Allan Sekula is a literary artist. His essayistic photography and film material is informed more by literature and cinema than its static counterparts of painting and sculpture. Thus, his works are driven by narrative, and require concentrated reading. Film Retrospective, which charts the development of Sekula’s video practice from the early 70s, is a typical example of the necessarily time-consuming nature of his work.
Part of Kirsten Lloyd’s Social Documents exhibition trilogy, Sekula’s retrospective continues the examination of documentary modes in contemporary art. The exhibition consists of six films, which are both projected in the gallery at set times and available to view on individual monitors. Similar to the last instalment of Social Documents, the exhibition is demanding. The films are not fleeting experiences; the shortest being over ten minutes, and the longest forty-five.
The earliest of the films, Performance Under Working Conditions, demonstrates Sekula’s interest in the theme of labour conditions and class structures. This is again explored in Tsukiji, which follows a day in the life of the world’s largest fish market, in Tokyo. The film captures the brutal and repetitive activity within the context of economic globalisation. He has claimed the film as a ‘lament for socialism and the sea.’
Reagan Tape, produced in 1981 during the early days of Reagan’s first term in office, revolves around the President’s first State of the Union Address. Sekula has spliced together excerpts from the economically-focused speech, with excerpts taken from his previous career as a movie star. The juxtaposition of the nascent ‘Reaganonomics’ with scenes of Reagan attempting to domesticate a chimpanzee in Bedtime for Bonzo, is still ruthlessly comical after 30 years. It also demonstrates Sekula’s capability to present documentary material which is simultaneously elegiac, witty, searing and politically
acute.
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