![]() I was pretty much there the entire time, which is a remarkable feat for something this long. (Also very ugly, but in beautiful ways.) And I agree about coherence and watchability. But what floored me was how beautiful so much of it is. It's like a massive modernist novel, stuffed to bursting with symbolism and nested with allusions to this text or that artist or this American-made automobile. It's totally insane and massive and awesome, and extremely rewarding to think about all the decisions that he made along the way. I was surprised how coherent the narrative was and how watchable it was I was taken aback at how earnest it could be at times and I was most basically just impressed. It's nothing but big-A Art, which opens it up to a lot of pretty basic criticism. The space this film (and his work overall, it seems) occupies is easily derided. I read about the CREMASTER Cycle in film classes as an undergrad, have seen stills, but this was my first viewing experience of a Barney movie. I went with my brother who leading up to the show had been working his way through the CREMASTER series, but my only encounter with Barney was his work in last spring's 1991 exhibition at the New Museum, which had some illustrations, some Drawing Restraint stuff, and one of the CREMASTER films, I think. Ross: Was this your first time seeing Matthew Barney's work? There were still a lot of younger, more run-of-the-mill art students and interested persons, but I was mostly surrounded by older people who stuck it out. Like, late 30s is being generous-I'm talking 40s and 50s and 60s. Marc: Very similar crowd, except that the age skewed older. How would you describe the crowd at yours? I was at orchestra level and saw some empty seats, but no big expanses of empty. The crowd was pretty young (late 20s, early 30s many bearded men and fashion-forward women), especially compared to lots of less-than-mainstream weird theater things I go to. It was slammed at the entrance I heard people asking about tickets, too. I went Sunday night at 7 p.m., the last screening. But once inside the theater, it was pretty packed I was at the orchestra level and could only see about 15-20 empty seats. There were a lot of people standing in line and I heard many questions about extra ticket availability, so it seemed like people were without tickets and trying to buy them there. Ross: What was the crowd like? Was it packed? Marc: I went to the Thursday night showing at 7 p.m., the day after it premiered, which was also the day after that big snowstorm. What follows is a conversation between Complex deputy editor Ross Scarano and Gothamist contributing writer Marc Yearsley about River of Fundament. Each screening was broken up by two intermissions. Barney's been working on the project for years it incorporates footage of performances Barney staged in Los Angeles, Detroit, and New York. River of Fundament had its world premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music over this long holiday weekend. A new work from the artist is the kind of event Kanye West shows up for. The biggest name in contemporary American avant garde movie-making, Barney is best known for The CREMASTER Cycle, five films about masculinity, competition, athleticism, and the muscle that raises and lowers the testes. This isn't Barney's first epic art rodeo, of course. There's lots of singing, some anal sex, really wet rimming, more defecation than you're probably prepared for, and stunningly beautiful and moving images of/about America. This reincarnation process catches the attention of the Egyptian gods, and so they show up to cause trouble. Meanwhile, Norman Mailer's spirit is being reincarnated as a few people and a few American muscle cars via a process that requires his spirit to cross a river of feces. Which basically goes like: Norman Mailer has died, and so there's a big wake at this Brooklyn brownstone, complete with all manner of fascination people, like Fran Lebowitz, Jonas Menkas, Jeffrey Eugenides, Larry Holmes, and more. The novel deals with Egyptian mythology and reincarnation, themes and ideas that inform Barney's film. It's big and bold stuff, inspired by the life of American macho man and writer Norman Mailer, and his novel Ancient Evenings. ![]() Keywords make sense for the project, which was written and directed by Barney with music by Jonathan Bepler, because of the work's fixation on symbols. These are just some of the keywords for Matthew Barney's five-hour-long epic movie, River of Fundament.
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