iMuseo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)Ciudad Universitaria, Coyoacán
Julian Rosefeldt. Manifesto
A 13-channel film installation re-staging artists' manifestos, from Futurism and Dada to Fluxus and Dogma 95, to question the artist's role today.
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At a funeral, Cate Blanchett plays a widow who fights back tears to tell the mourners: "Dada is shit. But from now on, we want to shit in different colors." It's one of 13 films in Sala 9, each with a different Blanchett speaking a collage of artists' manifestos.
You walk between the screens at your own pace. A broker recites the Futurists, a tattooed punk the Mexican poet Manuel Maples Arce, a newsreader Sol LeWitt. Twelve films run 10.5 minutes each after a four-minute prologue, about 130 minutes in all. Reviewing the installation at New York's Park Avenue Armory in 2016, IndieWire's Jude Dry called it "a remarkable meditation on the purpose of art" and "pretty entertaining".
It's all projection and spoken text, so give it time. Tickets are MXN 60, half price on Sundays and free on Thursdays from 18:00 to 20:00.
Editor's pick
Cate Blanchett, as a widow at a graveside, delivers the Dada manifestos as a eulogy. Thirteen screens, thirteen Blanchetts, about 130 minutes in all; IndieWire called it "a remarkable meditation on the purpose of art" and "pretty entertaining".
Look for
The Dada funeral
Blanchett, as a eulogising widow among elegantly dressed mourners, delivers the Dada manifestos as a graveside speech.
The classroom
A schoolteacher works the Dogme 95 rules and Jim Jarmusch's filmmaking advice into a lesson for a class of doodling seven-year-olds.
The garbage plant
An industrial trash compactor dumps its load as Blanchett, a plant worker, cries "Hurray for everlasting architecture."
The bearded vagabond
A homeless man shouts at the sky that "the role of the artist can only be that of the revolutionary".
The chorus
At one moment all thirteen Blanchetts turn to face the camera and speak at once in a sing-song monotone, each at a different pitch.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Nerding Out
Skip if
You want objects on walls: this is thirteen projected films and nothing else.
With kids
Under-12s get into MUAC free. The texts include swearing, such as the Dada eulogy.
Also at Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)
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Image credits
5
- Julian Rosefeldt. ManifestoCourtesy of Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)
- El Códice de AzcatitlanCourtesy of Museo Nacional de Antropología
- Entretejidas | Mextrópoli, 13o. Festival de Arquitectura y CiudadCourtesy of Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso
- El evento de un hilo. Narrativas globales en los textilesCourtesy of Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo
- Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC)Luisalvaz / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0