German artist Julian Rosefeldt has created a series of video installations with Australian actor Cate Blanchett to give visual and audio meaning to a number of the most famous and
provocative writings by artists of the modern era. Through a series of monologues edited and reassembled by Rosefeldt, the videos draw on a collage of
artists’ manifestos, including declarations by futurists, dadaists and
situationists, collected writings by individual artists, architects, dancers and
filmmakers such as Sol LeWitt, Yvonne Rainer and Jim Jarmusch.
Blanchett performs in all of these video installations through appearing as 13 different personas including a school
teacher, a newsreader, a factory worker, a socialite and a homeless man exploring the
power and urgency of these historical words in the modern world. The monologues are delivered in different settings and locations linked to the identity of each character - from a power plant, a school room, a manufacturing plant, a television newsroom, a cocktail party lounge room and a family dining room. In one video Blanchett's actual husband, playwright Andrew Upton, features together with their children. Whether intentional or not, Rosefeldt has created a series of parodies of varying strengths and relevance creating an almost bleak and one dimensional of images accentuated only by the absurdity of some of Blanchett's portrayals.
Manifesto has been commissioned by the Art Gallery of NSW, the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI), the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin the Sprengel Museum, Hannover, and Ruhrtriennale – Festival of the Arts.
The exhibition will be screening until January 2017.
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