What does MTV have in common with political performance art? What does German stage composer Kurt Weil from the 1920s have in common with feminist electro-pop group Chicks on Speed? And what links Margate to the anti-globalisation lobby, the oil industry and the French resistance movement?
The answer: Artist Anat Ben-David. Before graduating in 2003, with a MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths College, she studied at the School of Visual Theatre in Jerusalem. There she developed an interest in the radical dramatic theories of Bertold Brecht, which suggest that the ‘false’ reality created by the performing arts should be exposed to the audience so that they can critically engage with what they are looking at. Applying these ideas to her own artistic practice Anat Ben-David took her experience as a performer and applied it to both video and live art works that blur the boundaries and make connections between art, theatre and reality.
Now Limbo Arts has commissioned Anat to produce an exhibition and performance especially for Margate. The new work will reimagine the song Die Muschel von Margate by Brecht collaborator Kurt Weill, taking further inspiration from T S Eliot’s poem The Wasteland, which was partly written in Margate and famously contains the lines, 'On Margate sands. I can connect Nothing with nothing'.
The original Die Muschel von Margate (which has been translated into English as Mussels from Margate – though a more accurate translation would read The Shell of Margate,) was written for Ukrainian playwright Leo Lania’s satirical play “Konjuktur”, and tells the story of how, on the promenade at an English seaside resort, an oil refinery eventually replaces a little souvenir kiosk selling painted shells. The seller’s yell – “Shell! Shell! Shell!” soon becomes an angry rant against the Shell Oil Company.
For the new piece, Anat Ben-David will be using parts of both texts and adding new material to create a visual performance work that will combine music (the artist is a member of musical collective Chicks on Speed, touring with them and Peaches in 2002 and releasing her solo album Virtual Leisure on Chicks on Speeds’ record label in 2008), video and print to create an installation, through which she intends to recreate the fictionalised Margate of Weill and Eliot’s writing; a place where the romantic ideals of the past collide with the industrial capitalism of the modern world.
www.yippieyeah.co.uk
An exhibition of prints and video work will be on show at the Substation Project Space between 21 March and 25 – 28 March 2010 with a special performance to kick the show off on 20 March at 7pm.
Limbo gratefully acknowledges the generous financial support of 'The Elephant Trust,' as a contribution to artist fees for Anat Ben-David.