The Chittendens
...a mesmerizing, comical, and thrillingly bizarre meditation on the tics and tropes that make up what we call "character" and "relationship."
- The New Yorker
American artist Catherine Sullivan initially trained as an actress, and although she has worked in a variety of media, she is best known for theatre and video work that explores the conventions of performance and role-playing. For her first UK exhibition, Sullivan is showing The Chittendens, a six screen video installation.
The Chittendens was made in collaboration with composer Sean Griffin, who wrote the score for the video. Sullivan then edited the video to highlight the formal dialogue between the actors' gestures and his music.
The Chittendens investigates how a performer's emotional gestures can pervert the logical sequence of a musical score. The work also demonstrates how a conceptual pattern can be reordered and translated to become highly theatrical and cinematic artwork.
The title of the piece is derived from an insurance agency, Chittenden Group, whose corporate symbol is a lighthouse. Chittendens footage (shot on 16mm film and transferred to HD video) was filmed primarily in an abandoned Chicago office building and in a small lighthouse on Poverty Island near the Wisconsin shore of Lake Michigan.
On view at Metro Pictures from November 19 through December 23, The Chittendens will be exhibited simultaneously at the Tate Modern in London, from November 18 through March 5, 2006. The piece debuted at the Secession in Vienna in summer 2005. A Chittendens catalogue and music CD is available online: www.secession.at/shop/index.php, co-published by the Secession and the Tate.
Download of excerpts of "The Resuscitation of Uplifting" and "Shallow Brown" at the Tate Modern wesite: www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/sullivan/viewthework.htm
The Chittendens Suite
| Ensemble: | |
| Gascia Ouzounian | Violine / violin |
| James Eccles | Bratsche / viola |
| Augustin Maurs | Cello |
| Jane Grothe | Harfe / harp |
| Ivan Manzanilla | Schlaginstrumente / percussion |
| Andrew Infanti | Piano, Synthesizer, musikalische Regie und Zusammenarbeit / piano, synthesizer, musical direction and collaboration |
| Carl Francis | Kommentator / narrator |
| Carolyn Shoemaker | Gesang / vocals |
Griffin's scores reflect on whether structure is music's way of "getting a grip" on itself after some hard times, dirty secrets, bad faith, or ugly divorce. His structural "Betty Ford Clinic" later checks in Thrash Punk, Webern, Canonical Horror Film Music, Free Jazz, Hysterical Opera vis Berio's aging Sequenza III, and Pythagorean drones across expensive La Monte Young tunings. Each of these patients remain mutually condescending in their white rooms ... they also refuse to just shut up and take their pills.
- Wolf-Dieter Schlühnz, from Regimenting the Perhaps-burgs