Daria Martin: One of the Things That Makes Me Doubt `Bb` Dctb`Shnm Biography Daria Martin Was Born in San Francisco in 1973 and Has Been Based in London Since 2002

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Daria Martin: One of the things that makes me doubt `bb` dctb`shnm Biography Daria Martin was born in San Francisco in 1973 and has been based in London since 2002. She received her BA in humanities from Yale University in 1995 and her MFA from UCLA in 2000.

Martin’s solo exhibitions include Sensorium Tests, MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, UK, 2012, and Three M Commission: Minotaur, a touring exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, New Museum in New York, Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, 2009–10, S.M.A.K. in Ghent, 2007, Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, 2006, Kunsthalle Zürich, 2005, and the Kunstverein in Hamburg, 2005. Martin’s trilogy of ﬁlms, In the Palace (2000), Birds (2001) and Close Up Gallery (2003), was acquired by the Tate in 2007.

Working between theatre, design and art, Martin’s hypnotic 16 mm ﬁlms create a magical, mystical, mythical world, activating the spaces of dream and the unconscious. The artist describes her works as ‘daydream machines’.

‘Subjects such as robots, an archive of dream diaries and close-up ‘I came to the medium of ﬁlm card magic, are explored within isolated spaces such as the wings of a theatre, a military academy, or a scaled up modernist sculpture,’ because of its open potential, she says. ‘These protective yet fragmented settings, full of seams and shadows, stand in for the capacities of the ﬁlm medium itself, a permeable container that consumes and recycles the world at large.’ its invitation to travel through

In this exhibition, created especially for and with ACCA, Martin presents time and space within an her largest ever survey of films together with her grandmothers diary notes, drawings and paintings. Significant works including Birds (2001), Wintergarden (2005-11), and Harpstrings and Lava (2007) are imagined world.’ presented in stages, all leading to the final encompassing film: One of the Things that Makes Me Doubt. DARIA MARTIN `bb` dctb`shnm Curatorial Rationale

Daria Martin, whose distinctive artistic labour and Martin’s fictions. aesthetic, delivered in 16 mm Also presented are paintings film, deals with the body’s senses and diary notes by Martin’s as well as the extra-sensory grandmother, Susi Martin, which zones of memory, dream and manifest a collaboration across the unconscious. Martin employs generations. tableaux, linking her films to other JULIANA ENGBERG

depictions from art history, such Images below left to right: Daria Martin Birds (2001), as the paintings of the Symbolists Soft Materials (2004), Birds, Untitled painting by and Surrealists, as well as the Susi Martin, Soft Materials. costumes and attitudes of the Bauhaus theatre.

Daria’s ﬁlms take the viewer into a kind of sombulant state. Hypnotic in pace and curious in their stories which use symbolism and myth as foundational elements, they present as dreams in a continuous exploration of character and experience.

Martin’s works are presented as stages leading to the final encompassing film: One of the Things that Makes Me Doubt. This, like a psychoanalytic session, impinges on the minds of Martin’s actors as they grapple with their filmic personae, with the nature of

`bb` dctb`shnm Exhibition Map The exhibition consists of seven 16 mm ﬁlms, plus a selection of typed diary pages and paintings by Daria’s grandmother, Susi Martin.

[WORK 1] Daria Martin Birds 2001 16 mm film 7 minutes 30 seconds [WORK 2] Daria Martin In the Palace 2000 16 mm film 7 minutes [WORK 3] Daria Martin Soft Materials 2004 16 mm film 10 minutes 30 seconds [WORK 4] Daria Martin Wintergarden 2005-2011 16 mm film 12 minutes [WORK 5] Daria Martin Harpstrings and Lava 2007 16 mm film 13 minutes [WORK 6] Daria Martin Minotaur 2008 16 mm film 9 minutes [WORK 7] Daria Martin One of The Things That Makes Me Doubt 2010-2011 16 mm film, 32 minutes Copyright the artist. Courtesy Maureen Paley, London. `bb` dctb`shnm Key works Birds 2001 16 mm film 7 minutes 30 seconds

In her early works at art school Daria Martin created abstract paintings, however her interest in the assemblage works of artist Joseph Cornell lead her to film and an interest in surrealism. Cornell is best known for his boxed assemblages in which he arranged objects reflecting his various interests. For Martin, the medium of film could provide a similar opportunity to combine disciplines and to quote and layer references from art, dance and film history, creating a gesamtkunstwerk, or total painting set in motion. Above and left, Daria Martin, Birds (2001); Below left to right Wassily Kandinsky Composition VIII (1923); Oskar Schlemmer Bauhaus performances (circa 1923) Filmed in a white studio space, Birds (2001) references the ideals of Modernism with a soundtrack crafted with a moog synthesizer and performers dressed in retro-futuristic costumes reminiscent of Oskar Schlemmer’s Bauhaus ballet. Drawing reference from Kandinsky, Martin combines colourful geometric props with playful tableaux vivants that embrace awkwardness and absurdity.

‘I intentionally include in the edit moments in which the performer drops their guard, stops acting, allows themselves to relax, ‘I was intrigued by Oskar Schlemmer’s direction of the Bauhaus reveals exhaustion,’ Martin has said. theatre program: he combined instruction in the arts of vaudeville Tate curator Carmen Juliá has written with an application of his own rigorous painting practice; he created that ‘Martin’s films combine sculptural a continuum, not always seamless, between the dress-up games of form and painterly colour with the the Bauhaus’ gala costumed balls and his own self-serious, pseudo- performing body, and are characterised scientific study of abstraction. I’m very attracted to awkward clashes by a lack of dialogue that leaves the like Schlemmer’s: areas where Apollonian control and Dionysian body, articulated by pose, as the main means of expression.’ release come into conflict.’ DARIA MARTIN `bb` dctb`shnm `bb` dctb`shnm Daria Martin, Birds (2001) Key works In the Palace 2000 16 mm film 7 minutes

As an art student Martin saw Swiss artist Alberto Giocometti’s sculpture The Palace at 4 A.M. 1932 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. She was taken by the work’s ‘particularly evocative feeling, as if the ﬁgures within it have each been caught within their own dreams, simultaneously sleepwalking through the same house’

She created a scaled up version of the sculpture for her MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles. The idea that sparked In the Palace’ Martin has explained, ‘was a desire to literally Above and left, Daria Martin, In The Palace (2000); Below left to right Alberto Giacommetti. In The Palace realise my own fantasy to inhabit this at 4am (1932); Joseph Cornell, Fortune Telling Parrot (1937) photograph by George Platt Lyne (1941); small sculpture, to blow it up to human Martha Graham, Lamentation (1930); dimensions and to populate it with ‘Joseph Cornell, who ﬁlled performers’. hundreds of boxes with delicate selections from his collections Martin’s performers are poised in a of objects and images, is an series of tableau vivants resembling the artist who has fascinated me for choreographies of The Ballet Russe and many years. His boxes seem to Martha Graham, as well the photographs compress emotional experience; of George Platt Lynes. sometimes, like Giacometti’s early sculptures, they take the form of a game or a maquette that seemed to invite, yet exclude, participation. These boxes seduce you into complicity, yet they also shut you out of their self-contained worlds. Like The Palace at 4am, they suggest a whole world growing from a lap- sized space.’ DARIA MARTIN `bb` dctb`shnm `bb` dctb`shnm Daria Martin, In The Palace (2000) Key works Wintergarden 2005-2011 16 mm ﬁlm 12 minutes

Daria Martin’s Wintergarden takes place at the De La Warr Pavilion on the east coast of England. A modernist architectural masterpiece, one of the architects, Eric Mendelsohn had envisioned a monumental statue of the Greek goddess Persephone to stand alongside the pavilion. This odd coupling of modernist architecture and classical sculpture was never realized, as the Persephone statue was not approved. Fascinated by the proposal for this sculpture, and its potential implications in the context of a Modernist building, Martin creates a modern day Persephone, based on the Greek myth of Persephone, the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, who was carried off to the world of the dead by Hades. No longer working just with frozen composition and tableau vivant, choreography and the movement of performers becomes an important element in Wintergarden.

‘My 16mm ﬁlms aim to create a continuity or parity between disparate artistic media (such as painting and performance), between people and objects, and between internal and social worlds. Human gesture and seductive imagery meet physically mannered artiﬁce to pry loose viewers’ learned habits of perception. Mistranslation opens holes for imagination to enter or exit.’ DARIA MARTIN

All images: Daria Martin, Wintergarden (2005-2011) `bb` dctb`shnm Key works One Of The Things That Makes Me Doubt 2010-2011 16 mm ﬁlm, 32 minutes

After viewing Martin’s body of film work and her late grandmother’s dream diaries and painting, the final film in the exhibition One of The Things… layers these works together. Entries from the diaries are read out by the voicless performers featured in Martin’s previous films, combined with outtakes from these ten years’ worth of films.

When Martin began working with the dream diaries she explained that ‘This project was created as a way for me to digest the fact of my grandmother’s recent death. She was an amateur painter and a brilliant, deeply introverted intellect. She kept heavy shelves filled with meticulous All images, Daria Martin, One Of The Things That Makes Me Doubt (2010-2011) diaries, detailed records of her dreams and years’ worth of notes on her Jungian analysis. She agreed, before her death, to allow the family to look at her diaries. ‘Susi’s paintings and diaries are the ‘ground’ of the I made photocopies of about 100 pages from the late 60’s and early 70’s: a time piece, and I layered on top of her relatively private of intense and agonizing crisis in her life, bodies of work my relatively public body of film work. when her dreams were especially vivid. As the film progresses, Susi’s centrality is diffused, I was interested to see that her personal spinning off into parallel conversations with actress- history of escaping from the Nazi invasion of Europe surfaced so strongly in her es who have appeared in my films. These women dreams several decades later. I was also interested in the degree to which perhaps become stand-ins for Susi, or her part per- these diaries referred so often to arts and sonas, the recurring personalities she tracked in her artifice: objects, sculptures, paintings, plays and 1960’s “happenings” all make dreams – an internal community.’ their appearance on the stage of her DARIA MARTIN dreamworld.’ `bb` dctb`shnm `bb` dctb`shnm Daria Martin, One Of The Things That Makes Me Doubt (2010-2011) ‘There’s a longstanding romance between art forms In my work I try to fold that interdisciplinary approach at least through the 20th century—writers looking at back into a more intimate and private realm, one where a art, artists listening to musicians, fashion and art in kind of internal “utopia” can unravel. And so fantasising mutual fascination. There’s always something about about past moments where this cross breeding has another medium, which seduces, the things it can do, happened in a less commercialised way—Graham, which one’s own cannot. At the moment I’m amazed Noguchi, Rauschenberg—is a way of finding some by the freedom and discipline of musicians improvising traction, of escaping from our contemporary culture’s together onstage. That camaraderie, communication, slick version of Gesamtkunstwerk. My work seeks and intense interdependence is virtually nonexistent to reassemble this romance between the art forms, amongst visual artists today, unfortunately. to backtrack in time and perhaps suggest a different method for those paths to be forged.’ My generation has come of age in a time that’s increasingly interdependent and hybrid on the one DARIA MARTIN hand and increasingly fragmented and isolating on the other. It’s a paradox: so much information is at our fingertips, yet collective direction seems unclear. The hybrid art form—the “total artwork” or Gesamtkunstwerk that the Bauhaus celebrated— is all around us in commercial form: video clips, television, and especially films. Of course, even the most commercial Hollywood films integrate image, text, sound, and usually music; they are the legacy of Wagner’s opera. For my generation, coming of age in a time beyond postmodernism, a cross breeding between genres is completely taken for granted.

`bb` dctb`shnm Daria Martin, Harpstrings and Lava (2007) Symbolism GLOSSARY OF ART TERMS French critic Jean Moréas first coined the term Symbolism in 1886 to describe the poetry of Mallarmé and Verlaine. the term was soon applied to art that described Abstract Expressionism continuation, in face of Impressionism, Realism, Naturalism, of traditional Abstract Expressionism is a movement in American painting that flourished in New mythological, religious and literary subject matter, but fuelled by new psychological York City after World War II. The work of these artists all looked quite different to content, particularly erotic and mystical. each other, however they shared an interest in using abstraction to convey strong emotional or expressive content. Tableaux vivant Bauhaus Theatre Translated from French, tableaux vivant means ‘living pictures.’ Used in paintings and Oskar Schlemmer was a German painter, sculptor, designer and choreographer theatre performances, a tableau vivant describes a group of suitably costumed actors associated with the Bauhaus school. In 1923 he was hired as Master of Form at the or artist’s models, carefully posed and often theatrically lit. The casts of characters Bauhaus theatre workshop, after working some time at the workshop of sculpture. remain silent and frozen as they represent scenes from literature, art, history, or His most famous work is “Triadisches Ballett,” in which the actors are transfigured everyday life. from the normal to geometrical shapes. Also in Slat Dance and Treppenwitz, the performers’ costumes make them into living sculpture, as if part of the scenery. Dream Diary A dream diary (or dream journal) is a diary in which nightly dreams are recorded. It is often used in the study of dream interpretation and psychoanalysis. Many artists have kept dream diaries and used them as inspiration for their artworks, particularly those working in the Symbolist and the Surrealist movements. Gesamtkunstwerk Translated from German, gesamtkunstwerk means ‘total work of art’ and describes a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so. The term was first used in 1827, and later became associated with the German opera composer Richard Wagner. Today many contemporary visual artists strive to create gesamtkunstwerk by incorporating many art forms into a work. Jungian Analysis Jungian analysis is a method of psychotherapy developed by Carl Jung, the eminent Swiss psychiatrist (1875-1961). The Jungian analyst and patient work together to increase the patient’s consciousness in order to move toward psychological balance and wholeness, and to bring relief and meaning to psychological suffering. Dreams often play a central role in Jungian analysis as Jung believed dreams reflect the richness and complexity of the entire unconscious, both personal and collective. Surrealism Surrealism was an artistic, intellectual, and literary movement led by poet André Breton from 1924 through World War II. Breton declared that Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world Surrealist Film of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in “an absolute Entr’acte, above, is a 1924 Surrealist film directed by René Clair and written by Francis reality, a surreality.” Picabia.

`bb` dctb`shnm CURRICULUM LINKS & ACTIVITIES

PRE-VISIT DISCUSSIONS Why is art important? What makes something a work of art? What are the most important skills an artist can have? What materials and tools do artists use to create art today? How do artworks using film or video differ from what we watch on television or in the cinema? Where do artists find inspiration? Harpstrings and Lava, 2007 What is the difference between working alone and collaborating with others? Must artworks be beautiful? AT ACCA What elements of film or video might make it an appealing medium for ACCA’s FREE education programs mean that students will engage in theory, an artist to work in? language and practice while visiting the exhibition. For the Daria Martin exhibition, students may participate in the following programs: TALK Watch selected film works in the Daria Martin exhibition with a guided tour from ACCA’s qualified Education staff. Key themes are explained and tours are tailored to suit all year groups and subjects. THINK Use contemporary art as the stimulus for philosophical dialogue and search for meaning in our THINK workshop. Collaborative inquiry is used to investigate the concepts, symbolism and themes students have wondered about in the exhibition. Experience contemporary art as a mode of thinking, and ACCA as an ideas laboratory. MAKE After experiencing Daria Martin’s ‘daydream machines’ create a dream catcher at ACCA to take home. Use your dream catcher to hold on to your good dreams, and stop the bad ones. Write them down when you wake up, and use Harpstrings and Lava, 2007 them with the following activity suggestions. `bb` dctb`shnm POST-VISIT

VCE ART Investigate Daria Martin’s work using the Analytical Frameworks.

Formal Framework Daria Martin, One Of The Things That Makes Me Doubt (2010-2011) Look At Birds (2001) What materials and techniques has Daria Martin used? How does the combination of mediums and particular technical skills she has used shape or affect interpretation? VCE STUDIO ARTS Personal Framework Unit 1: Interpretation of art ideas and use of materials and techniques What relationship does the final film in the exhibition One Of The Things... (2011) have to Daria Martin’s life and experiences? What visual evidence Visit the Daria Martin exhibition to examine how both the artist, and her supports this reading? Explain a specific process or practice that the artist grandmother Susi Martin have approached the use of dreams through differ- has used in creating the artwork that reflects the artist’s personal history. ent mediums - painting and film, and styles - abstraction and surrealism.

Cultural Framework Research the Surrealist and Abstract Expressionist movements, with par- Daria Martin references different movements and artworks from Modernism ticular focus on how dreams and the subconscious were explored and in her ﬁlms. Resarch the utopian ideals of Modern Art and discuss the ways represented. Write down a dream you have had. Try representing the dream in which this movement in history have shaped the intention of the artist? through abstract painting, and with a surrealist drawing or collage.

Contemporary Framework Unit 2: Ideas and styles in artworks While the exhibition is credited to Daria Martin, it includes works made by Compare and contrast Daria Martin’s Birds (2001) with Wassily Kandinsky’s her grandmother. How does the presentation of artworks and noted that Composition VIII (1923) (Guggenheim collection) Discuss the aesthetic quali- have not been made by Daria Martin reﬂect or challenge artistic or social ties in artworks, communicated ideas and developed styles present in each traditions? work.

`bb` dctb`shnm AUSVELS ACTIVITIES FURTHER READING

After creating a dream catcher at ACCA, take it home and hang it in Daria Martin: One Of The Things That Makes Me Doubt exhibition catalogue, your room. It catches bad dreams and allows good dreams through. Published by Australian Centre for Contemporary Art 2013 Keep a dream diary to remember your dreams. You will need to do the Daria Martin by Catherine Wood, Beatrix Ruf and Daria Martin. Published following: JRP|Ringier; Bilingual edition, 2006. ISBN 3905701545

Prepare: Keep a pen and paper by your bed. Poor Man’s Expression Technology, Experimental Film, Conceptual Art Edited by Review: As soon as you awaken review the elements of your dream. Martin Ebner and Florian Zeyfang. Sternberg press, 2011 ISBN 978-1-934105-01-6 Key words: Identify key words from your dream, out of which you can www.dariamartin.com create a title for your dream. Write down the title and key words fol- lowed by as much of the dream as you remember. http://www.maureenpaley.com/artists/daria-martin Journal: Keep a Journal of your dreams and your notes, thoughts and feelings about your dreams. http://www.absolutearts.com/artsnews/2005/01/24/32701.html Associations: Write down your associations to the images or symbols http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/martin-in-the-palace-t12744/text-summary in your dreams. Context/Setting: Note the context of events in your outer life at the http://www.stedelijk.nl/en/40051/daria-martin-in-the-palace-wintergarden#sthash. time of the dream, and also the setting of your dream. PmDy5jwR.dpuf Structure: Look at the structure of your dream. a) What is the initial situation? b) What develops or changes? c) What is the action? d) What is the climax? Characters: Note the characters in the dream, and determine if there BOOKINGS & ENQUIRIES is an identiﬁable protagonist. ACCA’s free education programs are available for Primary, Second- Feeling: Note any particular emotions or feelings associated with ary and Tertiary groups between 10am - 4pm from Monday to Friday. your dream. Maximum 25 students per group for THINK and MAKE programs.

Now you can use your dream writings to: Bookings are required for both guided and self-guided School and Ter- Create a drawing of your dream (You could try an abstract drawing, tiary groups. School or Tertiary groups arriving without a pre-booking focusing on colour, shape and lines that represent how you felt in your may be required to wait to see exhibitions. Please be considerate of dream) other classes and the public in gallery spaces. Create a musical soundtrack that would ﬁt your dream Arrange your classmates in a ‘tableau vivant’ representing a scene Contact [email protected] or call (03) 9697 9999 if you from your dream would like to bring a Primary, Secondary, Tertiary or community group. Write a layered/shared dream story with a partner `bb` dctb`shnm `bb` 111 Sturt Street Southbank Victoria 3006 Australia Tel +61 3 9697 9999 Fax +61 3 9686 8830 accaonline.org.au