Rape of the Sabines
Eve Sussman and the Rufus Corporation Lecture at the Sterling and Francine Clark Institute, Williamstown, MA 10/10/06
By: Jane Hudson - Oct 16, 2006
The popularity of the previous work and the sensation it created produced a financial reward that has now been turned toward the production of Sussman's latest piece "The Intervention of the Sabine Women. " With the Rufus Corporation, a group of actors, technicians, sound and movement coordinators (she brought 12 people with her to the lecture!), Sussman is in post-production phase of the creation of the piece. The presentation at the Clark was an opportunity to screen clips from various locations and to discuss the artist's conceptual ground.
The myth itself has everything to do with desire (the theme of Big Red and Shiny's 51st edition), as it opens up the story of the expansion of ancient Rome by force of rape. The Sabines lived in the countryside outside Rome. The newly arrived "bachelor" Romans launched an attack to abuduct Sabine women taking them back to Rome where they established families. Eventually, the Sabines fought the Romans. On the battledfield the women and children surged en masse and came between the two armies. In this ecstatic gesture, the women forced the unification of two cultures and the expansion of Rome. This moment is the subject of an epic scaled painting by Jacques Louis David.
Sussman has adapted this story to a 1960's context. The art direction recalls the styling of European films of the era: Alain Resnais' "Last Year at Marienbad" Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" Michelangelo Antonioni's "Red Desert" and from an earlier era the tormented bodies of the 'battle' scenes of Sergei Eisenstein's "Potemkin." Sussman has shot the piece in Greece and Berlin in the site of Fascist architecture of the Berlin Airport or the classical arenas of the Pergamon Museum, an ancient stone amphitheater, and a stark soccer field. The imagery is gorgeous and evocative but derivative.
When asked to comment on the 'cinematic' references which are clearly her sources, Sussman demurred. She calls this work 'video art' at the same time she is making references to dance (I could see some Meredith Monk and Yvonne Rainer). Then there were the theatrical tropes, the set pieces, the performance of pathos, and as well something that tried to be sexually driven but felt oddly sexless, soul-less. There were contexts abounding that should have generated psychological tension, but that for me seemed vapid and listless. All this in terms that might be literary, but that ended up as spectacle.
In the end the work couldn't hold a candle to 'Alcazar' (of course it isn't complete yet) in focus and as a critical work. There are loose references to a kind of feminist revolt, but mostly it breaks down into a lot of bodies rubbing against each other. It could be a critique of bourgeois complacency, and the fascist order that keeps the comfort zone intact, but it lost its thunder in the excesses of its costly production values.
Somebody has desire in this mix. Sadly mine wasn't whetted.