Nada: Act II (2017), single channel HD video, 13 min 01 sec, stereo
The film is based on the 1958 production of Béla Bartók’s pantomime ballet The Miraculous Mandarin – the work that the Yugoslav State chose to represent its new direction on Nations Day at the Brussels EXPO almost sixty years ago. Here it is repurposed, mis-imagined and overwritten with new purpose in collaboration with the choreographer Lea Anderson. Bartok’s original characters – the pimps, prostitute and exotic Mandarin – are here replaced with the archetypes of politicians, the ideal of Mother Nation, and that most easily abused of Modern practitioners: the architect. Shot in the Arne Jacobsen’s Aarhus City Hall it links across time and space various European models of statecraft, soft power and its framing. Co-commissioned by European Capital of Culture Aarhus 2017, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art Gateshead and supported by Arts Council England, Northern Film School at Leeds Beckett University and Waddington Studios London.