If only every piece of video art started with the line: "Here I am lying next to my lover Jean, in intensive care."
While a considerable amount of video art shown at exhibitions elicits little more from viewers than blank expressions, bored shifts in shoes and plain old yawns, a line of narration like that which throws out the prospects of intrigue and debauchery would rivet them to the spot. Who wouldn't want to know what Jean and his lover had been up to?
And sure enough, there is a relatively constant throng of people huddled in the two rooms where the work of Dutch-born, British-based video artist Saskia Olde Wolbers is currently being shown in a solo exhibition at the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi that's concurrent with its Turner retrospective (see Re:View page). Of course, any video artist with a television set should by now have realized the importance of narrative to moving pictures. The fact is that any pastime requiring people's undivided attention for a set period of time must come with an in-built incentive to make them sit it out till the end. Nothing does that like a good ol' fashioned yarn.