses and snot-nosed
street urchins in mid 1960s Liverpool, it clearly wasn't just Dylan's
guitar that was electric.
The urban decay is more
in keeping with 'Punk Politics Posters – 35 years of fighting
racism through music', a crucial collection of 1970s Rock Against
Racism posters and ephemera that captured the messy, cut n' paste
energy of the time, as well as the complimentary flow between punk
and reggae during a combative era when the police were considered
enemies of the people.
Kommissar Hjuler is a
police-man in Germany, who, along with his partner Mama Baer and porn
star Violet Storm, might also be considered such. The walls of
corrupted detritus, scarifying paintings and explicit collages that
make up their 'Flux + (st/p) or (m/n)' show seems to mirror their
live noize performances (one of which can be seen at Summerhall on
November 10th), as the trio play with pornography in the
way pre-punk provocateurs COUM Transmissions did before morphing into
Throbbing Gristle.
All of whom owe much to
sound poet Henri Chopin's Revue OU publication, which featured
recordings of key avant-garde figures alongside extravagant and
elaborate artworks. Collected here in OU OU OU, Revue OU makes for a
bumper collection of artworks wrapped around each other in
tantalisingly tactile fashion.
Lauren Sarah Hayes'
'Skin Music' is equally tantalising, engaging physically with the
listener as music pours from the furniture you're sitting on in a way
that recalls Kaffe Matthews' Sonic Bed project. Harry Whalley's
split-screen video installation, 'A Little Harmonic Labyrinth',
meanwhile, jump-cuts a sole violinist playing two different musical
notations. Reconfigured at random by computer, as with all of the
shows here, the possibilities are endless.
The List, November 2012
ends
Comments