Ed Atkins’ computer-generated films feature shabby, lonely protagonists with disarming and marked fidelity. His animations demonstrate their digital constitution, their near-total artifice, even as they simultaneously strive for a disturbing level of realism. Atkins’ films get right under the viewer’s skin, rendering a queasily uncanny version of the familiar – just as the idea of “old food” raises a suspicion of goodness spoiled.
By Dimitris Lempesis Photo: Martin-Gropius-Bau Archive
Ed Atkins is known for a series of video installations peopled by Computer-generated imagery (CGI), animated by motion capture performances and voiced by the artist himself. As part of the Berliner Festspiele’s programme Immersion, that presents artworks which often occupy the grey zone between performance and exhibition, Ed Atkins presents “Old Food”, his largest installation to date, the artist has created a new series of works that build upon the allegorical possibilities of his particular brand of video making, shifting the aesthetic into ever more precarious areas of desire, historicity, melancholia and stupidity. In the exhibition the artist presents a system that’s at once less morbid and far less romantic. The world of “Old Food” is always-already lost, persisting regardless, with no mortal redemption in sight. Videowalls and flat screens depict a choreographed chamber drama of dubious sentimentality and historical inaccuracy. Caricature and parable collide in a nostalgic no-place of derailed escapism, conjuring both recent Fantasy television phenomena, and any fantasy’s failure to distract from a resurgent literalism concerning the romantic possibilities of the imaginary. Unlike much of Atkins’ previous work, “Old Food” is slow, hobbled and exhausted by its own apparent superficiality. These new computer-generated video works are installed alongside a vast display of the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s costume archive, presented as objet trouvé in the manner in which they are stored. Almost 280 linear metres of costumes are on view at the exhibition. The garments are on show exactly as they are preserved in the store-room, – arranged by century and theme. Categories include “Petticoats and Farmers’ Costumes”, “Knights”, “Metallic”, “Folklore”, “Male Renaissance”, “Female Middle Ages” and “Patinated Suits, Jackets and Coats”. The costumes invite a reading of the videos as aspirationally operatic and as compromised historical dream, both in their failure to sufficiently address their contemporary moment, and their presumed locale. Just as the costumes are displayed in a manner to subvert their role as instruments of immersive storytelling, Atkins’ videos constantly undo both their realism and their elaborate technology. The effect, ironically enough, is one of genuine imminence.
Info: Curator: Lisa Marei Schmidt, Martin-Gropius-Bau, Niederkirchnerstraße 7, Berlin, Duration: 29/9/17-7/1/18, Days & Hours: Wed-Mon 10:00-19:00,
Ed Atkins’ computer-generated films feature shabby, lonely protagonists with disarming and marked fidelity. His animations demonstrate their digital constitution, their near-total artifice, even as they simultaneously strive for a disturbing level of realism. Atkins’ films get right under the viewer’s skin, rendering a queasily uncanny version of the familiar – just as the idea of “old food” raises a suspicion of goodness spoiled.
