© Raymond Depardon

Raymond Depardon, "Around the World in 14 Days" (2008). Super-16 mm transferred to HD video, 20 min 35 sec.

March 2009 Reviews

The Double Club

Prospect.1, theanyspacewhatever, The Art of Participation

The Order of Things

Keltie Ferris

Nayland Blake

Trenton Doyle Hancock

Mika Tajima

Anne Truitt

Hans-Peter Feldmann

Phillip Allen

Katja Strunz

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One would expect the sheer amount of collective intelligence entailed in this collaboration—involving documentary photographer and filmmaker Raymond Depardon, philosopher Paul Virilio, and architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and focused on the increasingly fugitive idea of a native land, questions of human migration and rootedness—to have provided unprecedented insight into our current state of affairs on earth. Jean Nouvel’s entire steel-and-glass ground floor was transformed into two gigantic cinema spaces showing Depardon’s films Donner la parole (Hear Them Speak; 2008) and Le tour du monde en 14 jours (Around the World in 14 Days; 2008). The former presents portraits of indigenous peoples, including the Chipaya, Yanomami, and Afar, while the latter is a silent film diary of Depardon’s brief world tour. The filmmaker is known for his sensitive eye, and these two facets of the experience of globalization glint sharply off each other, casting appreciable light on subtleties of cultural difference, speed, and slowness. On the lower level, a video of a strolling, life-size Virilio greeted the viewer on one wall, while upside-down iMac computers suspended on rails across the vast ceiling showed footage pertaining to migration—including border crossings and refugee camps. Nearby, a massive image of the earth revolved and rotated around a panoramic gallery, revealing data about migration in its wake. We live in a screencentric culture, and this exhibition relied so heavily on technological wizardry for aesthetic impact that any message contained within was minimized, if not lost. Instead of coming away impressed or enlightened, I felt spectacularly alienated. 

"Native Land, Stop Eject" originally appeared in the March 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' March 2009 Table of Contents.