Artist Julian Rosefeldt has adapted his critically acclaimed, 13-channel video installation Manifesto (2015) into a feature film, premiering Monday, January 23, at the Sundance Film Festival in New York.
The work captures Hollywood actress Cate Blanchett reciting cut-up versions of dozens of art historical manifestos penned by artists ranging from Tristan Tzara, Kazimir Malevich, and André Breton, to Claes Oldenburg, Yvonne Rainer, and Elaine Sturtevant. Blanchett delivers the manifestos in wildly varying scenarios; as a tattooed lush, a tense news reporter, and a haggard homeless man; she proclaims an artist’s iconic words as a funeral speaker, a factory worker, and a dance teacher.
The video installation first premiered in December 2015 at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne, before making its European debut at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof museum in February 2016. It was a joint production between the two institutions, as well as the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney (where it is currently on view until February 19), the Sprengel Museum in Hannover (where it is installed until May 2017), and the Ruhrtriennale, where it was on view last fall.
Following a ten-month run in Berlin (where the installation was extended to November 6, two months past its original September 18 end date), Manifesto premiered for the first time in North America at New York’s Park Avenue Armory in December 2016.
But now, the overwhelming 13 screens, which as an art installation have all run simultaneously in one black box, will be consolidated into a single-channel feature film, fit for a movie screen. Preview the film with the trailer below.
