Linder: Forgetful Green

Linder’s commission was filmed following her recent performance at the Chisenhale Gallery, London.

On July 10th, a 13-hour improvisational performance, The Darktown Cakewalk: Celebrated from the House of FAME, took place at the Chisenhale Gallery. The next day, the characters from The Darktown Cakewalk – a Star, a Muse, Puella Aeterna, a Witch, a Cakewalk King and Queen - found themselves blinking in the early morning light in the Rose Field of Cants of Colchester, the oldest rose growers in Britain. The three-minute film begins here – the morning after the night before as if in Heironymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights - now manicured, suburban and retail. Abandoned hairdryers, vacuum cleaners and other domestic appliances amongst the roses pun on the use of 20th-century Bosch electrical appliances.

The three-minute duration of the film mirrors that of the seven-inch single. Three minutes of sound was the optimum recorded length for a single due to the constraints of manufactured vinyl from 1900 until the 1960s. Songwriters and musicians composed and recorded songs appropriate to the constraints of this format. A three-minute single, a ‘spiral scratch’, is reflected in the filmed choreography throughout the rose garden, and echoes the mystical spirals of Dante or the mythic site of Glastonbury Tor.

The characters from The Darktown Cakewalk circle through the rose garden led by Linder as Minerva (Minnie Mouse’s original name) and eventually meet the artist Harminder Singh Judge as the goddess Kali by way of Gene Simmons from the rock group, Kiss. The film traces a compressed history of glamour, from its origins in 18th-century Scotland describing enchantment, to its present day aerosolic ghosts.

This year, Frieze Film was curated by Sarah McCrory under the auspices of Frieze Projects and supported by Channel 4. It included four commissioned films amd a curated film programme. Frieze Film was shown in a specially constructed cinema outside the entrance to the fair and was free to the public. The commissioned films by British artists were shown alongside specially selected programmes as well as existing films by this year’s Frieze Projects artists.

Launched in 2007, Frieze Film is a series of new films commissioned from established and emerging artists and premiered annually as part of Frieze Projects, Frieze London’s non-profit curated programme.