Gabriel Orozco: Samurai Tree Invariants and Karl Jenkin's Concert for Peace

Two ways to pass the time; one making me wish I was safely home working on my dissertation.

These really have nothing in common but I am combining them in one post. On January 18th I went to see Concert for Peace – Celebrating the Spirit of Martin Luther King, Jr. which was comprised of two works by Karl Jenkins. I listened to a couple of minutes of Requiem on YouTube; and since I enjoy chorale music and I am not that picky, it seemed worth attending.

The music itself, I suspect, isn't too bad. But my goodness the videos that accompany it were more awful than I could have ever imagined. I mean truly, truly, amazingly awful. Footage of what looked like carnival and people playing with poi and dressed up as devils for the Dies Irae should have clued me in, but I tend to be hopeful so I braved through film and close ups of Rose windows and stained glass when the choir was singing about Jesus, grateful indeed that I never studied Latin and could close my eyes and just listen to what they were singing without having to understand the doubtfully stupid things that were being said. Then it was time for The Armed Man which was the work I had found reviewed and what I was looking forward too. At first the video seemed a bit better; there was historical footage of soldiers going to war, military parades and people building bombs all sped up or slowed down with to the tempo of the songs-- a bit literal its true but acceptable. But then they added recreations I think the Napoleonic Wars, and maybe the War of Independence intercutting that with images of the S.S. just feels weird. It made me squirm in my seat and look away. I know I should have kept closing my eyes and looking away but the thing is that when there is video its almost impossbile for me to look away no matter how awful I am a bit like my cat Kala when she sees a fly, my eyes keep going back again and again even if I know what I see will torment me. Well, just when I thought it couldn't get worse there were images of the World Trade Center falling down while the choir lifted their arms shook their hands and made some sort AHHHH or Ohhhh sound. The work was composed before 2001, which means that they actually had to decide to add this later. That someone thought this was a good idea actually, gives me hope for my future; although not much for society. Clearly, remarkably stupid people succeed all the time, so why not me?


In direct contrast to this horrible even was last Sunday's visit to the Moma.

We didn't have much time and really only saw some of Orozco's work. I loved Samurai Tree Invariants, at first I just thought it was passingly pretty. A room filled with variations on a theme. But as I looked at it my mind began to try to figure out the rules that were being followed for each change o f the image. All of a sudden I understood how it could be that there are almost an infinite amount of variations in chess. This is something that Nane always refers to but I never could really believe--I mean I knew he wasn't lying but I could get it until I saw this. I walked around figuring out some of the rules used and trying to guess what the next image would look like. When I dold him it made me think of chess, he beamed and said he was thinking hte same thing. It turns out so was Orozco although in a more precise way when we read the description on our way out he said he was influenced by the knight's movement on a chess board. So there you go, nice to know I was on a the same wavelength as the artist but I won't be winning any prizes for originality. The thing is, since the mind loves to to see repetition and discern patterns I suspect that almost anyone would love this work. It would be really fun to take a child to experience it. When I ran a children's program at museum many years ago, this was the kind of piece that you could play lots of games with...