A live event that wasn’t entirely live, held at a museum but shown in cinemas across the UK, David Bowie Is Happening Now was the grand finale to the V&A’s hugely successful exhibition.
I should confess. I originally intended this to be a comparison of the David Bowie Is exhibition and the proceeding cinema event, however I left it too late to request a press ticket and (call me undedicated), I couldn’t quite bring myself to queue for the four hours from 6am that was the only way I’d be able to get to see it.
Billed as a ‘grand finale’ to the hugely successful exhibition, the cinema event took place two days after the exhibition closed. Two screenings (one live, followed by various recorded screenings) took place in August 2013 at 208 cinemas across the UK, with an estimated audience of around 25,000 people. At £16, my cinema ticket was actually more expensive than entry to the exhibition.
Art exhibitions are the latest cultural events to be screened at your local cinema, obviously spurred on by the response to live theatre and opera. If you live in or near London, the idea might sound slightly ludicrous – why would you go and see something at the cinema when you can experience the real thing?
However it starts making much more sense if you’re not within easy reach of where the event is talking place, and until live streaming is introduced, it might be the nearest any of us will get to experiencing an evening at The Met or La Scala.
The V&A wasn’t giving much away beforehand, so I was expecting the evening to take roughly the same format as the recent film of The Royal Academy’s Manet exhibition – footage from behind the scenes, information on the artist and a walk through the galleries. Instead we were treated to a more varied (but sometimes slightly uncomfortable) mix of live studio discussion, filmed sections of the exhibition and what seemed like endless anecdotes from members of the public about what Bowie means to them. If there’s one thing I took from the evening, it was that everyone has a Bowie story, and, like holiday snaps, other people’s just aren’t that interesting.
The decision to stage the event was taken in the first month of the exhibition opening. The V&A has never experienced such a popular or fast-selling exhibition, so a live film of the exhibition seemed to offer a good solution for all the disappointed punters (and journos) who didn’t manage to get their hands on a ticket. Co-curator Victoria Broackes explains the rationale behind the event: “It was for both those who hadn’t had a chance to see it and also those who had seen the exhibition but wanted an enhanced viewing.” No one I spoke to at the cinema had actually been to see the exhibition, so perhaps it appealed mainly to the former.
Back to the Curzon. There was genuine excitement as the countdown to the live broadcast began. Thinking that the event was about to start, we were suddenly faced with a 15 minute countdown, which compromised of visitors to the exhibition finishing the sentence ‘David Bowie is...’ by writing their answer on what looked like a hastily framed whiteboard. It was one of the longest fifteen minutes of my life, not just because of the many cringeworthy responses, but because of the awful kerning – you could have driven one of Bowie’s tour buses through the space between the ‘A’ and the ‘V‘.
Finally, things kicked off with time lapse photography showing the exhibition being built (fascinating), some mime (embarrassing) and a Bowie-inspired artwork made of rice (puzzling). We then met our polished hosts for the evening, co-curators Broakes and Geoffrey March who were in the round at the V&A with an invited audience – this proved to be the only actual live element of the evening.
The format was pretty straightforward. We were led through the exhibition room by room, and in between each room we returned to the V&A for a live guest or three to give their Bowie story. The Bowie appreciation club (which included Paul Morley, Christopher Frayling, Jeremy Deller and Jarvis Cocker) were summonsed to give their Bowie story, but the highlight had to be Bowie’s hilarious costume designer Kansai Yamamoto who delighted in telling us (in between giggling fits) that the amazing sculpted costume of his that Bowie donned was originally designed to be worn by a woman.
The sections where the curators took us through the exhibition, revealing the narrative and explaining the context of the various individual pieces within the gallery spaces were genuinely enlightening, and definitely added something extra to the normal visitor’s experience (although if you’d watched any of the many recent documentaries on Bowie some bits felts a bit déjà vu). Those expecting any sort of critical approach would have been disappointed – the event reflects the exhibition’s celebratory tone as it too required permission from the man himself to show the archive material. The official line is that Bowie was not involved in the event, but given the control-freak nature which the exhibition reveals that he so obviously displays as far as his image is concerned, it’s hard to imagine that he was totally hands-off.
One advantage of the cinema event is having the shared experience of hearing Bowie’s music played very loud in digital 5.1 sound (visitors to the exhibition were asked to wear headphones). And for those familiar with his songs, hearing Bowie sing while his original handwritten lyrics were up on screen was quite breathtaking.
The screening also raises questions about how, as a museum visitor, you consume an exhibition. Watching a play or an opera is an essentially linear and prescriptive experience, but visiting an exhibition doesn’t have to be. You might spend two hours or ten minutes in the gallery. And while the curator might have carefully mapped out the progression through the exhibition, the visitor is in control of how they actually experience it. They might decide not start at the beginning, they might choose to skip over some sections completely, linger over others or simply look at objects in no particular order.
This kind of ‘curated’ event is unusual in takes that power away from the exhibition viewer. There were some objects and pieces which I would have I wanted to see much more of, and others which I would happily have skipped, for example the Bowie mime which was played out in its toe-curling entirety.
The event was directed by Hamish Hamilton and as you’d expect, the production values were suitably impressive. The least successful aspect of the event was the staged walkthrough of each room. Broackes explains that: “The gallery experience is altered and enhanced by having people in the exhibition. As we couldn’t film those scenes with the public, we used actors and Bowie fans to create an atmosphere that was busy but also slightly strange and intriguing.” The actors were posing as visitors, striking poses and held in Matrix-style suspended animation as the camera zoomed around them. Using such a hackneyed camera technique seems at odds with Bowie’s pioneering ethos, and anyway, isn’t an empty gallery space the holy grail for the museum visitor, especially given the volume of people that attended this particular exhibition?
Put together in just ten weeks, the V&A event was extremely ambitious and the museum should be applauded for its intentions. The sheer quality of the content and the storytelling meant that the evening was highly enjoyable in places, but as an event, it was let down by the fact that so little of it was actually live. Given that a completely live show was out of the question because the first room of the exhibition had already been packed up, a documentary style film about the exhibition itself (revealing more about how the exhibition was curated, designed and put together) would probably been more satisfying for the viewer – and considerably less hassle for the V&A. However it’s a fantastic promotional tool for the exhibition which is now touring, and a great record of the temporary exhibition for the museum itself.
A surprise appearance of Bowie’s school report from Bromley Tech was a nice touch, and there was always a sneaking suspicion that the man himself might just show his face (via Skype, if not at the Curzon Richmond), but sadly that wasn’t to be (unless he was masquerading as a well-heeled 50-something lady). The screening was probably a great aide memoir for those smug people who had already seen the exhibition, but for the disorganised among us that hadn’t, it just served as a slightly painful reminder of what we’d missed.
David Bowie Is Happening Now
Directed by Hamish Hamilton
Produced by Done and Dusted
Below: Trailer for David Bowie is Happening Now
(Warning: contains mime)
