print   back The Stories That Are Left Stephen Sarrazin from Shelly Silver: Video, Museum for Art & History, Fribourg, Switzerland, 2001 Back when I first encountered the brilliant series of stills by Gillian Wearing called Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say (1992-1993), I thought this was a very astute demonstration of merging private histories and documentary objectivity. I thought this was really good, much as I did some years earlier upon watching Shelly Silver's groundbreaking video Meet The People (1986), in which a group of (it turns out) actors play everyman/everywoman talking about life in America in the late eighties, where they are now, how they got there, where they're hoping to get. But unlike Wearing, whose object of exploration remained the U.K., Silver set out to meet the people, moving from America to Europe and Asia, creating along the way and through the years a series of award winning single channel pieces which challenge what could be done within the video medium. Shelly Silver's conceptual framework, of using fiction to speak of reality (Silver's work is very much about narrative, stories, tales, but also murmured secrets, confessions, anecdotes), has carried over in all her later tapes, notably The Houses That Are Left (about New York), Former East/Former West (about Berlin) and 37 Stories About Leaving Home (about Japan). Accordingly, it has always been accurate to point out that her work owes much to the early films of Jean-Luc Godard, whose fictions would comment directly on the socio-political issues of the era, from Algeria to Vietnam (Le Petit Soldat, Masculin, Feminin), from prostitution by housewives to make ends meet (2 or 3 things I know about her) onto the students of La Chinoise. In all of these films, characters address the camera, resulting in what was to become one of the classic self referential tropes of contemporary cinema. Silver breaks down this strategy to further include meta-fictions, such as the intricate weaving of narrative and mediums in The Houses That Are Left (1991), which sees two friends reunited in New York City (one of them has come home, after living in Paris; this is shot in stunning black and white 16mm). Upon her return, this woman soon finds a job in market research, and hits the streets; the result is a savvy video montage of consumer culture and trivial and tragic woes. The third layer goes on sitcom mode, a visual space inhabited by the dead, ghosts whose task it is to watch the living and keep a detailed record of their activities which will eventually lead to their own deaths. In this 52-minute piece, the artist shows her mastery at handling media forms, from street interviews with people willing to reveal intimate aspects of themselves the second they find themselves before an microphone and a camera, to the flatly lit sitcom genre, to the complex film mise-en-scene. And while her characters are trapped within the spectacles of representation of their lives - each layer of media used or alluded to - Silver's compassion for them is as strong, though considerably warmer than that of Godard.(1) Former East/Former West (1994) is what is usually termed a 'creative' documentary, that is, a documentary that no longer locates itself within the tradition of cinema, nor does it pretend to mimic the objectivity of the networks' reality shows. Rather, it is part essay, part original creation, as the nature of the questions asked, and the editing pattern itself, reveal an explicit subjectivity on the part of the artist; historically, something like Dan Graham's sublime Rock My Religion (edited in part by Tony Oursler) may serve as a reference, although Silver's consummate editing shows just how far the form has gone since Graham.(2) What Silver explores here are the half truths, misconceptions, fallacies, mythologies and prejudices voiced by the citizens of a city formerly divided in two parts. The artist steers clear of the easy TV questions like 'where were you when the wall fell, what did it feel like,' going instead for 'what is history, what does the word Germany mean to you, etc.' This piece also reveals how adept Silver is at creating powerful portraits of a community, and respecting them sufficiently to challenge them to go beyond the trash TV ideal of confessing trauma. Which, in an odd way, is at the core of her stunning 37 Stories About Leaving Home (1996), in which she interviews Japanese women on their relationship with their mothers. Western media, and increasingly contemporary art, is filled with representations of impossible relationships between parents and children, ranging from abuse to neglect. Silver wants to hear other voices, selecting a group of women ranging from teenagers to obachama (grandmothers). We discover here a history of quiet rebellions, of soft mutinies, as daughters from generation to generation strive to resist assuming the social functions and tasks that are traditionally expected of them within Japanese society. Silver combines this with an adaption of a classic ero-horror tale from Japan in which a demon spirit has kidnapped a beautiful young woman the day of her wedding, wanting her as his bride. The girl's mother takes it upon herself to go and rescue her daughter, thus pointing to the bond that exists between them in Japanese culture. The way they manage to flee the demon and his cohorts is well worth sitting through the video again and again.... At a time when the moment has never been as ripe, when institutions are filled with transversal works combining film, video and installations, when the recent British wave of media artists has once more proven how 'viable' installations can be, it remains a mystery why Shelly Silver has never 'exploited' those possibilities in her work, as so many parts of her tapes call out to be declined outside of the single monitor.(3) Certainly everything is there, the dialogue between film and video, between literature (notably Thomas Bernhard) and media, between concept and storytelling. Perhaps it's just that there's already so much, too much in those tapes for them to make the move to installations. In a recent interview with artist Stan Douglas, Robert Storr argued that the pacing of his work was graceful, unhurried, unlike the disjunctive Godardian effects.(4) Implied here then is that disjunction might be less elegant. And while Stan Douglas is one of the finest artists working with media today, much of his use of film and media relies on eras when the world moved at another pace, as his work explores the consequences of the disappearance of a specific form and medium. But Silver, who is close to Godard in so many ways, has sought to achieve montage and meaning out of chaotic situations, from the personal to the political. As I said, why Silver never branched out into an installation practice remains a private act, and I expect a political one. Nevertheless, one hopes they're on the way.* Likewise, it's unfortunate that Silver herself, who is notoriously camera-shy, has never appeared in her own works.* Lifting once more an example from the work of Gillian Wearing, which shares several common traits with that of Shelly Silver, I recall asking a U.K. colleague who was the cool girl in the video Dancing in Peckham; 'that's Wearing,' she said. And when I think of Dan Graham's Rock My Religion, I'm reminded that Shelly Silver always had a young Patti Smith thing going for her, and like Smith, great arms, by far the best arms in video. Stephen Sarrazin 2000, Tokyo. * Artist's Note: After Stephen Sarrazin wrote this article I sheepishly told him that not only was I about to open my first installation, Hidden Among the Leaves a collaboration with the Swiss artist Nika Spalinger (see following article), but that I am also starring in my new work suicide. 1) One need only listen to Godard's whispered voiceover text during 'the world in an espresso cup' sequence in 2 or 3 things I know about her. 2) In Rock My Religion, Dan Graham made the argument that rock music could be traced back to the Shakers, a strict religious community - and sublime furniture craftsmen - while making a case for Patti Smith as the Arthur Rimbaud of America punk. 3) Also in light of the pathetic and embarrassing surface media work that is coming out of the current New York scene (orbiting around galleries like Gavin Brown, Leo Koenig, etc.) 4) Art Press, #262, November 2000, pg. 26 Stephen Sarrazin is a film and media art lecturer at Paris 8 University; critic and writer (Art Press, Parachute, Flash Art, Cahiers du Cinema, Metropolis M, InterCommunication,etc.) and a film and media consultant in Japan. He was head of New Media, ESEC, Paris, from 1992-1999 (Žcole supŽrieure d'Žtudes cinŽmatographiques), former artistic advisor at CICV, France, and founding member of VidŽochroniques, France. He lives in Tokyo and Paris. Shelly Silver: Video, Museum for Art & History, Fribourg, Switzerland, 2001, pg. 30-35 page top