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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

The Art of Bottles

by

20131125

Al­though you may well have ad­mired the bot­tle-bal­anc­ing per­for­mance rit­u­al­ly en­act­ed on the pave­ment out­side Smokey and Bun­ty's bar in St James, it's un­like­ly that even with a bad head you would have con­sid­ered this "Art".Think again, and not sim­ply about the artistry re­quired to source the raw ma­te­ri­als for this dis­tinct­ly post­mod­ern Cre­ole per­for­mance art. Here in Trinidad, we take for grant­ed such street per­for­mances in much the same way that tourists or Lon­don­ers take for grant­ed the jug­glers in Con­vent Gar­den, or the pave­ment chalk artists who'll oblige with a quick por­trait or an Old Mas­ter.It took an out­sider–Heino Schmid, a Ba­hami­an artist–to see the bot­tle bal­anc­ing as an art form. Ini­tial­ly cap­ti­vat­ed, Schmid be­gan to study the per­for­mance both from prac­ti­cal and artis­tic points of view.

He made draw­ings; stud­ied the physics in­volved; ded­i­cat­ed long nights of re­search on the St James pave­ment to even­tu­al­ly learn the mag­ic of bal­anc­ing and then to shoot a short video of him­self per­form­ing, which com­bines hu­mour and sly com­men­tary with man­u­al pre­ci­sion.Schmid's "tem­po­rary hori­zons" video, which runs for ap­prox­i­mate­ly ten min­utes and fea­tures the head­less artist's hands care­ful­ly plac­ing two bot­tles–the up­per one with resid­u­als which con­sti­tute the tem­po­rary hori­zon–be­fore he walks off­screen leav­ing the bot­tles, which even­tu­al­ly col­lapse, was orig­i­nal­ly shown at the pres­ti­gious Tate Liv­er­pool Bi­en­nale in 2010.Last week, thanks to lo­cal artist Christo­pher Co­zi­er, one of the 35 cu­ra­tors of Project 35, it was screened at Al­ice Yard, along with sev­er­al oth­er videos from the same project.

Project 35 is the sec­ond in a se­ries of itin­er­ant sin­gle-chan­nel video ex­hi­bi­tions, or­gan­ised by In­de­pen­dent Cu­ra­tors In­ter­na­tion­al (ICI) New York, which "trace the com­plex­i­ty of re­gion­al and glob­al con­nec­tions among prac­ti­tion­ers and the va­ri­ety of ap­proach­es used to make video." The videos them­selves "re­flect on the in­ter­sec­tions of rou­tine and rit­u­al, the mun­dane and the ab­surd, the pos­si­bil­i­ty and im­pos­si­bil­i­ty of in­tel­li­gi­ble com­mu­ni­ca­tion." Al­ice Yard played host to Project 35, with four screens of dif­fer­ent sizes lo­cat­ed in strate­gic spots play­ing con­tin­u­ous loops. It was pos­si­ble to stand mid-yard and with pe­riph­er­al vi­sion catch two videos si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Be­sides tem­po­rary hori­zons an­oth­er im­pres­sive video was The In­vis­i­ble Pa­tri­ot shot in Cu­ba by Reynier Ley­va No­vo. This eight min­utes short, shot in chiaroscuro light so it re­sem­bles a Rem­brandt-like can­vas, fo­cus­es in close up on the hands of a gui­tarist poised over a fret­board, tun­ing the har­mon­ics and lat­er strum­ming a chord se­quence. In the dark­ness with noth­ing to dis­tract, the screen res­onates with pure mu­sic-some­thing the mak­ers of mu­sic videos might care to learn from.

The Egypt­ian Basim Magdy's My Fa­ther looks for an Hon­est City of­fered a wry look at the cor­rup­tion which seems a reg­u­lar fea­ture of mod­ern con­struc­tion and de­vel­op­ment, while an In­done­sian video mixed hu­man ac­tor with an­i­ma­tion, with com­ic ef­fect.As new me­dia ex­pands and is ex­pand­ed by artis­tic in­ter­ven­tions and in­ter­pre­ta­tions, pro­vid­ing al­most lim­it­less con­nec­tiv­i­ty and a reach un­thought of on­ly a decade ago, lit­tle Al­ice Yard is once again at the fore­front of keep­ing T&T in the new loops.


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