Nathalie Melikian
The words flash across the screen like a heartbeat. Black on a white ground, set in good old Times, they fade to black before appearing again after a short pause. Vancouver artist Nathalie Melikian's Action (1999) describes briefly what would be happening on the screen if you were watching an action film. The accompanying music and soundtrack hint at the genre in the same way an Oxo cube hints at a pot of soup - gun shots, police sirens, slamming car doors, minor-key violins.
Tautological references can be both funny and melancholy. I remember a song by Robert Wyatt in which he sang in a heartbreaking voice, lines like 'this is the first verse' during the first verse, or 'this is just another key-change' during a key-change. Using a similar approach, Melikian projects phrases like 'Angle Shot', 'Build up' or 'Car Chase Against Traffic', reminding you of all the action films you've ever seen. The work gives you the feeling that your memories of the film will remain as blurred as the moments in your life you associate with them.
Fiona Banner's text piece The Nam (1997) filtered films about Vietnam through the mind of the artist; the labour of writing them down became an act which mimicked the monstrous nature of the subject itself. Melikian has also sat through a lot of Action movies, but minimised the amount of words needed to describe their structure.
While Action withholds images from the films you may have seen, the second piece in the show, Charlotte and her Boyfriend (1999) is a re-make of an early offering from Godard, Charlotte et son Jules (1958). It's a film Melikian has only ever read about, as the few copies that exist of it are too old and fragile to be screened. The artist transformed her understanding of it into a short film subtitled The Melodrama: a couple have just broken up and the woman has returned to visit her ex for the last time, while her new boyfriend waits in the car outside (as Godard once said, to trigger a movie you need a woman, a man and a car). The male character intones 'I don't want to debate the meanings of love...' before breaking into a Godardian monologue about love; she looks out of the window before he grabs a gun and shoots out of the same window - but with disinterested Auteur film cool, nobody reacts.
Melikian obviously briefed her actors to deliver their dialogue in the most mechanical way possible. Yet, Action is ultimately the more powerful of the two videos - however good a job the actors may have done, their faces and voices have a presence which distracts the viewer from structural rather than narrative references to histories of narration.
There's a hypertext to Melikian's work that develops its own peculiar poetry: I can't help, for example, but read 'Angle Shot' as 'Angel Shot' (I imagine an angel with camera eyes, wings flapping, hovering over the head of Bruce Willis). Ellipses such as 'Endless Failed Escape Attempts' followed by a devastating 'Everybody's Wounded', can make you nervous when accompanied by the right music. And just when you fully embrace alliterations such as 'Helicopter Hovering' and 'Heroine Held Hostage', you start to realise that all these words are in strict alphabetical order - 'The End' occurs a third into the piece, while the actual end reads 'Weapon of Destruction. Wide Angle. Wipe. Zoom'. The narration turns out to be even more of an illusion then you thought it was. And it makes you wonder: how can I be moved by an alphabet.
Melikian's work is not so much about the genre of horror or action or melodrama, but about the beauty and banality of their construction. It's like the difference between contemplating the design of a luxury car and trying to comprehend the mathematics of its roaring engine, and in doing so somehow building an engine of your own.
