The Grand Bizarre

I had the great privilege to watch this film for the first time projected from a real reel, replete with the requisite nostalgic ambient sounds, in a crowded room where people sat in mismatched fold up chairs of patchy patterns, flowers, and colours run amok, mirroring the bazaar itself, at an event co-hosted by Tënk. I was as struck by the film as I was charmed by its maker, who was present at the screening. To behold the machinery of Jodie Mack’s brilliant mind, whose natural state of rest is, like her films, a fantastical dance, jagged and full of sounds, sights, and theory amplified with anecdote, is to watch a performance by a true character, befitting only a great master.
 
If this film feels like a kaleidoscopic joyous journey, a hectic kinetic run through an ever-rotating globe, a portrait of the wind, a postcard collage, a never-ending flea market feast, the sometimes confusion and always delight it delivers is befitting of its creator: a woman with a wonderfully wild vision, and an incredibly innovative art practice to hold it, with a fine dose of humour, to boot. A depth of critical commentary on a range of topics including travel, globalization, cultural appropriation, the global capitalist economy, consumption and production et al. live, here, amidst the frenetic party in Mack’s mind, a rolling clothing rack of multi-coloured textile jewels, piles of fabrics that rise and swell and deflate like a belly breathing ‘til the very ocean and piles of fabric are one, as we watch them passing through a rear-view mirror, all set to rave sounds rooted in the quotidian, a language without language, emanating from, for example, the Skype dial tone, or, say, crickets.
 
You could watch and rewatch this film and always find a new narrative, nook, and cranny to climb into, infinite details to discover amidst the cacophony, ripe fruit rife with layered meaning. Where visual and sound art meet cinema and video art, this Jungian smorgasbord of signs and symbols busts out of the gallery to enliven your day. I invite you to take a trip like no other via Mack’s bright bizarre. 

Aurora Prelević
Writer, translator, cinephile