U.S. composer Jonathan Blair and South African artist, Mikhael Subotzky have collaborated on a project which premiered at the Goodman Gallery in London on 8 June 2022 – Epilogue: Disordered, and Flatulent is a thirty-minute single-channel projection film which follows various strands of narration between three central points in time; the mid 17th century, the mid 20th century, and the present.
Blair was commissioned by Subotzky to create a score for a work by Subotzky that takes snapshots along a transhistorical evolution of racism and systems of patriarchy beginning in the 17th century, through the apartheid era, and finally today where it focuses on the story of a homeless man named Hermanus, whom Subtozky befriended in the early 2000s, and has continued a relationship with until present.
Subotzky begins with paintings of Rembrandt —an emblematic representation of the Dutch Golden age— and begins to deconstruct them by removing the paint, and animating it according to the multifarious narratives explored in the film.
Over two years meticulously crafting this project
Blair was tasked with taking Haydn’s Die Schöpfung and similarly deconstructing it in similar fashion across the tranhistorical narrative. In the end, it employed a chamber ensemble consisting of members of the Cape Town Philharmonic as well as eight singers from Cape Town Opera.
Blair and Subotzky spent over two years meticulously crafting this project, containing dialogues in which the disciplines of both the visuals and the music inform, respond and transform to each other in linguistic and representative ways.
Formally, the cantata and the film interweave within another; aspects of the film are told through narration that presents autobiographical dialogue between Subotzky and his just dying father, journal entries by John Milton, the story of Hermanus, going from orphan, to imprisoned convict, to living on the streets of Cape Town as an elderly man imparting ethos, wisdom, and incantations of his own idiosyncratic mythologies. The operatic solo aspects and chamber ensemble sections carry the threads of reflection from a disembodied observer, outside of the strains of the time-frame in which the film is set.
Epilogue: Disordered, and Flatulent can be viewed free of charge. To access the film click here
More info about the musical side of this project can be found here
WS
