Introducing first UK screening of Malcolm McLaren’s completed Paris: Capital Of The XXIst Century at The Performance Studio next week
McLaren opened up the frontiers between artistic and wider cultural attitudes by taking fashion and music out of their respective contexts and translating them into new formats that captured the wider popular zeitgeist. A closer look at his seemingly disarticulated, exuberant and streetwise oeuvre shows it to be consistent and, in its own way, profound.
David Thorp
On Wednesday (June 3) I’m introducing a screening of Malcolm McLaren’s Paris: Capital Of The XXIst Century at The Performance Studio in Peckham, south London.
This is a the first-ever opportunity in this country to see the final work, which McLaren completed a matter of weeks before his death in April 2010. A working version was shown here just once, at Newcastle’s Baltic in November 2009.
I have been invited to talk about the film and its place in the corpus McLaren left behind by curator David Thorp of The Performance Studio.
Thorp describes Paris as “a vibrant collage”. McLaren constructed it from juxtapositions of footage from archived French advertisements combined episodically with narration and music from the ads and also from his 1994 album Paris.
“Paris: Capital of the XXlst Century finalises the narrative of McLaren’s life, much of which he mythologised through lectures, radio programmes and television documentaries,” says Thorp, who included the cultural iconoclast’s filmwork Shallow: 1-21 in the 2008 Royal Academy group show Collision Course.
“McLaren’s journey and forays into the world of radical visual arts started in the 1960s when he attended art schools in London, and culminated with his two films Shallow and Paris, which he described as ‘musical paintings’,” explains Thorp.
“His inspiration came from many sources, vital to which were the Situationists. Guy Debord, the most influential figure in the Situationist International, played a key role in catalysing the May 1968 revolt in Paris. A generation on, McLaren was living in Paris and in the film he expresses Baudelaire’s notion of the flâneur and Debord’s ideas about commodity, banality and spectacle for a post punk society.”
Le Peintre from Paris: Capital Of The XXIst Century:
Meanwhile Thorp and I are putting together an exhibition which will be held at Southampton’s John Hansard Gallery this autumn. Called Eyes For Blowing Up Bridges, this explores the creative connections between McLaren and a bunch of other difficult fellows, including William Burroughs, Guy Debord, Asger Jorn, Alexander Trocchi and the UK Situationist King Mob.
Tracey Emin pays tribute to Thorp:
The screening of Paris: Capital Of The XXIst Century starts at 7pm; admission is free. If you can make it we’d be delighted to see you.
The Performance Studio is at The Nines, Copeland Park, 133 Rye Lane/133 Copeland Rd, London SE15 3SN. Find out more here.