By A.J. Goldmann 

A Review of the Beastie Boys’ new concert film and an interview with the band members

The pantheon of great rock concert movies is small but distinguished. It includes such masterworks as Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, the Maysles brothers’ Gimme Shelter, and Jonathan Demme’s Stop Making Sense. At their best, these films succeed both in capturing live performances in all their kinetic excitement and heart-thumping intensity and offer rare and candid insight into the musicians’ personalities and artistry.

The new Beastie Boys movie, Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That! (An Authorized Bootleg), falls very short of the bar for rock movie greatness. The idea was simple. Beastie boy Adam Yauch (aka MCA), who directed the film using the pseudonym Nathanial Hörnblowér, handed 50 lightweight digital cameras out to audience members at a sold-out concert in fall 2004 at Madison Square Garden.

“What inspired the idea of the movie was that Yauch had seen a fan posted a little bit of footage using a bit of a camera phone on their Web site, and that was inspirational,” Beastie Boy Mike D recalls. The only instructions that the volunteer videographers were given were to “press the magical red button” at the start of the concert and keep on recording till the final number.”

“Surprisingly, people were careful enough that they [the cameras] all got returned, and none got broken,” Mike D continues, explaining that they held on to the volunteers’ drivers licenses as collateral during the show.

The amateur cameramen were strategically placed throughout the arena in order to capture the concert from all possible distances and angles. In addition, five professional DV cameras captured the action up close. Yauch and the film’s editor, Neil Usatin, sifted through the dozens of hours of footage and compiled the 90-minute film from the most interesting bits.

“Neil wanted to be sure that we weren’t missing anything good, and he sat and watched every single camera from beginning to end,” Yauch explains.

Unfortunately, this highly interesting concept does not translate well. There is nothing earth-shattering or revelatory about seeing the same concert from 50 different—but generally similar—views. In much of the footage, the cameras are either zoomed in on the stage so that the cameraman’s actual position in the theater is indeterminable, or they are so far back that the stage is barely visible in the 35mm blowup. In fact, the footage shot by the DV cameras is so sharp and so vibrant that one wishes that they wouldn’t cut to the handhelds quite so frequently.

Only rarely do the amateur camera operators manage to capture the strange and unexpected—a woman dancing precisely the same way as Mike D, a humorous mid-concert trip to the toilet. The coolest effect is a 50-way split that definitely outdoes Mike Figgis’ Timecode and appears time and again. But on the whole, while viewing the finished product, one can’t help but feel bad about Neil and all those wasted hours in the cutting room. As the film progresses, so to does Yauch’s dependency on artsy effects such as strobing and other Final Cut Pro tricks.

“It was more of a decision in the editing room,” says Yauch. “We started playing around with some things for different songs.”

For all these reasons, Awesome: I Fuckin’ Shot That is a film whose appeal doesn’t extend past its title. This is a pity, especially considering what a great performance the band gives—a performance that only the DVs are capable of capturing.

The performances of 23 favorites such as “Sabotage” and “Shake Your Rump” are energetic, quirky, and colorful—thank God the sound was recorded in multi-track and mixed later rather than with the crummy camera mics. Part of what makes the performance so exciting is the improvisational shenanigans of their DJ Mix Master Mike, who keeps the Boys on their toes.

“A lot of times, what we’ll do is start with the first verse, which we’ll do over the main beat of the song, and after that, it’s a free-for-all. He’ll [Mix Master Mike] just throw beats in, and we have to figure out how to make our lyrics work over the beats. It keeps it interesting and keeps us on our toes,” says Yauch.

Mike D agrees: “The sample thing for the film was actually one of the bigger hurdles in making it. Mike throws so many different things in from different places.” The concert also features a colorful selection from the Beastie Boys’ wardrobe.

“We got free stuff from Adidas, so that helped our decision-making process,” says Beastie Boy Ad Rock. “I like the jumpsuits the best of all of the things.”

Mike D chimes in: “We also had Jean Paul Gaultier design us a full line of clothes for the show, but we didn’t wear them. It didn’t come to fruition.”

The band also dedicates its performance of “Sabotage” to President Bush. Mike D explains: “On that tour, definitely, because that tour took place leading up to the American election, and then, dishearteningly, past it, so that was definitely something that was big on our minds. It’s not like it has to be about politics, but it’s an incredible medium and can serve right for that.”

Should we expect more forays into political terrain from the band? The answer, at least for Mike D, seems to be no. “I’m currently working on a big album by Faith Hill,” he says. “I do some of the digital editing, some of the special effects, and the graphics, the album cover, the airbrushing … and I play the glockenspiel, too.”

“3 Films by Louis Malle” (Criterion, SRP $79.95)

Reviewed by A.J. Goldmann

The filmmaker Louis Malle was always willing to tackle morally ambiguous subjects in a frank and way. In a career spanning four decades and 20 films, he coolly examined incest, pedophilia, the Nazi occupation and the French collaboration, often retaining the ambiguity and leaving the judgment up to the viewer. The Criterion Collection has compiled several of the director’s best in 3 Films by Louis Malle. The films, available for the first time on DVD, all deal with one of Malle’s chief preoccupations, youth and the loss of experience. To their credit, Criterion has decided to let the films speak for themselves. The few, mostly-well chosen supplements are relegated to an extra Supplements disc, which is available only as part of the boxset.

Murmur of the Heart

    Many of Malle’s films sparked debate, but perhaps nowhere (except possibly Pretty Baby)  was the debate louder than over Murmur of the Heart, with its provocative treatment of adolescent sexuality and climactic scene of incest.
    The film follow the 14-year-old Laurent Chevalier (Benoit Ferreux), a Camus-loving, jazz enthusiast growing up in 1954. He and his older brothers, Thomas and Marc, are the Antoine Doinels for a new generation. Nothing in sacred for this bunch, who wreak havoc with their complete irreverence and high shenanigans wherever they are: in class, at dinnertime, at a brothel. This wickedly funny film will make you wish your childhood was half and wild and stylish as the three rollicking Chevaliers’.
    There is a perceptible mood shift in the middle of the film, when Lauent is discovered to have a heart murmur and is taken by his mother (the Italian actress Leá Massari) to a hotel spa. Here Lucien’s Oedipal longings, set up in the first half with a Proustian fixation on a goodnight kiss, intensify simultaneous to his confidence about women his own age. Even after the film’s shocking denouement, one is left wondering if Laurent is really and truly weaned.      

Lacombe, Lucien

“I can’t bring myself to completely despise you,” says a character to Lucien Lacombe, a teenage Nazi collaborator who muscles his way into the household of a Jewish tailor in order to court his daughter. It’s a sentiment that we as viewers can understand. No matter how strongly Lucien’s behavior revolts our moral sense, we invariably acknowledge his immaturity – and lack of finesse – as his saving grace.
    Early in the film, Lucien (given a wonderfully understated performance by Pierre Blaise) is rejected from joining up with the partisans. Disillusioned with the resistance, he unwittingly volunteers himself as a Gestapo informant and denounces the underground leaders in his town. He soon becomes a member of the Gestapo, and struts around in custom-made suits, menacing those around him for kicks. His ungraceful attempts to court a Jewish tailor’s daughter are darkly comic, unpredictable and nerve-wracking. Malle claimed that he wanted to follow Lucien around without explaining or judging him. But Lucien’s final act of foolhardy heroism, and a postscript telling us Lucien was executed as a collaborator after the war, make it hard to believe that Malle suspended judgment.
    The film portrays the adult collaborators as a bunch that act as much out of cruelty as out of boredom.  In this, Lacombe, Lucien brings to mind films such as Salo and the Conformist Visually speaking, this is the starkest of the batch, shot with a fluid handheld that makes the film teeter on the brink of violence. Much of the film also has the surrealistic flavor one finds in Malle’s chillingly opaque Black Moon.

Au Revior Les Enfants

    Winner of numerous awards and hands down the most overplayed film in high school French classes, Au Revoir les Enfants is by far the gentlest and most accessible offering of the batch. Malle is never less cynical and more sympathetic than in this autobiographical film about the friendship of two boys in a catholic boarding school during the Nazi occupation: one Jewish, the other Catholic. Malle’s alter-ego, the 12-year-old Julien, guesses at the secret of his talented friend, Bonnet, who bathes separate from the other boys and doesn’t receive communion. After some initial friction, a warm friendship develops between them, which is ultimately shattered by the betrayal of a disgruntled boarding-school employee. Malle’s direct and simple style allows the viewer to experience the film through Julien’s eyes. We feel the terror in Bonnet’s eyes when the Gestapo drive him and Julien back from a ill-fated game of capture-the-flag; we are incredibly and physically present with Julien on the brisk morning when he sees his friend and the head of the boarding-school (based on the real-life figure of Père Jacques) disappear forever.     

By A.J. Goldmann 

Metropolitan Opera Review

Mazeppa
March 10, 2006

    Traditionally speaking, a premiere at the Metropolitan Opera is usually a hit or miss proposition. In past years there have been hits (An American Tragedy, A View from the Bridge) and misses (The Great Gatsby). The case of the Met’s new production of Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa is an interesting case. It arrived in early March in a co-production with the Mariinsky Theater of St. Petersburg, which previously presented a different production at the Met during a guest residency in 1998.    
    That this 120 + year-old opera had to wait so long for a New York premiere seems an unforgivable oversight. Based on Pushkin’s narrative poem, “Poltava,” Mazeppa is less known but no less compelling than Tchaikovsky’s other Pushkin-based works, Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades.
    Like its source material, Mazeppa  tells of the late 17th century hetman of the Cossacks who conspired with the King of Sweden to lead an insurgency against Peter the Great. While Mazeppa’s uprising was ultimately crushed at the battle of Poltava, in the nineteenth century, he became the subject of some as a hero of Ukrainian nationalism. Tchaikovsky chose to ignore the political dimensions of Pushkin’s poem and instead milked it for its purely dramatic potential.
    At the core of the opera is the romance between the aging hetman and his goddaughter, Maria, daughter of the wealthy Cossack, Kochubey. After Maria defies her father by marrying Mazeppa, Kochubey threatens to expose Mazeppa’s dark plans to the Czar, only to have his head cut off my Mazeppa. Maria learns of her husband’s dark purposes and goes mad. The opera ends in the wake of the battle of Poltava, with Mazeppa fleeing for his life while Maria in left to die in the freezing cold.
    If Mazeppa is a discovery, than it is a shame that the overly- and ill-conceived production doesn’t do it justice. The Mariinsky has imported many of its principle talents, chief among them Maestro Valerie Gergiev who’s fiery temperament and somewhat erratic persona fits Tchaikovsky’s warm-blooded and searing score like a glove. Also on hand are several of the talents who contributed to the Met’s ill-fated 2002 company premiere of Prokofiev’s War and Piece. That overstuffed production hit a glitch opening night when a goat fell into the orchestra pit. 
    Yuri Alexandrov’s production, while not as over-the-top as War and Peace does have an even larger share of outlandish touches. For this symbol-laden evening, Alexandrov throws whatever he wants onstage – plaster-cast statues that look like action figures, dancers in garish golden costumes, Cossacks wearing rubberized bat-suits with style pony-pails protruding from their bald heads, you name it! Invariably, some of these touches work. Most, however, do not.  At its best, this new production looks like some edgy instillation you might encounter at a Chelsea gallery; at its worst it feel like you’ve stumbled into a sci-fi convention designed with the shimmering gaudiness of Broadway’s The Lion King.
    Set designer George Tsypin, who also has to his credit the sets for Julie Taymor’s blockbuster production of Die Zauberflöte, has exhibited work at the Venice Biennale and even designed the 1999 MTV music awards. While there were come clever touches time and again, the overwhelming sense one got was of being adrift in a kitschy sea of Eurotrash. This was especially true of the first act with its glaringly golden field of wheat and marble columns with comic-book-meets-social-realism statues and Persian rugs. There was little sense to make out of the onstage spectacle of Kochubey’s feast in Mazeppa’s honor, which included a lengthy ballet sequence that drew groans from the audience.
    The choreography of Sergei Gritsai (another W&P veteran) might have worked if the slew of dancers were better coordinated and wearing something a trifle less silly than gold tutus and stockings). That said, credit is due to Alexandrov / Tsypin for the horrifying Act II finale – Kochubey’s execution – which was far and away the most gruesome spectacle I’ve seen on the Met stage.
    Vocally, the evening was superb. There were few glitches from this mostly-Russian cast. As the tragically naïve Maria, soprano Olga Gurtakova was deep throated, with a voice that carried well over the performance’s four hours. She only faltered slightly in a big Act III aria. She was also somewhat hard to hear when pitted against Putilin’s Mazeppa. But at evening’s end, she sounded as clear and fresh at she had at the beginning.
    The punishing role of Mazeppa was assumed by Nikolai Putilin, a full-bodied and deeply textured baritone who was equally at home in declaring his love as he was in wreaking horrifying vengeance, an ability which made for a compelling, three-dimensional character. Almost his equal, Paata Burchuladze started off a bit stiff, but soon found his footing ingeniously, delivering a bold, brazen performance that culminated with his deeply affecting “Three Treasures” aria in Act II.
    In the supporting roles, Larissa Diadkova made a forceful – if somewhat clichéd – impression as Maria’s mother Lyubov and Oleg Balashov as the opera’s sole tenor, Andrei, sang powerfully and sympathetically, although he was admittedly rather wooden. He did, however, pull through beautifully for his dying duet with Mariah, to which he gave an honesty that was lacking from his earlier work.       
    In the pit, Gergiev gave a forceful account of the endlessly lyrical score. He overture was strident, solid and clear, with suitably clipped playing from the strings. His account of the dramatic Act III prelude, which describes the battle of Poltava, was a thrilling dramatic performance in its own right.

By A.J. Goldmann 

Carnegie Hall Review:
The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra
Saturday, March 11, 2006 at 8PM

    Spano opened the work with violins, cellos and chorus in a marvelously effective and otherworldly whisper that had the unfortunate effect of leaving the music susceptible to being marred some consumptive Atlantans in the audience. But amidst the coughs, the women of the chorus and the  strings carried along the flickering melody. For the Kyrie, the tenor Frank Lopardo entered with a booming, heroic tenor. The electric soloists remained easily audible with a wall of sound – the absolutely massive chorus – in back of them.
    The Dies Irae was a dynamic, unabashed display of extravagance and fire. The blazing chorus – menacing, tempestuous and unrelenting - was easily heard above the energetic musicians. The percussion was dead-on and piercingly powerful. The victorious trumpets built to a thrilling climax in their call-and–response. Invested both emotionally and physically Spano led the ferocious and well-trained ensemble. In his solo, bass Greer Grimsley was direct and precise if a bit stiff. Mezzo Stephanie Blythe stayed her ground well, backed up by the determined chorus. She let out a big, gorgeous sound rather effortlessly even in her lower register in a thoroughly dramatic performance. While on the whole capable and robust, Lopardo could be hard to hear next to the female soloists, including the soprano Andrea Gruber. The two women struck a good balance together. Even without the support of the orchestra they seemed to have enough texture and stamina to carry the performance. Their duets, however, could’ve done with a little less diva flair. Since the entire force seemed to operate at such a consistently frenzied level, it seemed a miracle that everyone was so clearly audible; I suspect that some audience members needed to turn their hearing aids down. Blythe especially could’ve managed to go a few notches lower in the more lyrical moments of “recordare Jesu pie.” Lopardo struck a sour note transitioning from a soft quiver to a full-bodied heroic tenor at the beginning of his lengthy solo, “Ingemisco tanquam reus” which would have benefited from a bit more flair. Grimsley was far better at breathing fire. He sang the “confutatis” with a menacing boom worthy of Scarpia. In the Offertorium, Gruber entered with an exquisite, sustained long note. The Sanctus was an opportunity for the chorus to shine. The Angus Dei, with its resemblance to Nabucco was memorable, a stately, quiet moment in the midst of all these fireworks. In the final movement, Libre Me Gruber sang with Wagnerian flair and the chorus responded in a whisper. She sang slow and careful and her high notes rang out with force and transfixing power. She navigated her way through the tempestuous waters as easily as wading through a stream and ended on an unexpected note of understatement.

By A.J. Goldmann

Carnegie Hall Review:
The Boston Symphony Orchestra
Monday, March 6, 2006 at 8PM

After James Levine bowed out of the BSO’s 2006 American Tour due to a shoulder injury resulting from a fall onstage in early March, a replacement was quickly found for the orchestra’s scheduled appearance at Carnegie Hall the following Monday. The conductor chosen to fill in for a concert which included Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony and Beethoven’s Ninth was the estimable Marek Janowski, the current musical director of the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
Here was a great orchestra paired with a great conductor. However, the result sounded like a mismatch. Mr. Levine had no doubt prepared the BSO extensively, and one sensed in the Beethoven a lack of communication between players and conductor. For the Schoenberg to be the highlight of such a program was a severe disappointment, especially given the dramatically raised price of admission.
Janowski gave Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony No. 1 the perverse attention to detail that an expressionist work like this merits. This fascinating one-movement work dates from relatively early in the composer’s career, around the time of his immersion in the post-romantic idiom that pervades such works as Verklärte Nacht and Gurrelieder. Although performed as a single-movement, it is further subdivided into five through-composed movements. The composer revisited the symphony in 1939 and produced a version for full orchestra. Leading the BSO in the re-orchestrated version, Janowski wisely kept the volume at a level where the various thematic strains could shine through. The first violin made a particularly strong impression, with an extremely tremulous vibrato. That said, the strings tended to sound on the whole a bit monochromatic. But aside from this there was little to complain of. In this piece, where the texture can change from thick to thin in a moment and melodies pile up and ramble on of their own accord, the winds struck a good balance with the often-harsh strings. The angular contours of the piece took on a sharp form from musicians playing at the top of their game, sounding full and strident. One speculated that the same ensemble could follow the work up with a performance of Scheherazade.
After intermission came the Beethoven. The number of musicians on stage grew and the bleachers teamed with members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus. In the first movement, the horns made a ghostly entrance while around them the strings built to a solid crescendo. Section by section, it was a dynamic performance marked by Janowski’s tendency to ease tension at the end of phrases. The horns gave a pensive reading, while the strings sounded impulsive. And while he highlighted certain descending figures, other more central ones got lost in a flurry. The bass was solid and reliable, but the pervasive percussion was a tad to enthusiastic. At times, the winds hovered in a barely audible zone and some texture was lost.
In the second movement, Janowski proved himself a much more energetic maestro than Levine, who lends his interpretive stamp on a piece mostly during rehearsals. He flapped around vigorously urging the violins for something they couldn’t quite provide. Again, the overzealous drummer ensured that the audience was wide-awake. After a fairly predictably opening movement, Janowski took the symphony at break-neck speed. Yes, the music is thrilling, but the gallop at which Janowski took it seemed inappropriate. Without time to breathe and rushing though measure after measure, the winds sounded as mechanical as a video-game soundtrack. One lamented that with the extreme velocity of the performance that much of the beautiful detail was lost. Even in the lyrical third movement, Janowski was intent on racing though. One lamented the lack of emotional connectedness in a movement in which the music seemed to climax in one big yawn.
The musicians too seemed a bit caught off-guard that their conductor was leading a triathlon. As they opened the final movement at break-neck speed, the horns were ill-coordinated and muddled. While the strings were ample, the basses could’ve started on the Ode a bit more softly. While the movement hurdled towards its inevitable climax, there was little tension to sustain the listener. Tenor Clifton Forbis charged forth in a commanding (if slightly hoarse) voice. The other soloists – Soprano Christine Brewer, Mezzo Jill Grove and Bass Albert Dohmen turned out solid accounts. Of the bunch, Dohmen, hard to hear at times, was least impressive. But while the soloists were mostly easily heard over the massive and well-trained chorus, they often were shouting at each other rather than singing together. For the very last round of the “Ode,” Janowski, possibly aware that he hadn’t attained the level of emotional intensity he’d been aiming for, harnessed the entire force for one final push. It sounded forced and any emotional impact it made was easily forgotten.

By A.J. Goldmann 

Carnegie Hall Review:
The Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Saturday March 4, 2006 at 8PM

  
    The Vienna Philharmonic holds a unique position among the world’s major orchestras as the only one legislated directly by the musicians. Made up of the crème de la crème of today’s musical artists, the VPO has a radically amount of freedom to chose their conductors in a way that is otherwise unheard of.
    Riccardo Muti, the recently-resigned musical director of La Scala, has enjoyed the attentions of the VPO for over three decades. Earlier this year, the players invited him to Vienna to ring in Mozart’s 250th birthday. When he led the players in three Carnegie Hall concerts earlier this month, it was more than apparent that Muti and Vienna have enjoyed a long and fruitful open marriage.
    In the second Carnegie concert, on Saturday night, Muti radiated familiarly, elegance and effortlessness as he led the players in a program featuring music by Schubert, Mozart and R. Strauss.   
    At the podium, Muti cut a dashing and elegant figure. He led with a firm command of the musicians, but there was no room for spontaneity in his conducting. Leading with Germanic precision, he made the music sound very angular and terse. The musicians stayed close to their instruments the whole evening, and showed an astonishing amount of versatility in an ambitious if somewhat lopsided program.
    The first piece, Schubert’s Overture to Rosamunde was an unmemorable touch on an already too long program that no one would have missed. Muti made the opening three-note figure slow and laborious. On the whole, he imbued the piece with a plodding quality that lent an air of mystery. Slow, methodical and pulsing, the performance was marked by fine work from the strings, who stayed close to their instruments as Muti playfully coaxed them.
    The second item, Mozart’s delicious Sinfonia Concertante  for violin and viola was among the evening’s highlights. The VPO soloists, Rainer Honeck on violin and Tobia Lea on viola, both gave dazzling performances; and while Honeck, swaying this way and that like a puffed-up bird, could be accused of indulging in some overripe showmanship, his ardent and assured playing made for a fitting contrast to Lea’s more restrained bowing. Where Honeck exaggerated his high notes to deliberately comic effect, Lea was more reserved, deploying judicious vibrato, for an overall subtler and more satisfying performance. Watching Honeck ham things up with his Stradivarius alongside the no-less-confidant but more earnest Lea was the musical equivalent to Wildean repartee. At other times, it seemed an amusing game of one-upmanship, with Honeck thrilling with his high notes and Lea countering with sharp thrusts of his bow.
    For much of the performance, Muti seemed to sit back and watch the players’ craftsmanship affectionately. In the blissful andante, Muti was keen on making Mozart sound like a late Romantic. The violins could shift from shrill to lyrical in a flash and the rests were dangerously exaggerated. The result was music that could melt slowly on the tip of his tongue. 
    After intermission came Schubert’s Fourth Symphony, which seemed to employ a larger fraction of the musicians than the two previous works combined. Nicknamed the Tragic, the Fourth is among the composer’s most accomplished adolescent compositions. The 19-year-old Schubert had steeped himself in German Lieder; more than anything the poignant and dramatic melodies of the Fourth Symphony, rendering in clear and rhetorical style say more about his abilities as a composer of Lieder than of symphonies. The orchestration remains unremarkable, and despite some clever turns, represents the youthful strivings of a composer who would write his finest compositions for piano, voice and string quartet. Ever dependable, the strings did grade A work, with the violins sounding especially luminescent in the legato phrases and memorably jagged elsewhere. The winds were routinely too loud and the brass sounded muddled. To his credit, however, Muti made the Menuetto effectively unsentimental and built up nicely to the well-earned crescendos. Echoes of Mozart (Don Giovanni especially) were present throughout, and a careful regulation of dynamic levels ensured that all constituent parts were well heard and accounted for. 
    Only for the final piece of the evening, Richard Strauss’ tone poem Death and Transfiguration, was the entire orchestra on stage. The Strauss was well worth the wait; but after hearing the VPO at full strength, one was left craving more.
    Death and Transfiguration dates from relatively early in Strauss’ carreer. It is one of those remarkable pieces that remind us music’s emotional core. Muti was well attuned to the music’s thunderous, religious and dramatic potential. He clipped the end of the phrases and kept augmenting the tension. Strauss’ richly detailed score with its beguilingly ambient theme was well serviced. Wonder-filled flourishes abounded, including a highlighted harp and violin duet. The seven double basses sounded thunderous and clearly articulated the bass line. As the piece wore on, the playing became more successively full-blown and over-the-top. At times had a hard time making it sound like a coherent, holistic whole. Tension built and built but to what end? Muti could have scaled down the horns, for the trombones especially grew too loud in spots. The chaos at the performance’s middle was washed away by a grippingly vexing finale. It was a performance that, despite it’s shortcomings, would please any Strauss enthusiast. For all the rest in the audience, Muti reminded us how near and dear opera is to his heart by leading the entire orchestra in a muscular encore of the overture to Verdi’s La forza del destino.     

Let’s say that my familiarity with recent Lebanese history leaves something to be desired. Thus, on entering the Kitchen’s exhibit, I was expecting something in the way of historical explanation. The conspicuous absence of such introductory material was the first false note the exhibit struck for me. All the placard mentioned was that Walid Raad had spent the past 14 years (1990 – 2004) working with materials from the archives of the Atlas Group. There was no mention of any other parties having ever been involved in this group, and there was only the scantest reference to the events that the group had been chronicling.
The first work, Secrets in the Open Sea, struck me as an unbelievable concept. How, I asked myself, could these blue prints contain enough information to extract a photographic image? I was likewise puzzled that the gentleman present in the images weren’t introduced, except to say that they were all recognized by the Altas Group.
Notebook Volume 72: Missing Lebanese Wars, the preservation of Dr. Fadl Farhouki’s obsessive and puzzling notebook entries on Lebanese war historians and their betting habits (on horses and photographs of horses) did nothing but increase my bewilderment. The systematicity and obsessiveness of the project brought to mind the work of the Oulipo, the French experimental writing group) and the filmmaker, Peter Greenaway. Indeed, these notebooks seemed straight out of any one of a number of Greenaway’s quirky, pseudo-documentaries and films.
What struck me most about the alleged self-portraits of Dr. Farhouki was hope perfectly posed and well exposed they were. The photographs just seemed too professional and self-conscious to have been snapped in an instant under the Eiffel Tower or while casually sitting at home.
While looking at these photographs I was informed (by another student) that the entire exhibit was a fabrication. This had been a suspicion of mine all along, and confirmation of this suspicion somehow made it easier for my to enjoy the exhibit. With the awareness that all I was looking at was but a construction, an alternate history, I opened myself up more to the art and began to applaud its cleverness. Through imagining and constructing alternate histories, the Altas Group makes one ponder the relation of art to history memory and violence, both through what is said and implied by the work.