I managed to get to Bilbao and see the Guggenheim (again - I love it!) The building itself is always spectacular and the interior spaces, high ceilings and large rooms, show off the artworks very well indeed. I managed to stay about 3 hours (4 including lunch and arsing around) and saw exhibitions from Rousseau to Rauschenberg with Amish Kapoor in between.
It is the main Kapoor work that I want to talk about: it was called "Shooting into the Corner" and consisted of a cannon that fired synthetic meat into the corner of the room - it was very messy! Initially I thought the installment was really interesting - through the emotive use of the media and a senseation of abandonment, through the still but poised machinery, a powerful narrative drive was established. Images of characters seething in emotion and firing this "meat cannon" in a slaughterhouse (the room seemed to suggest such a setting) to release there emotion were easily established. It had a very physical and violent atmosphere, a blend of repulsive natrual elements and the harshness of man's industrialisation of carniverous instincts.
This violent repulsiveness and the tension that arose from the narrative drive (and therfore a sense of a character returning) lent the work a disquietening and uneasy tension - expectation infact. I did not realise that this expectation would be sated until the entrance of a performer - the cannon was to be fierd! As an audience now, instead of a collection of viewers we waited with bated breath; we were a roman mob waitng for the visceral entertainment in the Colloseum. The cannon was fired and the 'meat' slapped heartily against the wall, we, the audience applauded and laughed, ingnoring the repulsive nature of our entertainment.
However, I thought the performance was disapointing - it removed both the narrative drive, I now had no angst-ridden character to fire the cannon, but an emotionless mechanic and also destroyed the equilibrium of tension, curiosity and gut-renching visceral quality. In short it was too sensationalist, to crowd pleasing and not accademic or artistic enough - it passed from a manifestation of powerful emotion into a (albeit brutal and damning on the human condition) circus.
Anyways - I hope you like the video (i'm afraid I couldn't find a version from Bilbao but you get the idea) and pictures!
