The Storyteller: Blood and Lore
Jeremy Deller and Mike Figgis The Battle of Orgreave 2002 Video still Courtesy Artangel London and Channel 4
In his 1936 essay “The Storyteller,” Walter Benjamin decried the waning intimacy and immediacy of storytelling in the age of mechanical reproduction. Fast-forward a century to the age of digital reproduction, and narrative forms are gaining a renewed footing among contemporary artists. “The Storyteller,” a travelling exhibition organized by Independent Curators International and currently on view at the AGO, brings together works by 17 international artists who return to the story format as a means of comprehending and conveying world events and their history. Works range from the temporal and personal, like Joachim Koester’s photo essay documenting Immanuel Kant’s daily walks through his native city of Kaliningrad, to the public and communal, like Mike Figgis and Jeremy Deller’s film reenacting the 1984 clash between striking miners and police in Thatcherite England. Cao Fei’s whimsical yet melancholic video portrait of workers in Gaungdon Province evokes fairytales, while Liisa Roberts’ multilayered film about the 2002 restoration of Alvar Aalto’s library and Omer Fast’s video of Schindler’s List movie extras investigate the relationship between past and present. Rounded out with works by Ryan Gander, Hito Steyerl, the Missing Books collective, Adrian Paci, Mounir Fatimi, Lamia Joreige, Steve Mumford, Michael Rakowitz and Emanuel Licha, the artists/raconteurs in this exhibition adopt commonly shared lore to unite individual experience, activating new historical understandings one voice at a time. (317 Dundas St W, Toronto ON)
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Omer Fast Spielberg’s List 2005 Video still Courtesy Cine Plus Berlin |
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Lamia Joreige Objects of War 2006 Video still Courtesy the artist |
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