Collective Gallery,
Edinburgh – January 18-March 2 2014
When it was announced
that French artist Bertille Bak's home town of Barlin, city No.5 in
the Pas-de-Calais in northern France, was to be renovated as part of
a programme of urban regeneration, the authorities promised much for
the former mining parish. This included vastly increased rents for a
tight-knit community who were effectively being priced out of living
in what is now described on Barlin's Wikipedia page as being 'a
modern and dynamic place that offers its residents numerous
amenities...'
Bak's response was
'Faire le mur', her 2008 film which in part charts the residents of
Barlin's resistance to the proposed changes, yet does it in a way
that goes beyond documentary to create a magical-realist
meta-narrative that blurs the boundaries of fact and fiction. Rather
than the poverty porn of Channel 4's latest underclass-baiting
obscenity, 'Benefits Street', Bak has looked at her own community and
transformed their protest into something heroic.
“There's a real sense
of playfulness about what Bertille does,” says Collective director
Kate Gray, who has brought an updated version of 'Faire le mur; (it
translates as 'To the wall'), to Edinburgh as part of Factish Field,
a year-long collaboration with moving image based arts organisation
LUX that looks at the relationship between artists' film-based work
and anthropology.
This manifests itself
in a series of self-organised meetings which, as the community move
from house to house with a series of tapestries based on paintings by
Poussin, Goya and Girodet, become theatrical pageants of
revolutionary intent, with all the romance that implies.
“There's a real
tension there between what you might expect a documentary to be in
terms of not trying to influence what goes on,” says Gray.
“Bertille is trying to find a way to change and alter that
community while working with them.”
The List, January 2014
ends
Comments