Movin' on up

SKYDIVE art collective creates a socialist stir on Montrose

land deed by Amy Balkin
photo by Erin Elder
tea towels contributed by David Mabb (detail)

Scott Gertner, you better look out below.

This Saturday, SKYDIVE art collective, located a few floors below the legendary jazz club — Scott Gertner's Sky Bar — in a Montrose Blvd. high-rise unveils it's latest concept: "An Exhibition of Proposals for a Socialist Colony." Organized by former MFAH Core Fellow Sasha Dela, Benison Kilby, Elysa Lozano for Autonomous Organization and Nancy Zastudil, the exhibition is based on a ersatz premise that during the 19th century Archives War in Texas, a box of documents was lost, leaving the property at 3400 Montrose up for grabs.

SKYDIVE jumped on this fabricated loophole to establish a socialist colony, and today they are on the verge of revealing their utopian plans.

SKYDIVE's highly conceptual call for proposals was met with open arms from art collectives the world over. This week, visitors may view socialist solutions from groups like N55, a collective based in Copenhagen that aims to create situations with a concrete and fundamental significance to daily life, which simultaneously maintain an aesthetic and ethical consequence.

In her proposal, San Francisco artist Amy Balkin examines how humans interact with and impact the social and material landscapes they inhabit. Her intent is nobly exhibited in her piece, "A research project on giving away land to sell products," which presents itself as an official Texas land deed certifying the socialist colony.

Artist and curator Erin Elder's contribution includes a photograph of a blazing campfire — an icon that with prehistoric precedents, that brings to mind story-telling, communalism and natural danger.

For British artist David Mabb, "colony" can be a loaded term due to the United Kingdom's precarious history of conquering far-off lands. To offset the pejorative connotations, Mabb contributed a set of tea towels designed by socialist 19th century textile designer William Morris, whose floral arts and crafts style will lend an ironic domesticity to the proposed colony.

Several of the artists are currently in Houston to mount the exhibition. On Thursday evening, Elder, Mabb, José Filipe Moreira da Costa, Chin Xaou Ti Won and Duncan Wooldridge explained their entries to a small crowd at the Glassell School's Freed Auditorium. Despite the participants' geographic diversity, all proposals build on local civic laws to designate a global zone for debate regarding distinctions between personal necessity and public life. In layman's terms, the exhibition combines institutional critique with public art.

Garnering such an international cast was an incredible coup for the exhibition's organizers — as was earning grants from three Portuguese outlets: Fundaçõ Calouste Gulbenkian, Ministério da Cultura and Direcção-Geral das Artes at the behest of contributor Moreira da Costa (perhaps part of Houston's recent Portuguese invasion).

The exhibition couldn't be more timely: A matter of weeks ago, the high-rise building located at 3400 Montrose was foreclosed upon and acquired by FH Properties. The fairly derelict building, which according to Dela hasn't increased its rent since the 1980s, now faces an uncertain future in which a socialist takeover could very well be as probable as a new HEB or H&M. Moreover, SKYDIVE's mission is reflective of a growing national movement of "pop-up" art spaces giving new life to foreclosed real estate, as well as a booming independent spirt in the Houston art scene.

"We're seeing an increasing and increasing number of artist-run spaces: SKYDIVE, Box 13, the Joanna; all are run by practitioners and unlike other art programs, these spaces are engaging students from universities," Dela said. "Very soon, I think we'll see these venues giving institutions a run for their money and wake them up. We're witnessing this very rich, exciting moment in Houston."

SKYDIVE art collective is based at 3400 Montrose, but An Exhibition of Proposals for a Socialist Colony is located at the Eldorado Ballroom at Project Row Houses. The show opens on Saturday from 6-9 p.m. and continues through May 22.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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