Last Things (2008) by Ivor Shearer is an experimental film set in a devastated New Orleans after Katrina. Inspired by Paul Auster’s 1987 novel, In The Country of Last Things, and set in the future, the film portrays a surreal, dystopic world in which the federal government has closed the city off from the rest of the country. The film follows the activities of various characters as they navigate through a lawless world dominated by garbage and dependent on the recycling of found materials. In an ambiguous way the city appears on the one hand imprisoned within and controlled by an exterior civilization, and on the other hand it seems cut off on the outside, and thus forming its own rules of negotiations. In this pre- or post-societal state with no common agreement of law or constitution, the survival of the fittest is the only rule. The film premiered on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina at the New Orleans Museum of Art.
Still from Last Things (2008) by Ivor Shearer.
Still from Last Things (2008) by Ivor Shearer.
Still from Last Things (2008) by Ivor Shearer.
Still from Last Things (2008) by Ivor Shearer.
Ivor Hartley Shearer is an artist working with film, video, and installation. He lives and works in Houston, Texas. His work has shown nationally and internationally, including the Wexner Center for the Arts and the New Orleans Museum of Art. He has an MFA from Columbia University (2010), and attended the Whitney Independent Study Program (2011). He was recently a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation 2012 Biennial Award.
REWRITE / REDRAW / RETOOL was presented in four parts during the Autumn 2011-Spring 2012, with works by Artur Żmijewski, Ivor Shearer, Libia Castro and Ólafur Ólafsson, Johan Tirén, and Chto Delat? The exhibition series was curated by Rakett on invitation by Vita Kuben exhibition space at Norrlandsoperan in Umeå.
Through visual and narrative endeavors REWRITE / REDRAW / RETOOL engages in questions concerning how conflicting interest groups negotiate their positions, within existing or fictional societies. Who are the creators of history, how are political strategies played out, and how are art and its institutions embedded in political structures? In the presented works meetings are played out between people and ideologies where conflicts of interests are set in motion to be discussed on arenas within or outside constitutional frameworks. A discursive program is part of the exhibition and consists of discussions, presentations, a seminar, film screenings and book launch.
The exhibition was on view at Vita Kuben 27/10 – 27/11 2011
REWRITE / REDRAW / RETOOL is supported by Norrlandsoperaen, Umeå and iaspis.
