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Cate Blanchett Embraces Change in “Manifesto”

By Laura Blum

Pity the poor manifesto, long dismissed as a lesser literary genre shouted from soap boxes and pamphlets. Finally, with Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto” installation at the Park Avenue Armory, the snubbed art form gets some overdue love.

It took star power to do so. Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett flashes from each of the show’s 13 screens in about as many dramatic guises. By turns poetic and philosophical, shrill and blowsy, her words are drawn from the platforms of influential 20^th-century art movements. Blue Rider? Check. Fluxus? Check. Pop Art too gets a tribute. All told, Blanchett recites the litanies of more than 50 artists including André Breton, Sol LeWitt, Yvonne Rainer, Claes Oldenburg and Werner Herzog.

The project makes bold use of Blanchett’s inner Zelig, earlier sampled through her Bob Dylan act in the movie I’m Not There. For starters, we find her homeless man persona proclaiming the “revolutionary” role of the artist, and on our way out, there she is done up as a school teacher, imparting the Dogme 95 rulebook to her young class. In between, Manifesto fronts the Australian actress as tetchy Russian choreographer, as tattooed British punk, as prim Southern housewife. A standout is her double stint as mainstream news anchor and storm-lashed reporter, with other incarnations that span funeral orator, garbage worker and company CEO.

But before everything, there’s a prologue to set the show’s arch yet ardent tone. Its featured burning fuse combusts into Blanchett’s recitation of Tristan Tzara’s Dada Manifesto. “…I am neither for nor against and I do not explain because I hate common sense,” goes the epochal rant. This Dada bit is preceded by The Manifesto of the Communist Party, the famed proclamation by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The political bass notes continue on screen #2, as Blanchett's tattered hobo reels off the Draft Manifesto of John Reeds Clubs, published in 1932. High-low pairings are all part of the contrarian fun.

Manifesto certainly is entertaining, but that’s not all it is. The productions are taut standoffs between reverence and ridicule, displaying Rosefeldt’s taste for iconoclasm while also making no bones about the effort he put into creating them. As the characters deliver their impassioned screeds, it’s a toss-up whether to admire the espoused ideals or to bemoan the impotency of their calls to action. Are we meant to marvel at the quaintness of these bygone excitements without having to act on them? Is Blanchett’s ironic enjoyment the point, or is our mission at the Armory to get cracking on her principled pronouncements?

Either way, we’re recruited—just as moths are summoned to light. As we wander in the darkness of Wade Thompson Drill Hall, there’s something oddly sensuous about the giant flickering spectacles. It’s not what we might expect from a bunch of arty abstraction. Yet in Manifesto’s inky, cavernous space, the scatter of media takes on a mysterious campfire magic.

How it will hold up as a movie remains to be seen. That’s set to happen at Sundance, where the 13 segments will screen as one edited, cinematic piece. But it’s tough to imagine capturing the immersive effect of the installation, where the pileup of monologues can make mischief, together, across the room. Things get flat out conspiratorial when Blanchett’s alter egos all gaze into the camera and drone on in sync.

Not that icon-style close-ups are Rosefeldt’s only approach. The German filmmaker and former architecture student goes in for pans of the constructed environment, from factories to churches to tombs. God’s-eye views are big on his shot list, though so too are intimate details of hand-crafted puppets and gravy-drenched roasted fowl. With his heightened palette, theatrical staging and focus verging on the hyperreal, Rosefeldt builds visual tension with each historical text. But the real crackle comes from seeing all the pictured walks of life so consumed with creative thinking that, even in their most mundane moments, they burst into fiery speech.   

Manifesto is on view through January 8 (including Thursday-Saturday, noon to midnight, and New Year’s Eve from noon to 4 pm). It’s not to be missed.

Photos:

1. Cate Blanchett in Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto, 2015 © Julian Rosefeldt and VC Bild-Kunst, Bonn.” Photo courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory.
2. Cate Blanchett as Homeless man in Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto, 2015 © Julian Rosefeldt and VC Bild-Kunst, Bonn.” Photo courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory.
3. Cate Blanchett as Tattooed punk in Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto, 2015 © Julian Rosefeldt and VC Bild-Kunst, Bonn.” Photo courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory.
4. Cate Blanchett as Choreographer in Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto, 2015 © Julian Rosefeldt and VC Bild-Kunst, Bonn.” Photo courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory.
5. Cate Blanchett as Funeral Speaker in Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto, 2015 © Julian Rosefeldt and VC Bild-Kunst, Bonn.” Photo courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory.
6. Cate Blanchett as Conservative Mother with Family in Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto, 2015 © Julian Rosefeldt and VC Bild-Kunst, Bonn.” Photo courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory.
7. Cate Blanchett in Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto, 2015 © Julian Rosefeldt and VC Bild-Kunst, Bonn.” Photo courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory.
8. Cate Blanchett as Teacher in Julian Rosefeldt’s “Manifesto, 2015 © Julian Rosefeldt and VC Bild-Kunst, Bonn.” Photo courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory.
9. Photo of “Manifesto” creator Julian Rosefeldt courtesy of the Park Avenue Armory.