The FIFA is actually the festival of films about art—which,
in Montreal, delightfully, no-one confuses
with a soccer franchise. I was most excited about the Anselm Kiefer film. Kiefer
had an exhibit at the Contemporary Art
Museum here about 5 years ago. I was captivated
by his sculptures, particularly the one depicting a giant lead book with giant
lead wings sprouting from its back. It seemed heavy and sad, despite the obvious
symbolism.
The film did not disappoint. It let the cleverness,
unexpectedness, and provocativeness of Kiefer’s work shine as sunlight through
a clean window. But that metaphor is all wrong for today’s thoughts. You’ll
never find a clean window in Kiefer’s maze of broken glass, concrete cubes, and
metal sheets dappled with molten lead and dirt.
At one point, Kiefer mentions he likes imperfections, empty
spaces. We see him flinging sheets of glass on the concrete surrounding a lead
tableau. The fractured, the diffuse, the brokenness. Those things we avoid, see
only to patch up or cover over, he forces us to look at them, think about them,
marvel at them, grasp them without collapsing their disintegratedness. I’m
reminded of the dazzling, shattered complexity of our current world. Wars are
fought, not with armies but random little cells of rebels. Information is
transmitted, not through a fixed number of newspapers or television channels
but a multiplicity of organically, randomly interconnected internet sites. I
cannot concentrate for more than 3 minutes on any task during my work day
without being interrupted by my buzzing Blackberry.
What to make of this post-big-bang-style eruption of formerly
packed particles into a million spots of light that has happened in the past 10
years or so? Confusion reigns, because our eyes are trained to see a music
video as a seamless 3.5-minute flow despite the cut-a-second editing, because our
minds yearn for perfect wholeness.
One of Kiefer’s tableaux, of the thick giant metal sheet
variety, is textured with fissures. In the film, he pours molten lead and it
runs along the cracks. Then he takes oversized plasters of molars and sticks
them into the lead. “It’s the Greeks’ idea,” he shrugs, “they sowed teeth and
harvested warriors. The legend of the Argonauts.”
Yes. Yes, how do we do that? How do we nourish ourselves in the
multitudes of cracks, make ourselves at home in the brokenness, draw strength
from the endless and unpatterned divisions, so that we rise up warriors?
