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Ssetting the mood for this year’s Glasgow International (GI) is a dedicated show David Wojnarowicz – artist, writer and 1980s East Village scene. Including drawings, photos and videos, it is set inside a Georgian house so decaying that you can see holes in the fabric of the building. Stop to look between the cracked bricks and you’ll see a sculpture of a cow’s head that Wojnarowicz painted in the New York piers. On the top floor, Wojnarowicz’s dead pictures of his former lover Peter Hujar to be one elegiac wall. Take a look. Through fragments of the split ceiling drama of the film that was not completed at the time of Wojnarowicz’s death, in 1992, at the age of 37.
Sometimes the artist’s voice enters the architecture, from the soundtrack to Itsofomo (In the Shadow of Forward Motion) playing on the TV box. “I wake up every morning in the killing machine called America and I’m as angry as a bloody egg,” he says, spitting out rage. The words contained a real story – New York during the Aids epidemic – and yet Wojnarowicz’s anger at a system that failed to serve him or protect him seems symbolic.
The next day I went there for the last time Glasgowa vape shop attached to Central station caught fire. Back, a few months ago, the main entrance of the station was closed. It is very recent that many roads, streets and buildings in the city are now cut with hoardings, Heras fences and scaffolding. Among the areas not to be visited are cultural institutions including the Charles Rennie Mackintosh-School of Art which burned down in 2014 and 2018, and the Center for Contemporary Art, which closed earlier this year. While the image of the city is becoming less and less accessible to its people, Glasgow has found a permanent place, as if it has not completely surrendered to the current situation.
“Every day goes by until something happens, and then I continue in the endless struggle of being connected to the world,” he said. Renèe Helena Browne for their film, Flat. Filmed in Donegal, Flat follows his uncle Browne as he lives on a cattle farm, building a house in a barn and teaching him about the sun. It’s a film about many things: the confusion of building materials, fertility, our place in nature. But at its core, it is about struggle and survival. Picture life as an endless sequence of events, mistakes and corrections.
Sasraku brother‘s Tropical Hardware is a long-lasting and beautiful installation. Camouflage-colored wooden frames and military-style armored personnel carriers are carved from large amounts of newsprint paper, dyed with UV light. Trinkets filled with waste oil from office boxes – military experiments. Like Browne, Sasraku explores aspects of masculinity – starting from the perspective of a soldier’s wife serving in the Gulf. The result is motivation, wealth, patriotism and violence, which is provided by a hot umbrella.
Putting two strong films together examines the struggles of people and institutions. Rehana Zaman‘s Plantation examines the working conditions of migrant and seasonal farm workers in Pakistan and Scotland. Their dire dependence on other people’s soil is exacerbated by climate change. Floods occur while Zaman is filming in Pakistan. They make films about families who have gathered together and live in boats on muddy waters after losing everything.
In three aspects, Naeem Mohaimen‘s Through a Mirror Darkly pieces together historical documents related to the shooting of civil rights students and anti-Vietnam war protests at Jackson State College and Kent State University in 1970. Showing the scarcity of artifacts – and cultural memory – of black students at Jackson State, it’s a film filled with gaps. In a sad demonstration (if more is needed) of our selfish leaders, a Vietnamese journalist working in the US feels that although Americans call it the Vietnam War, it should be called a re-election war, because this is what boosted the support of the President.
Wojnarowicz’s exhibition serves as a poignant reminder that art is worth fighting for, and what can be achieved through community and comradeship with those willing to take action. Beyond the gallery, GI honors projects with a local focus. In the northern part of Springburn. Mandy McIntosh offers a community-made bronze sculpture, mounted on a blank canvas that once contained community art. The room is located in what used to be a park, opposite a train station that locals long to get to. McIntosh is determined to restore the values that the neighborhood has neglected. At the nearby station is Vincent Butler’s Heritage and Hope – a 1989 sculpture he found struggling in storage and he fought to return to the people.
The beautiful Kinning Park Complex is an important place for action, which was awarded in 1996 after 55 days of operation. Katy DoveA Glasgow artist who is committed to experimentation and collaboration alike. A historical video of school children dancing thoughtfully and joyfully followed by individual animations brought tears to my eyes.
Though clearly of death and mourning, Rae-Yen’s song‘s Tua Mak is also very life-affirming. With the neon glow of a creature of the deep, a large, thin eight-story building, surrounded by richly embroidered silk robes, houses portable glass. Spirits of Pepperand giant inflatable tardigrades. In the center is a vitrine filled with water filled with water from the Song family’s pool, and masks to be used in performances during the festival. Tua Mak (“big eyes”) is an ancestor who drowned in the sea at the age of 13, and this beautiful and beautiful scene acts as a reconciliation with water spirits, the path of life and death, life and decay. In the local and international environment that may seem alarming, but here it is a welcome celebration of cyclicality and connectivity.
