6/16/06

Cälin Dan

MCA Sydney
Calin-Dan
Cälin Dan's video work Emotional Architecture 2 - Sample City is one of the few works that I really got something out of in this Biennale. I want to feel changed when I go to these kinds of shows, to know something I didn't already know, or to think: I wish I thought of that. I like that feeling. That's what I'm here for. So in the Sample City work a man walks around with a door tied to his back, through the rocky outskirts of a town somewhere very far from Australia. The light and the landscape are unfamiliar. He seems childish in a way I can't explain. No one bothers him, he just walks, sits down and rests occasionally. Alex Rizkalla told me that the work relates to a story about a young man who leaves the family home and is told to pull the door behind him. Kind-of a sad story about a naive man who then carries the door around for God knows how long. He said that when Dan shot the work back in Romania people remembered the story from their childhoods and they understood what he was doing. They said hello to him, didn't bother him, helped him and let him on his way.
Jacqueline Riva
Cälin Dan Emotional Architecture 2 - Sample City 2003
production photo from video 11.40 mins, courtesy of the artist

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

yeah, i agree. like many of the works in the biennale, i think it suffered from being stretched into a bigger work than was necessary, and so any intimacy in the piece was lost.

1:00 PM  
Anonymous Sarah said...

i loved the dub. it transported me back to Brixton circa 1976.

10:03 AM  

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