ResonanceDesign

Why Sonar lost me with Chris Cunningham

Chris Cunningham’ work has always been described as controversial. Now, I don’t really know where controversial starts, so this will not be my public debate here. Especially, as I have to say there is much more controversial work out there, but then again, it won’t get the circulation that Cunningham gets. Sonar festival in Barcelona decided to show a number of his works during one of the rave nights in the middle of a huge complex outside of Barcelona, some 15,000 people doing various rave activities (dancing, mainly). They showed, amongst others, Cunningham’s ‘Flex’ (a naked man and woman beating and kicking each other violently, the woman heavily bleeding synched to a harsh base) and another one, which shows a sleeping kid, lying on bed, her facial features being pushed and eventually her stomach (cut?) open, again to some harsh electronic beats.

The simplicity of my description makes the imagery sound fairly crude and cruel, but the visuals in combination with the sound really are. There are moments the whole experience goes toe to toe with imagery from the HBO series ‘Spartacus – Blood and Sand’, which also pushed the boundaries for accepted pornographic and violent gory imagery on mainstream tv. As HBO’s intentions are straightforward, Cunningham’s decision to use such a primal language is at least to me, conceptually fairly two-dimensional.

How one might feel about this drift into violence and mutilation is one thing, but here is the thing that made the experience most shocking. Imagine standing in between a mass of teenagers and early tweens cheering and beer-drinking to that footage, without even a single age restriction warning. (I am not aware the event itself was age restricted). The combination of both cheerfulness, uncontrolled energy and dark extreme visuals made one realize how mobs can abandon common sense so easily.

Bottomline, I am very critical about the unrestrained showing of Cunningham’s work in a context where people are likely unprepared or unfamiliar with his work. This is not saying, his work shouldn’t be ‘controversial’ or not be shown, but I wouldn’t screen ‘Irreversible’ on a public square either. So apart from the generally positive vibe and experience of Sonar festival, that one, why,… Sonar why?

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