Ed Atkins OLD FOOD @ Martin-Gropius_Bau, Berlin

 Courtesy the artist, Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin, Cabinet Gallery, London, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, Rome and dépendance, Brussel

The exhibition of Ed Atkins  Old Food  at Martin-Gropius-Bau shows a paradox.
There are a series of Cgi animations projected on large monitors installed near  a whole 

wardrobe of stages costumes from the Opera. Some panels in which there are captions which 

give indications on the meaning of the exhibition.
The animations show an infant, a kid and a men, these last two dressed up with old stages 

costumes.  They cry a gelatinous fluid substance that looks more like mucus than tears.
In the initial panel, it is written that water is a fundamental element for life, that the body is 

mostly made of fluids, that it has its density, its heaviness.
On the larger monitors you can see three different scenes:  the first one is the inside of a 

house in the countryside, wrapped in a strange atmosphere. Then there is  a white room with a 

hole on a wall from which a light passes through. Then there is the outside of a shack, in the 

countryside, with a tree, a piano and a boy, dressed as a pageboy, who runs tirelessly and 

uninterruptedly, almost ridicolous, around the piano, going out and back in the video screen.

In the last room the videos show a crowd of animated characters running aimlessly. In a corner 

of the screen is the Facebook logo. All videos have a deafening sound.

Suddenly the crying characters leave the video screen to 'enter' the movies with the empty 

rooms, sit at the piano and play, and do other things ...

Next to the films, the stage clothes 'seem ghosts in reverse', says one of the texts written by the 

artist on the panels, describing a baby's dress hanging on a crutch. The costumes have 

something anachronistic especially close to digital animations.

An idea of 'molded' pervades the show.

On one of the panels is written something about the meaning of the title, Old food, where the 

protagonists of the films are animations: they do not suffer time passing, they are not hungry, 

thirsty, do not feel anything, and do not have a real physicality; the animated characters eat 

only because this is of comfort to our human eyes. It makes us feel good to see them eat.

Animations are a mystification.

Also the scene clothes are. But through the story that the Opera tells, the most a-logic and 

spiritual part of our selves expresses itself, manifests itself, becomes real, above all thanks to 

the music.

Atkins questions not only what is part of our contemporary life, so tied up to the superficial 

aspect of communication, to shield ourselves of virtual alter-egos through social networks, but 

also the way we build our lives and we believe in it , we structure it.

All the elements that are part of the exhibition seem to have nothing in common, like the title,  

Old food, but in reality it is all a paradoxical "staging", which concerns our existence: on the 

one hand the aspiration of man towards spirituality and on the other side the inevitable 'fall', if 

this can be said, of the body.

To explain what I mean, I will do something that is not orthodox. :)

I will use a film that I watched some time ago as a 'lens' to interpret the Atkins show.

The film is Personal Shopper by Olivier Assayas with Kristen Stewart. The story is about an 

American girl, Maureen / Kristen Stewart, who lives in Paris. She has recently lost her twin 

brother; she does a job that she hates, the personal shopper for a famous and fickle actress.

The only reason why Maureen / Kristen resists this situation is because she tries to get in touch 

with the ghost of her dead brother through her supernatural powers.

One day a friend contacts her to disinfest an old haunted villa.

Maureen / Kristen believes she comes into contact with her brother but the ghost attacks her. 

She gets scared and runs away. From this moment, she feels haunted too.

The owners of the house tell her that they were in Stockholm and saw an exhibition by Hilma 

af Klint. The artist, who lived in the first part of the 20th century and has anticipated abstract 

painting, believed to be in contact with a spiritual entity that told her what to paint.

The perplexed Maureen / Kristen learns more about the artist on the internet.

In the last sequence of the film, Stewart finally manages to get in touch with the spirit that  

haunts her and asks who is really he. The ghost answers that it is actually herself.

The film and the work of Atkins have some elements in common, but above all the desire to 

find something spiritual 'out' elsewhere, as if the spiritual element resided in a special place 

outside of us.

Going back to Atkins and his show. CGI is a type of animation that takes place from reality. 

For this reason the animations seem so real, giving the idea of ​​a fantastic element perfectly 

inserted in the real context. An example are dragons in the TV series Game of Thrones.

We know that it's just an animation as the animation is mediated through video support. 

But who is behind the masks of the child, the infant and the man who cry mucus? In reality 

there is the artist himself, his body, his real being.

Transforming his real body into an animated character, without corporeity,  who does not drink, 

does not eat, etc. Atkins insists on the paradox of needing to withdraw from reality in favour of 

a fantastic character, enclosed in an image that cries dense tears like mucus, which is real but 

also not, like our personas on Facebook or Instagram.

At the same time, the clothes of the opera's characters are an element that recalls all the 

transience, the 'worldliness' of human existence.

The missing piece to complete the exhibition, the keystone are the visitors. The 'other' presence,

 which is a real body with a life, made of real things, real feelings, real desires, needs and 

thoughts and even spirituality.

Ed Atkins  

Old food

Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin

29 September 2017 to 7 January 2018