Review: “Tempography” at the Goethe-Institut, Hanoi.

I have always had a love-hate relationship with video art. Videos that run for too long tend to disinterest me. Videos accompanied with music or sound become a different art form. Videos that appear too abstract can easily get me emotionally detached or distanced. And that is why when I walked away from the new exhibition hosted at the Goethe-Institut, entitled ‘Tempography’, I was in such high spirits. This is video art with a little twist – different and exciting.

Tempography is a new conceptual video art project brought forward by Swiss artist Anthony Bannwart and Swedish artist Magnus Aronson. It lies somewhere in between the still and the moving image. Its aim is to catch a brief moment, a short movement, and the continuity of that moment/movement, which a photograph can’t record, and which the camera(man) tends to overlook. However, what becomes the most important here is not to differentiate or pigeonhole the three art forms. Rather it is to combine certain conceptual and methodological aspects from each of them to create an innovative way of looking at life and capturing its ever-changing state.

The works within this field are called tempographs, and are often shown in sequences. In the most poetic and creative manner possible, the tempographs in this exhibition have captured and recorded the insignificant, easily forgotten and often overlooked moments and details in our everyday life, and reprsented them as artworks. Grouped together and celebrated here are stories of the local and stories of the strange – ants crawling, snow falling, a branch cracking, balloons flying up the sky, a teabag spinning up side down, a plane passing by leaving its trace behind, a cooker heating up making the water bubble, sunlight shining through the forest, a spider staying still on the wall, water going down the pipe, a machine running… Filmed by various temphographers and participants in different locations all over the world, each scene depicts an object, a subject or a happening, which either has a personal or collective significance to either the audience or the tempographers/participants themselves. These are visions we have all seen or experienced at least once in our lives, and can relate to one way or another. In other words, this exhibition/project has enabled peoples’ personal feelings and viewpoints to be unite and shared universally.

What I personally find most inspiring about the exhibition is the two completely different cinematic approaches that the participants employed to materialize their ideas and film their subjects – either entirely by chance or in a carefully constructed manner or environment. You would have to either be lucky enough to be at a certain place, at a certain moment to catch a glimpse of a certain something; or keep experimenting until you’re satisfied with the final product. Moreover, the project doesn’t have a restriction on who can/cannot take part, or what kind of camera and film to use/not to use. This ‘do-it-yourself’ approach reminds me of the ideas expressed and founded by Fluxus – the group of artists who are mostly associated with the art form ‘event score’. The term ‘score’ is used in exactly the sense that one uses to describe a music score: a series of notes that “anyone can do, artist and non-artist alike” [1]. This idea links directly to the underlying policy of Tempography in which it aims to express life as it is and to intervene the everyday environment of a living space or a city, and what better way to do so than asking and letting its inhabitants speak for themselves?

Additionally, this mixing and matching of works created by both professional tempographers and amateur participants has made the viewing experience a lot more stimulating – the types of camera used, the styles of filming adopted, the ways subject matters explored and presented are so diverse that we don’t see the same thing twice. Our viewpoints are turned up side down and inside out; our attention is manipulated and shifted continuously; our senses and logics are played with; our everyday thinking and routine are messed up. What’s filmed outside has been brought inside, moving images are displayed on the right and left, the front and back, above our heads and next to our feet; a video space is created for the audience to move within, from side to side, from one corner to anther. It is as if we are offered the opportunity to go on our own journey, and encouraged to look at the everyday surrounding with all our heart and soul, in order to re-discover the minor details, small movements, and minimal changes that are happening everywhere around us.

It has been a long time since I last felt so content after having seen a video exhibition; and in that sense I consider ‘Tempography’ a successful show. As an art form, it has become the important missing link between video and photography; and found the ability to combine the planned and the unintended, the made-up and the natural; the act of following the rules and being free of restrictions, and the notion of celebrating the wonderful everyday life and criticizing us for being ignorant of it. But more importantly, it has offered us a fresh and truthful perspective on the notion of a culture, living space or city and its inhabitants.

[1] http://bd-studios.com/yoko/about/about_articles_timeout1968.html

‘Tempography’ is housed at Goethe-Institut from 25 Sept – 05 Oct 2009.

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(BN)