In his post-September 11 State of the Union address, George W. Bush declared: “For too long our culture has said, ‘If it feels good, do it.’ Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: ‘Let’s roll.’” The statement takes center stage in “Xanadu,” Robert Boyd’s four-channel video installation on display at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery. Named after the 1980 Olivia Newton-John musical, “Xanadu” is a series of five videos that depict some of the 20 and 21 centuries’ most horrific events and influential religious and political leaders, set to a euphoric soundtrack of disco hits. The images in “Xanadu” show that we have indeed left the feel-good era of disco music and have entered into a new militarized world.
Inspired to create “Xanadu” by America’s decision to invade Iraq, Boyd spent three years gathering footage from all over the world for the five videos that comprise the installation.
“I probably spent thousands of hours watching this footage and picking out the most iconic images, so there was nothing superfluous about the piece,” Boyd said.
Cut at an MTV-style frenetic pace, viewers are barraged with the images of iconic figures who led others astray. The images start off almost humorous, but become progressively horrific.
“It’s sort of taking a global perspective of self-destructive behavior and ideologies,” Boyd said. “If we subscribe to a system about immediately cataclysmic ideology, what do we do to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy?”
Each video has a certain theme. The first video, “Heaven’s Little Helper,” set to “Everytime” by Britney Spears, deals with cults from the Manson Family to Heaven’s Gate to Aum Shinrikyo. The second one, “Patriot Act,” set to Donna Summer’s “I Will Go with You,” opens with images from Nazi Germany and explores political movements. The third in the series, “Judgment Day,” set to a remix of “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” by Madonna, examines the connection between religion and politics, and shows footage of groups from all over the world, including Hindu nationalists, Israeli settlers, and American Christian fundamentalists. The fourth and final video in the series, also called “Xanadu,” depicts an onslaught of gruesome images of death and destruction, culminating in homemade footage of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, filmed by Boyd from Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
The fifth video, “Exit Strategy,” which serves as both a prologue and an epilogue to the series, plays separately from the other videos in the North Gallery of the Zilkha.
“It’s the fourth channel of the piece and it’s a much quieter piece,” Boyd said. “It has all the cult leaders speaking about death, the president, etc. from their vantage point.”
The layout of the exhibit, with its three screens in the main gallery and one in the northern part, contributes to the overall experience of “Xanadu.” “Heaven’s Little Helper” is showcased on the central screen of the Main Gallery, the next two videos are on either side screen, and “Xanadu” brings the action back to the middle screen.
“I wanted to take it away from a cinematic experience and take it to an installation experience, so people have to constantly re-position themselves,” Boyd said.
The necessary movement by the viewer helps to elicit a physically parallel response to the emotions felt by watching the images on the screens.
“In order to see all the projections, the viewer is forced to move around which may feel a bit awkward or uncomfortable,” said Zilkha curator Nina Felshin. “But, hey, feeling a bit awkward or even perhaps a little physically manipulated is nothing compared to the psychological manipulation that’s represented in the videotapes.”
The physical component of the exhibit helps illustrate one of the installation’s main arguments—that people should not passively and blindly follow a leader. The carefree sound and up-tempo beat of the disco music, combined with a large revolving disco ball overhead, provides a stark contrast to the images on-screen, and the viewer cannot help but be swept away by both aspects.
“The soundtrack makes you want to move your body to the beat of the music,” Felshin said. “But how can you callow yourself to feel this way, to feel like you’re being entertained or lulled as if by a narcotic, while watching images of an unraveling world? And then it dawns on you that by eliciting these physical responses the artist has implicated you psychologically in the events moving by you at breakneck speed.”
Nobody gets a pass in “Xanadu,” and the viewers themselves may leave the exhibit feeling implicated.
“While this is not the intention of the artist, I came away feeling that if we don’t do something, if we don’t challenge what’s being served up to us, we will meet essentially the same fate as the victims represented in Boyd’s ‘Xanadu,’” Felshin said. “There is subtext to this work which, as an activist, I would characterize as a call to action or resistance.”
Robert Boyd’s “Xanadu” can be seen at the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery from Saturday, Jan. 27 to Sunday, March 4, 2007. The gallery hours are Tuesday-Thursday and Saturday-Sunday from 12-4 p.m., and Friday from 12-8 p.m.
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