Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya
Closes in 6 days
The teenage years: Most of us didn't understand them when we were there, and now we're past them, most of adults can't deal with "today's" teenagers. Self-centered, unfocused, unable to communicate, obsessed with the opposite sex, rebellious -- from a distance, the age seems like a never-ending melodrama. It is, all told, not the most appealing of topics.
To dismiss "Tornadoes of My Heart" on subject matter, however, would be to dismiss the contemplative art of Emmanuelle Antille. Currently at Tokyo Wonder Site Shibuya (www.tokyo-ws.org), and closing today at Nichido Contemporary Art, the show consists of three video installations and a series of portraits that deal with this difficult time in life.
Having spent one year befriending and prepping her amateur actors, Antille captures an honesty here that offers more than any teenage documentary ever could. In her video works, which get to the heart of her subject, she uses multiple screens to coolly display everyday life with a strange intensity. A boy with a hole in his stomach, a cheerleader with little cheer and a strange mother figure, who seems more like a drugged-out lover, are some of her protagonists. Simple footage of their bored, sometimes escapist lives is juxtaposed with images of tornadoes and empty landscapes.
Carefully edited and played at differing speeds on various screens in darkened rooms, the installations hint at the power and fluidity of the mind. Though the characters never directly talk to one another, ideas of closeness and distance, love and hate, reality and dreams come to the surface and time seems to sit still, even as it moves.
