Submitted by Berkana on Mon, 10/11/2004 - 4:42am.
Artist Barney Looks to Brazilian Gods in New Film
By Fernanda Ezabella
SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - Matthew Barney has choreographed dancing girls, filmed a demolition derby inside the Chrysler Building and dressed up like Harry Houdini all in the name of art.
In his latest work, the acclaimed U.S. artist, whose work melds scultpural installations with performance and video, is delving into the heart of Afro-Brazilian culture to expound on his vision of the creative process, the destruction of nature and cycle of life.
The 60-minute art film "De Lama Lamina" ("Of Mud a Blade") had its world premiere in Sao Paulo last month, when hundreds of art aficionados descended on the city to attend the opening of the Sao Paulo Bienniale, one of the world's largest international exhibits of contemporary art.
Part documentary, part fiction, "De Lama Lamina" captures a float built by Barney for the pre-Lenten Carnival celebrations in Salvador, Bahia, the cultural heart of Brazil's African, slave-descended culture.
The float consists of a gigantic, muddied forest tractor carrying an uprooted tree in front of it. Two actors -- one on the tree and another in the tractor -- play deities in the polytheistic Afro-Brazilian religion Candomble.
Although largely unknown to most people, Barney has received a lot of attention over the last years in art circles for "Cremaster." New York's Guggenheim Museum gave him a retrospective last year and the five "Cremaster" films have been shown around the world.
Even before then, though, Barney was making a splash. In 1999, The New York Times called Barney "the most important American artist of his generation."
"Candomble ... became a catalyst for finding a way to express a faith in the balances in nature ... and through this faith being able to look at the world today without feeling hopeless," he said.
The new film depicts the clash between nature and technology through two "orixas," or deities, in Candomble.
Barney's idea for "De Lama Lamina" began six years ago when the artist attended Carnival and decided he wanted to film something with a live audience, in contrast to the meticulously planned "Cremaster" movies, which took 10 years to make. Atop Barney's 20-foot tree a woman represents both Ossain, a Candomble orixa tied to plants and medicine, and Julia Butterfly Hill, an activist who lived two years on top of a California Redwood tree to stop it from being cut down.
Down in the tractor's machinery, Ogun, the deity of iron, engages in a Vaseline-greased ritual with machines that was not visible to Carnival onlookers but captured in the film. At one point he looks like he is trying to copulate with the tractor.
"Ossain is in contact with the forest, and Ogun is who takes the forest away on the way to create civilization," Barney said. "The contract between them has the same kind of duality that any orixa has, to destroy and create."
The tractor pulled a wagon of dirt atop which a musical band led by experimental musician Arto Lindsay played music. The whole endeavor is a twist on the typical "trio electricos," or moving sound stages, that snake down Salvador's winding streets during Carnival.
Full article at:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=572&ncid=572&e=1&u=/nm/20041008/lf_nm/art_barney_brazil_dc_10
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