Page 108 - Art Review

Ali Kazma Subterranean

Jeu de Paume, Paris 17 October – 21 January

If they have any regard for their personal its accommodation and community buildings in the final sections of the exhibition, some-
freedom, Turkish artists, journalists and aca- on Spitsbergen Island. While North records times evident, sometimes an unseen presence
demics cannot be as overtly critical as others; erstwhile habitation and the relics of a past in buildings that have witnessed brutality.
Ali Kazma has made this restriction an advan- working-culture, people are absent from both The earliest work, Brain Surgeon (2006), shows
tage, developing a modest yet mighty filmic works. Kazma’s commentary lies in his selection surgeons undertaking – and their patient
practice characterised by impassive observation. and his framing, the subjects he finds worthy undergoing – what looks like trepanning;
When he exhibited in the Turkish Pavilion of quiet focus: a store to preserve plant species it is almost impossible to watch. Mine (2017),
at the Venice Biennale in 2013, Kazma showed in a site of melting permafrost; the architecture however, consists of still-camera observation
several works from his Resistance series (2012–), of a community outliving its inhabitants. He of the skeletons of buildings in the Atacama
and two of these, Tattoo and Calligraphy, are illuminates subjects worthy of attention, among Desert: once a mine, the exhibition notes state,
among the small-format projections in the first them the overlooked and the little-known. this site became a concentration camp during
gallery here. They are placed alongside works Taxidermist (2010) reveals the craft of gutting the Pinochet regime.
including Kazma’s best-known work, Clerk, and skinning an animal cadaver, fixing the skin Yet Kazma films most often without human
of 2011, an observation of the hands and mien on a synthetic foam form and primping it to subjects; when people are present there is no
of a man with extraordinarily speedy, accurate make it appear lifelike again. It’s not pretty: engagement or exchange with them. His pointed
– and surely outmoded – document-stamping we are rapidly sensitised to the process while focus examines a world as it has been formed by
skills. Kazma’s close camera is respectful, likely desensitised by exposure to it. humanity, but we are not present. Sometimes the
intimate even, and the portrait unspectacular House of Letters (2015) concludes the first world – weather or nature – takes back control,
but unsettling: though the framing and skill suite of galleries on a cosy, pastoral note, observ- when buildings rust or are subsumed by snow.
suggest we might be impressed, the subject ing Alberto Manguel at home in rural France Still, in shaping our environments as we and our
of analogue bureaucracy is depressing. among countless books, the camera looking in ancestors willed, have we created Frankenstein’s
This exhibition of more than 20 filmworks through the window or poring over manuscript monsters? In the last film, Tea Time (2017),
continues in the next space with Safe (2015) and pages and personal inscriptions from authors Kazma watches machines producing glassware
North (2017): a three-minute single projection to the Argentine-Canadian writer as a sunny day as closely as he did the clerk six years earlier,
and a five-minute double projection respectively turns to night. If it feels a bit too enchanting, but this subject is a powerful machine working
of snowy Norwegian landscapes and architec- it turns out that Manguel – with whom Kazma with glowing, molten raw material at speeds
tural structures found there. Safe is set on the had collaborated for several years on the publi- sometimes perceptible, sometimes too fast to
Svalbard Islands, where thousands of seeds are cation Recto Verso (2012) – left his idyll soon after fathom. Kazma’s attitude is ambivalent, though
preserved inside the Global Seed Vault, while to become director of the Argentine National he does convince us we need to pay attention.
North records an abandoned Soviet mine and Library. In contrast, there is plenty of horror Aoife Rosenmeyer

North (still), 2017, two-channel video, HD, colour, sound,
5 min 10 sec. © and courtesy the artist

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