Critique
Visual Artists' News Sheet | March – April 2021
Phil Collins, Bring Down The Walls, 2020, Colour, sound; 88 min., Courtesy Shady Lane Productions, photo: Mel D. Cole
ON A CHILLY and wet lockdown Saturday evening in January, it was great
Phil Collins Bring Down The Walls HOSTED BY VOID GALLERY FOR DERRY RADICAL BOOKFAIR 30 JANUARY 2021
to book into the special screening of the Phil Collins film, Bring Down The Walls (2020), which promised a fascinating correlation on mass incarceration and dance music – underground house meets the American criminal justice system – from an artist with an incredible talent for navigating the difficult social, political and cultural situations of his chosen subjects. We have all had to get used to events migrating online during the pandemic, and screenings with a limited online presence are one way of recreating the buzz of something you once left the house to do. It’s almost like going out. The video was hosted for only a few hours on the Void Gallery website and was presented as part of the Derry Radical Bookfair. There were no book stalls this year; instead, a series of online launches and discussions, which probably brought the fair to a wider virtual audience1. Derry has a proud radical left, a tradition of activism, workers’ rights, and social justice tangled within the politics of the Troubles, as explored recently in projects for EVA International by Sara Greavu, who also programmed this screening2. The buzz of this event and film are important. It is not so much a documentary about mass incarceration but rather it documents a participatory public art project that took place in 2018. Commissioned by that behemoth of socially engaged practice, Creative Time, it involved over 100 collaborators during the month of May and was held in a decommissioned fire station that became a “school by day and nightclub by night”3. The school part explained the vast reading lists that accompanied the socials for this screening4. These lists relate to the original project, which had a curriculum but also many other scheduled events and activities, grounding the film in a wide array of contemporary scholarship around mass incarceration in the US, but also providing legal services, walking tours, meals, critical resistance sessions and so much more. This helps eliminate any confusion there may be that the topic is being
