Impressive sound

Ryoji Ikeda: data.tron.2007
MIC Toi Rerehiko
11 July - 15 August 2008

This installation is not the first time Ryoji Ikeda has presented work in Auckland, but it is the first with visual material. In 2001 he provided sound compositions for Toyo Ito’s Blurring Architecture, a memorable show at ARTSPACE that NZ architect Andrew Barrie organised.

Here in the MIC, it is his sound that dominates – so crisp, razor-sharp, intricate and penetrating that it causes the visual image component to seem comparatively dull.

Ikeda works with rows of data that he transmutes into sound and image and projects at a frenetic rate four times faster than film. Yet despite the use of deep receding perspective and rapidly rising and descending columns of digits, you are not drawn in. It is only on one wall. The immersive sound though encompasses you. Your body tingles as swirling aural sensations snap, crackle and pop their way into your skull. Their staccatoed, vibrating sonic stutters are what you remember.

Shustak

Stuart Page: Shustak
MIC Toi Rerehiko
11 July -15 August 2008

Larence Shustak was a photography lecturer at Ilam art school while I was a painting student there in the early seventies, and much loved by many of my friends. He came to Christchurch after working in the sixties for Life magazine, doing important documentary projects such as for the New York Jazz label Riverside Records (see the one of Monk above), and making a handful of short documentary films. Much of his work deals with the gritty realities of life in East (Greenwich) Village and engages with communities like handicapped children, or the black Jews of Harlem.

Shustak was a gregarious, big-hearted American who liked to talk about art (a category in which EVERYTHING was included), make images, play his banjo and smoke grass. My impression though was he had toked on one ‘j’ too many and lost a lot of brain cells. A lovely warm man, but hardly what I would call ‘wise’. I imagine others (like Stuart Page who here presents samples from his documentary on Shustak and a curated selection of Shustak’s photographs and short films) will vehemently disagree.

Page’s trailer for his film is extremely informative, but only about 20 minutes long. It is a shame MIC just don’t have continuous screenings of the full 90 minute doco. (After all some of the German videos recently shown at St Paul St were almost that long and people came and went at will.)

I met Shustak several times, know many of the people in the film and am more than a little puzzled. It would be good to get a fuller grasp of what he was on about as a teacher. Many of his black and white photographs were very eclectic – Brandt, Brassai especially – but his jazz portraits are wonderful. Shustak is obviously very highly rated by his peers in the States, and seeing a proper full length documentary would hopefully reveal a great deal. In the meantime there is an excellent (albeit a little worshipful) essay by James Robertson in the free takeaway poster/catalogue.