During the 1970s, composer and artist Charlemagne Palestine creates a series of filmed performances in which, characteristically, he uses the harmony of body and voice and their capacity to express an inner state of immense agitation. Frequently violent, intense and with a ritualistic character, they are acts that provide an outlet for physical and psychological catharsis – a sudden, overpowering need to make a clean sweep of both inner and outer limitations.
Latifa Echakhch’s work manifests something of a showdown with violent gestures, but here in the irrevocable action that we only see the result of in the exhibition space. Nature morte. Still lifes made out of spilled tealeaves, pools of ink and broken tea-glasses, flagpoles and carpets deprived of their primary functions, bureaucratic phrases etched into the wall. Here Echakhch’s praxis is direct and confrontational in posing questions about the construction of identity and the maintance of cultural stereotypes.
In the juxtaposition of the two artists their insistence upon certain concerns appears equally persistent. In both cases, their actions seem to lead towards the deconstruction of self-experienced limitations and categorizations. If the act of drumming historically has been used to mark the beginning of events ranging from festive ceremonies to war battles, then the drumming of a woodpecker serves as the unwearied sound of the complex world that refuses any convenient simplification.
