Isaac Julien: Playtime

Overview

What is ‘capital’? It’s social, economic, personal. Yet, it’s also intangible and invisible. You might say that we intuit capital the way we intuit gravity. But what we do know for sure is, it's a force that controls almost every decision we make.

Set in a post-GFC world, Isaac Julien's acclaimed seven-channel video installation, accompanied by large still images in this Roslyn Oxley9 exhibition, investigates that mysterious non-substance called capital. The work drew worldwide attention when it was projected on the billboards of New York's Times Square at midnight last year. It didn't hurt publicity that among the six characters featured is one James Franco, he of the many puzzling art cameos.

In a hybrid of fiction and documentary, the Turner Prize-nominated Julien presents a series of narratives that explore the impact of capital on the art world and the individual. In Dubai, exponential growth is juxtaposed with the financial circumstance of a lonely and isolated Filipina maid (Mercedes Cabral). As she mechanically fulfils her duties, her own image is rebuffed by the hard gloss of untouched furniture and steel structures, depicting the sterility of this foreign wealth. At times, her narration is even delivered through these reflections, reinforcing her as a ghostly and detached presence.

Where one economy booms, another flounders. North in Reykjavik, an Icelandic artist paces throughout the abandoned interior of his modernist dream house, in an image of lament and decay. Framed by snow-capped mountains and steaming geysers, the architecture offers some very striking images, such as the silhouette of the artist against a circular window, yellowed by the sun. Slipping up and down staircases, under beams and between rooms, the artist generates an optical elusiveness that is reminiscent of something M.C. Escher might sketch.

Unlike the artist and the maid, the third chapter features a host of characters who have managed to control capital. “It’s a game!” announces Franco's art dealer, oozing self-assuredness, as he delivers a monologue praising the market and citing collector’s fairytales. As the camera circles Franco, it is as if Julien is driving home the idea that capital is constituted through social relations, and is only enhanced by a dose of charisma. This is followed up by an interview with the art auctioneer Simon de Pury, who plays a version of himself.

These internally focused capitalists are much less subtle than the external longing of the maid and the artist. The way they are scripted seems to hit quite deliberately on the academic concepts Julien wants to convey. Although the last segment is engaging, it probably doesn't need to try so hard, particularly as the accompanying work, Kapital, fleshes out a deeper reading of capital and its representation, via an interview with Marxist scholar David Harvey.

Nevertheless, Julien offers up a rich visual experience that is both topical and technically accomplished. This global portrait of the ever-present nature of capitalism and its grasp on humanity is sometimes quite frightening. Whether you deify or demonize money, it's a reality that governs our existence.