INTERFACE
Visual art exhibitions and events with a platform for critical writing
REVIEW
The Golden Record – Sounds of Earth
Collective Gallery, Edinburgh
1 August – 13 September
Reviewed by: Juliana Marie Capes
Despite having lived in Edinburgh for twelve years, I still get surprised each year when August arrives and the festival period lands, as if from space, seemingly overnight. The city swells into a great alien beast of performing arts; every nook and cranny crammed with culture, swarming with those who make and watch it. Your only option is to surrender to the new rhythm or face being a grumpy humbug until autumn.
Among the invading festivals, the ‘Fringe’, renowned for its convoy of cackling heralds, its comedians, has often seemed the most vibrant, but in recent years Edinburgh’s art galleries have joined the citywide jamboree, as the Edinburgh Arts Festival.
In the heart of the city, two minutes from the frantic activity of the Fringe performers on the High Street, we see a stalwart of the Edinburgh art scene, Collective Gallery, straddling both festivals with its own public offering, ‘The Golden Record – Sounds of Earth’, a lighthearted exploration of culture, comedy and aliens.
The exhibition was based upon the original, and serious, 1977 ‘Golden Record’; an undertaking that saw images and sound recordings of earth launched into space on the Voyager spacecraft. American astronomer Carl Sagan collated the original time-capsule-come-self-obsessed love letter to the galaxy; a bundle that contained images and recordings selected to represent the diversity of Earth’s life and culture. This modern and entertaining reinterpretation – curated by Mel Brimfield – invited over 100 artists and comedic performers to remake the key elements of the original project.
In addition to Fringe comedians being included in the exhibition, the gallery chose to emulate the format of many comedy events, with weekly late-night gigs taking place in the space in which fifteen comedians compete to win the honour of representing mankind as the voice of the record’s opening address, a job undertaken in the 1977 original by the then U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim.
This vein of comedy continued elsewhere into the exhibition, with a silly pseudo-scientific documentary by Mel Brimfield and Sally O’Reilly, that embellished the story of Carl Sagan’s endeavour, recasting him as the second husband of Karen Carpenter, of 1970’s pop duo, The Carpenters. Over a slideshow of ‘Pythonesque’ flick cards of random images, Patrick Moore-style narration opined: “The knowledge that humans are not the centre of the universe could perhaps unhinge some people.” This video set the tone of daftness that characterised the entire show.
At the back of the gallery, in a room not unlike the hundreds of black-curtained Fringe venues, a reel of video works showed various comedians each explaining an aspect of life on earth – a replacement for the fifty-five Greetings in different languages included on the original golden record. The comedians, including many familiar Fringe Festival faces, demonstrate concepts such as sex toys, singing and eggcups in rehearsal rooms and recording studios. As entertaining as they definitely are, these pieces suffered a little from being shown in a gallery context. It felt strange to be watching comedic performers in an art exhibition when you are within spitting distance of their live shows all month, where the audience can react to what the performer is saying, and heckle if they want to. Also, the acts themselves felt a little generic; not as bitingly satirical or truthful as comedy can be.
In this gallery context these works are outclassed by the visual complexity of the video pieces from visual artists, such as Jason Nelson’s contribution, which also succeeded in holding its own in terms of comedy; showing that an artist’s natural sense of humour can effortlessly translate into their practice. His hand drawn animation blethers along in a ‘Fife wifey’ dialect, telling a tall story of alien abduction with plenty of charm and humour.
This cross-disciplinary mixture approach continued in the main room of the gallery with both artists and performers having been invited to contribute 2D artwork; the walls covered by 116 squares in the familiar dimensions of an LP cover, which in turn reinterpreted the original golden record’s catalogued images, chosen to give a positive view of human life on earth and to portray the ‘most beautiful parts’ of the planet. The exhibition’s contributors were asked to use the titles of the original images to realise their own pictures to represent mankind and our world. Some chose to gently mock the title they have been given, some poetically investigate it, others faithfully recreate it and the rest seemed to ignore it entirely. Should this collection ever make it into the hands of any species assessing the human race, it would tell them much about our desire for individuality than anything else. It proved to be a real insight into life on Earth and the artist’s ability to translate and decode it.
These paintings, drawings and photographs were varied and thoughtful, and proved more satisfying than much else in the show, as they didn’t play exclusively for laughs. Standing, looking and thinking in the silence of the gallery was a perfect foil to the patter of the comedians in the room next door.
There can be truth about life in both art and comedy. The faint haze of unreality this show assumed allowed each individual involved to speak their opinions, veiled in metaphor and role-play, and claim “it’s only art”, or “it’s only comedy” if criticised. Combining these two arts in an exhibition is a premise with great potential, although, the show was not wholly successful in its attempts to create a cohesive bridge between comedy and art. But with so many participants this could perhaps be expected, and despite its failings, it still managed to rib the original golden record in an amusing and upbeat manner. It was a fitting contribution to Edinburgh’s festival period, and a show that was an ambitious and admirable record of the human desire for fun.
Writer detail:
Juliana Capes is an artist based in Edinburgh.
Venue detail:
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