by Jeremy Deller, United Kingdom 2018, 61'
| SHOOTING: Ben J. Smith | LANGUAGE: VO: English; SUB: Italian | |
| PHOTOGRAPHY: Stephen Pook | PRODUCER: Frienze and Gucci | |
| EDITING: Dominic Leung |
Presented at Lo schermo dell'arte 2019The myth of acid house as a niche musical genre, the exclusive domain of a small avant-garde of fashionable London DJs, is definitively exploded. With this film, Jeremy Deller explains, in a lesson given to London high school students, the birth and development of a culture and lifestyle that changed the face of Great Britain, and places acid house at the center of the country’s social transformations between the 80s and early 90s. The artist shows how rave culture was born in depressed suburbs of industrial cities, and how much it owes to the working class protest movements that culminated in the 1984 Battle of Orgreave - the subject of a extraordinary performance by Deller - where striking miners clashed with the police, as well as electronic music from gay clubs of Chicago and the discovery of ecstasy drug. Through archival materials, the artist explains the evolution of English nightlife from clubs and discos to illegal raves, when kids began to occupy abandoned factories and warehouses, turning them into enormous dance floors. The first ravers staged a revolution in rhythm, a struggle against the establishment begun by their fathers to protect workers’ rights, carried on in defense of free expression, a dream of a new world in a post-industrial century, dances to tribal rhythms, which aroused outrage among conservatives and triggered violent reactions from the state. Deller introduces us to high school students who hear these stories for the first time, and for whom they’re already ancient history.
Jeremy Deller:
British artist Jeremy Deller, trained as an art historian, works with video, installation and performance on themes of popular and folk culture. He’s developed an ironic narrative suspended between reality and fiction. He’s interested in the mechanisms on which contemporary societies are structured and in the disparate experiences and relationships of individuals. He makes critical use of the stereotypes spread in society, especially those related to political, economic and religious powers. Winner of the Turner Prize in 2004. Among his solo exhibitions: Sacrilege, Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2018); English Magic, British Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale (2013); Joy in People, Hayward Gallery, London (2012); It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq, Creative Time and New Museum, New York, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2009); Procession, Cornerhouse, Manchester (2009); D’une révolution à l’autre. Carte blanche à Jeremy Deller, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2008).