writer / filmmaker
︎ About Me
Note June 2021: This website is under construction.
An EXCLAMATION: Sergei Paradjanov
Where: Animate Project/ APEngine
Date: February 2010
Paradjanov!
Flamboyant non-conformist! Anarchic filmmaker; a thorn in the side and a
spit in the face of Soviet Russia! Three times imprisoned, who spent
five years in a labour camp! Who was lobbied on behalf of by Tarkovsky,
Yves Saint Laurent, Francoise Sagan, Godard, Truffaut, Fellini,
Bertolucci, Marcello Mastroianni, Antonioni and John Updike!
Paradjanov’s
Soviet Union is an exclamated sense of place. A sense of place that
between February and May 2010 will be hosted by the National Theatre,
Arnolfini, Pushkin House and the Armenian Institute, where exhibitions,
events and symposia will be held to honour the twentieth anniversary of
his death by lung cancer. Particularly notable are the public events at BFI Southbank, where a retrospective film season will showcase his features and the gallery will show a newly commissioned work by Mat Collishaw,
made in response to the great man. The first mention of a Young British
Artist being commissioned to create a piece for the BFI Gallery in
response to the work of Sergei Paradjanov did, in all honesty, inspire a
short intake of breath and a reservation of judgement however there is,
of course, a rationale, and the BFI Gallery rarely (if ever thus far)
misses its intended mark.
Mat Collishaw’s work feels violent (I’ve never felt I could fall in love with, or to, one of his works) but his retrospective – Retrospectre,
as it is billed – is head over heels with Paradjanov. Paradjanov! Whose
works are nothing if not filled with a unique, exquisite beauty!
(Sorry). And Mat Collishaw does have an inherent interest in concepts of
beauty, moreover how beauty is perceived and represented. And he, like
Paradjanov, has a similar fascination with the allusion of religious
allegory. Both re-appropriate and finely craft a conceptual narrative,
utilising collage and mosaic-based composition, giving an affected
contextualisation to (meta-)physical personal, spatial relation and
interaction.
As preparation for the new work,
Collishaw visited Paradjanov’s Armenia, now Georgia, as well as the
sites most associated with the director. The footage that he filmed
there is back-projected onto the installation, through windows and
mirror-spaces of his large-scale construction. We can forgo the obvious
‘look into the artist’s world’ line of investigation; however, what is
interesting is the comment previously made of Paradjanov’s work that his
films are ‘…not about how things are but how they would have been had
he been God.‘ Paradjanov! With the matchless sense of vision into the
artist’s mind! Precisely what the films of Paradjanov encounter are the
symbolic impressions of the manner in which an artist formulates and
manifests thought.
There’s no better example to illustrate this than the film considered his masterpiece (arguable): The Colour of Pomegranates (1968). A biography in the Orlando sense of the word, the film tells
the life story of Sayat Nova, the Armenian troubadour. Actress Sofiko
Chiaureli took on not only the role of the character known only as The
Poet, but also The Poet as Youth, his love, his muse, the mime and the
Angel of Resurrection, in what might be described as Paradjanov’s love
letter to the actress herself, his muse.
To
muse on muse, Paradjanov for Collishaw, with indirect strands of
reference to Sayat Nova, Chiaurelli and not only. Paradjanov’s obsession
with the artist’s obsession cannot be overstated. Ukrainian Rhapsody
(1961), telling the story of a soprano passing on international stardom
for the memory of her fiancé, Ashik Kerib (1988), the titular wandering
minstrel on a voyage of heroism to save his beloved, or Shadows of Our
Forgotten Ancestors (1964), traditional Ukrainian folk culture
transposed on-screen in the most sumptuous, fabulist communal
communique, set to heartbreak and violence. Here lies a man whose
artistic vision forced him out of the nation of his beloved heritage;
the artist unwelcome in his own country. Accused of rape, homosexuality,
bribery – ‘Appreciate these beauteous works, direct antecedents to an
historic tradition, still manifest today! Mine is not a unique voice.’
he pleads! His subjects, worn and battered, forced in continual travel
else violence befall.
Collishaw! With your
occupation – the production of work that highlights the personal, social
and political fascination – a grotesque fascination – with sex and
violence, a glorified sex and violence. Unwarranted beauty, superfluous
aggrandisement on a mass-conscious level. Subvert, overt, covert. The
form is irrelevant once your theme has been identified. That theme:
Paradjanov! (with an onus the exclamation mark.) Subtlety is not your
bedfellow. A horse’s eye peering at me – in fear, in wait – on a
backdrop of unobscured, yet legitimate, beauty.