Jeremy Shaw at Schinkel Pavilion

Jeremy Shaw's Variation FQ, recently exhibited at Schinkel Pavilion, is a study in duality, ultimately seeking transcendence through material transformation. Using seminal Canadian filmmaker Norman McLaren's 1968 experimental ballet film Pas de Deux (which can be viewed on the NFB's online archive) as a conceptual and aesthetic framework, Shaw has replaced the Canadian ballet duo Margaret Mercier and Vincent Warren with transgendered New York underground vogue dance legend Leiomy Maldonado (whose repertoire is widely available via YouTube).



Jeremy Shaw, Variation FQ

McLaren's film presents the two classical dancers clad in white, evocatively lit in the deep space of an all black set and appearing as ghostly spectres. The formal tropes of black and white, male and female, physical and spiritual take on allegorical overtones as their interactions and steps are dissected and re-spliced, thus creating a slow-motion study of the poetic lyricism of the human body, enhanced by a haunting soundtrack of pan flutes and synthesizer loops.

Variation FQ presents a lone dancer who embodies the essential or allegorical qualities of these two dancers in a singular subjectivity. Rather than the refined, regimented steps of classical ballet, Maldonado's movements demonstrate vogue dancing's aggressive erotic display. Vogueing is often performed in a dance battle, whose parameters of performativity and violence seem to take cues more from the sport/entertainment hybrid of WWF than classical dance.

Here, the urgency of the vogue battle is replaced by a formal gravitas, heightened by an atmospheric soundtrack and Shaw's choice to output the digitally shot and edited video onto 16mm film. Viewing this mesmerizing image on a large heat and noise-producing film projector, replete with flickers and scratches, leads one to question appropriation, the role of materiality, and the location of the avant-garde and/or subculture in relation to contemporary artistic production. As with much of Shaw's previous work, this installation deals with the slippages between high and low, insider and outsider, perception and reception, while skillfully employing sound and image to dramatic effect.


Schinkel Pavilion: http://www.schinkelpavillon.de/
See website for current exhibitions.


Holly Ward is a Vancouver/Berlin-based interdisciplinary artist working with sculpture, multi-media installation, architecture, video, and drawing. She is Akimblog's interim Berlin correspondent.