Incommunicado

30th Sep 2003 - 14th Dec 2003

There is a basic need to communicate, to understand and to be understood. But what happens when things go wrong? How reliable are our methods of communicating? Does new technology help or confuse?

Lip Sync, 1969 Bruce Nauman Read more »	Comedie, 1966 Samuel Beckett/Marin Karmitz Read more »	PIDGIN interrupted transmission, 2001 Erika Tan Read more »
Autograph, 1997 Smith/Stewart Read more »	Self-portrait talking to Vince, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-78 Francesca Woodman Read more »

These were some of the many questions raised by Incommunicado, a National Touring Exhibition from the Hayward Gallery.

Central to the show was Com�die, a recently re-discovered film by Samuel Beckett and French film-maker Marin Karmitz (producer of Krzystof Kieslowski�s famous Three Colours trilogy). Com�die, made in 1966, speeds up Beckett�s play to the point of near incomprehensibility. The absurdity of communication breakdown also characterises much of Bruce Nauman�s work. Incommunicado featured two Nauman films from 1969, Lip Sync and Gauze and his 1995 World Peace � Day Two (Brooke�s Lips). Nauman�s Violent Incident: Man � Woman Segment from 1986 showed how a practical joke turns nasty during a romantic meal for two.

Some of the works in Incommunicado found the artists reflecting on their own attempts to communicate. A video installation by Glasgow�based duo Smith/Stewart - Autograph, 1997 � contained two monitors showing the artists� hands locked together, striving against each other to write their own signature. In another work, Francesca Woodman, the American photographer who committed suicide aged 22, poignantly conveys the frustration of an inability to express feelings in a self-portrait in which glass comes out of her mouth in place of words.

The way that different media leave meaning open to corruption was explored in Berlin-based Omer Fast�s CNN Concatenated, 2002, which featured excerpts from live newscasts, taken out of context and edited to the artist�s script. Christian Marclay (USA) used a similar montage technique in Telephones, 1995, a humorous piece that explored literally the problem of getting �crossed wires�, by showing mixed up telephone conversations from Hollywood cinema

Other artists in the exhibition were: Pavel Buchler (UK), Phil Coy (UK), Angus Fairhurst (UK), Mona Hatoum (UK/Lebanon), Jiri Kolar (Czech), Hirsch Perlman (USA), Erika Tan (UK/Singapore), Lawrence Weiner (USA) and Chen Zhen (China).