#dannyryder

Mark Boulos

FACT

Thursday 3 October - Thursday 21 November

Gallery 1 and Gallery 2

  Mark Boulos’s solo show at FACT is the premier a new piece of work, Echo, as the centre piece for his exhibition. Alongside this is three of his previous works.

  Echo (2013) differs from his previous ‘documentary-style’ works in that this is an immersive viewer experience, one of which I am glad to have gone to. The piece is in Gallery 1, in FACT’s foyer, inside the gallery you are greeted by a spotlight on the floor, this singular bit of light in the pitch black room entices you in.

  Entering into the spotlight, you are greeted by a ghostly figure, this person is a ‘reflection’ of yourself, standing on a corner pavement in an urban area, the image moves as you do and speaks when you speak, you are then submerged deeper into this world by the sounds that surround you. The sound of a vehicle getting closer and closer soon marries a bus passing by you on the road, again pushing you deeper into this pseudo-world is the noise of footsteps seeming to come from behind you, [I had look behind me to check it wasn’t actually someone walking up to me in the space and at this point it is safe to say I had left the real world and entered into the fictitious one in front of me]. Again this sound was met with a woman more clear than the image of myself walk from around the corner; stop, turn and walk away again. This impressed on me that I may have entered some out-of-body experience, I began questioning my reality within this piece, thinking that maybe I WAS a ghost and this was me returning to the place and time I last remember and the noises where those of the last sounds I heard before I parted.

  The world you have entered is then made more surreal by the original night scene flashing to dusk and back, all the while, the auditory sensations and visual cues continue. As these scene flashes become more rapid as does the sounds, this begins to eject you out of experience until it finally concludes by disappearing leaving you standing lost, inside the spotlight that you entered originally, you are then rescued by the invigilator who thanks you and escorts you out. This work was simply amazing, I have never experienced anything like it before and is something that I’m glad I did had the chance to go and see.

  The exhibition is continued upstairs in Gallery 2. Up here you have three of Boulos’s previous works; All that Is Solid Melts into Air (2008), The Origin of the World (2009) and No Permanent Address (2010) but of the three, the one that grabbed my attention most was All that Is Solid Melts into Air. This is at the back of the gallery space, to the right of The Origin of the World video as you enter the gallery. The work, comprises two large-scale videos, projected opposite each other, this is the start of the juxtaposition that runs throughout this piece. It presents you with two images of seemingly very different worlds, at opposite ends the economic world – the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and the Niger River Delta in Africa. The videos run simultaneously with the starting points offset by a few seconds. The video of Niger takes you down a river, past an oil refinery into a part of jungle in the Delta, you then come into contact with people on the banks of the river, in contrast to this the video opposite starts with a fly by shot of Chicago, with its concrete jungle of high-rise buildings and skyscrapers.

  After the scenes are set you are then introduced to the ‘characters’, in the Niger video you meet various men who talk about the struggles and violence that they encounter daily, fighting over control of the delta which lies on top of the crude oil. Many of them talk calmly and softly about the violence that they are a part of daily and have been since they were children as well as the devastation of “one of the largest oil fields in the world. This is in stark contrast to the video of Chicago, where you have a hive of activity in the exchange with traders on the day of the 2008 credit crisis. Both sets of people are in a struggle to control oil but via completely different means; one of violence and war, the other through the power of money.

The film’s title is referenced from a passage in Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto. This considers how major political and social structures, change from their original state and could one day disappear. The title also shows how much distance there is between the conflict which comes behind the acquisition of natural resources and the products which they are turned into and how they are ultimately handled.

  The exhibition is one not to miss, it’s not one you go to see when you have some free time, I rightly say that it is one you set time out to go to, take in and take from.

  Mark Boulos is on at FACT until the 21st of November, you can tweet your opinions on #MarkBoulos and tweet FACT at @FACT_Liverpool, you can also tweet me your views on the exhibition as well as this article. My twitter is below.

Danny Ryder

Light can be brighter and darker; it can be white light or it can be any colour you can imagine... I'm extremely happy with light and I don't need it to talk to me… Light doesn’t mean anything, it’s not inner, just outer… I love light just as it is and have no need for it to be anything more than that... I don't need it to be psychological; I don't want it to be a happy colour or a sad colour, I just want it to be light! I don't need it to do anything other than give myself and the viewer pleasure through experience…

Adapted from John Cage about Silence