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The End - Ragnar Kjartansson

Banff National Park, Alberta

"In Canada, I will make a video that will make me cry. In unbearable frost and thin air I shall hold my shivvering dried-up heart in my hand..."


     If the Walter Philips Gallery had more than one exhibition going, I didn't see the rest. I was pretty contented with Ragnar Kjartansson's The End- a video installment in 5 parts projected simultaneously onto the walls of a pitch-black, blacked-out room. The words Video Installment usually make me cringe too, to be honest I was expecting something more akin to the Miss Chief video in Calgary.
     But in February of last year Kjartansson and musician David Por Jonsson went out to the Rockies, donned Davie Crocket caps and played guitars, banjos, drums, bass, piano and electric guitar in temperatures as low as -20 degrees C. The result is 'a five-channel video installation synched together as a single disfigured country music arrangement in the chord of G', and absolutely sublime.
     To start with I got stuck watching just one screen. The electric guitarist (predictably) was my first choice- his pink Fender and Marshall stack sticking out like a sore thumb against the mountainous backdrop- but when another figure wandered onscreen, nodding along with the music and smoking a cigarette, and apparently doing nothing else, I turned away to the others. After a while it becomes obvious this is nothing like a music video- there are no cut-to-screens or focusing on any one musician. I ended up feeling a little like a director, with the choice of the five screens and the power to mix them together as I pleased.
     I ended up watching the guys you couldn't hear. Only this way could you see the banjo player pull out a bottle of bourbon, the bassist kicking up the snow, electric guitar-man bumming the cigarette off his friend, or the third guitarist putting gloves on his freezing hands and humming along instead.
     This was undoubtedly the best art installment I've ever seen. Even the layout of the room was bare enough to make it a very personal, touching affair- there was nothing else but black paint and black carpet. No benches, no seating of any kind, so you can either stand awkwardly, like in a normal gallery, or just give in and sit or lie on the floor. Preferably with your eyes closed.
     All in all, a very good way to spend half an hour.
Only the thought of the freezing walk back to town getting even more freezing as the clock ticked past five made me get up at all.

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