Did you know that at the border between Mexico and California an undeground tunnel connects the cities of Mexicali and Calexico? You can access it from the Dragon Restaurant, in Mexicali's Chinatown.
But you're warned: if you enter the tunnel in Mexico, you don't emerge in the States, but in a huge hypermarket located somewhere in China, a Baroque temple where millions of plastic products are lined, all guarded by tired and sleepy women.
You don't believe this story? Well, if you suspend your disbelief and watch Mika Rottenberg's "Cosmic Generator" video (that was also part of the US Pavilion at the 16th International Architecture Exhibition in Venice), you will change your mind and swear such a tunnel exists.
"Cosmic Generator" is just one of the videos by the Buenos Aires-born, but New York based artist, on show at the first Italian solo exhibition of Rottenberg's works, kicking off tomorrow at the Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna (MAMbo; until 19th May 2019).
There is plenty to see in this exhibition, part of the main programme of the ART CITY Bologna event, that also features three new works produced by MAMbo in collaboration with the Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art London and Kunsthaus Bregenz.
The artist's fans will discover in the art museum spaces a kinetic sculpture entitled "Finger", mechanically mesmerising and alienating with its constant rotating movement and its scarily long and curved nail; "Ponytail", mysteriously erupting from a wall, moving with a disturbing force, curious, bizarre and utterly disquieting since it looks as if somebody (a ghost?) was trapped inside the wall; and "Smoky Lips (Study #4"), a pair of silicone lips integrated into a wall, sending smoke signals and inviting visitors to look inside them to watch a video inspired by Surrealism.
Yet Rottenberg's surreal videos mesmerise more than her quirky installations: quite often the artist employs indeed the techniques of documentaries and the visual semantics of journalistic reportage for her films.
In "NoNoseKnows" (2015), for example, Rottenberg takes the visitors through a small pearl factory and introduces them to the cultured pearls industry in China.
Rottenberg actually visited the pearl-making facilities of Zhuji, in the south of Shanghai, and integrated documentary footage showing Chinese women seeding pearls in her 21-minute long video.
The latter features shots of depressing apartment towers and manufacturing buildings around Zhuji, but then the attention shifts onto a mysterious woman, interpreted by Bunny Glamazon. The 6'3'' fetish performer acts as a sort of Western overseer who in turn becomes another clog in the machine.
Metaphorically locked in an elaborate fiction, but physically trapped into the factory (the tightly framed shots contribute to convey this impression to the viewers), she opens and closes doors that only lead into tiny rooms in which surreal soap bubbles and foam blobs fluctuate in the air like ethereal pearls; or, even more bizarrelly, Bunny sits in her office filled with flowers and located beneath the production floor. Here her nose grows long and red until she sneezes, Chinese food bursting from her nose and providing nourishment for the pearl workers.
Rottenberg has been fascinated with the theme of sneezing as proved also by her 2012 video "Sneeze" (maybe a reference to Thomas A. Edison's 1894 Kinetoscopic Record of a Sneeze) featuring men in suits with rather peculiar noses that sneeze all sorts of things including rabbits, steaks and bulbs.
Bulbs are another personal obsession of the artist: in an untitled projection, a gloved hand breaks coloured bulbs and the viewer gets the same point of view of the camera, becoming a part of the kaleidscope of colours formed by the broken fragments.
There is one key to grasp better the essence of Rottenberg's works - repetition tinged with sarcasm: the protagonists of her videos (mainly women) are trapped in a series of daily and relentless routines that have the potential of driving someone mad.
Humans turn into robots, but, right when you thought a revolutionary message or a comment about exploitation may appear on the screen, Rottenberg turns to sarcasm and humour.
In her video "Tropical Breeze" (2004) for example we look at the absurd production of lemon scented tissues that involves a body builder, Heather, who spreads the scent with the sweat of her body.
It's when Rottenberg shatters these stories of alienation and frustration with her trademark sarcasm that you suddenly remember a badly paid job you've done or you're trapped in, and that's when you want to cry and laugh at the same time, thinking about the absurdity of it all and the uselessness of some of the repetitive gestures seen on the screen, that are probably the same ones you're currently doing in your life and in your job.
That's when you realise you've been Bunny Glamazon zealously opening and closing doors that lead to tiny empty rooms; you've been one of the women in the pearl factory or one of the workers falling asleep in the hypermarket in "Cosmic Generator", surrounded (and almost suffocated) by garishly coloured Christmas tinsel.
The life of Rottenberg's workers also seems influenced by the objects they manufacture: through elaborate and obsessive production rhythms, these women have turned into grotesque characters or machines (Rottenberg looks at the relation between machines/products and living organisms in "AC and Plant" in which an old air conditioner ends up feeding a plant with its water of condensation, forming an unlikely bond with it).
The absurdities in Rottenberg's films become stratagems to point at real and painful themes, such as differences between classes, social inequalities and the effects of the gig economy and of globalisation on human beings. The artist seems indeed to warn us not to be fooled by the bright and vivid colours in the Chinese hypermarket, as that's where the dark magic of the hyper-capitalist society hides.
There is also a political message behind some of Rottenberg's videos: "Cosmic Generator" was inspired by a trip the artist took to China while US President Donald Trump was elected, and her tunnel in which she invites viewers to fall like Alice in Wonderland, is a way to escape Trump's wall.
So, while wandering around the MAMbo ponder more about the meanings behind these videos: in her films, while actions endlessly and irritatingly repeat and gestures lose their meaning, Mika Rottenberg reminds us that final products are useless and worthless. Their values stand indeed in the actions performed by the human beings who produced them and by the efforts and energies they employed to make them.
Image credits for this post
1, 2, 3 and 19
Mika Rottenberg, Cosmic Generator, 2017
Installation view at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2019
Photo credit: Giorgio Bianchi, Comune di Bologna
Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth
4. Mika Rottenberg, Smoky Lips (Study #4), 2018-19
Installation view at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2019
Photo credit: Giorgio Bianchi, Comune di Bologna
Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth
5. Mika Rottenberg, Finger, 2018
Installation view at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2019
Photo credit: Giorgio Bianchi, Comune di Bologna
Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth
6.
Mika Rottenberg, Ponytail (Orange), 2018
Installation view at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2019
Photo credit: Giorgio Bianchi, Comune di Bologna
Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth
7-12. Mika Rottenberg, NoNoseKnows, 2015
Installation view at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2019
Photo credit: Giorgio Bianchi, Comune di Bologna
Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth
13. Mika Rottenberg, Sneeze, 2012
Installation view at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2019
Photo credit: Giorgio Bianchi, Comune di Bologna
Courtesy of Antoine de Galbert, Paris
14. Mika Rottenberg, Untitled Ceiling Projection (video still), 2018
15 and 16. Mika Rottenberg, Tropical Breeze, 2004
Installation view at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2019
Photo credit: Giorgio Bianchi, Comune di Bologna
Collezione Pasquale Leccese
Courtesy Le Case D’Arte, Milano
17. Mika Rottenberg, AC and Plant, 2018
Installation view at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2019
Photo credit: Giorgio Bianchi, Comune di Bologna
Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth
18. Mika Rottenberg, Bowls Balls Souls Holes (AC and Plant), 2014
Installation view at MAMbo – Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, 2019
Photo credit: Giorgio Bianchi, Comune di Bologna
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