What is better than Cate Blanchett? Why, 13 Cate Blanchetts, of course. The actress embodies multiple personas in a new exhibition at ACMI.

The centrepiece of Manifesto, a showcase of the work of Berlin based artist Julian Rosefeldt, is the specially commissioned film of the same name. Drawing on writings by artists and performers from the last century, philosophies espoused on multiple screens by a motley crew of characters including a newsreader, a school teacher, a widow, a homeless man and a puppeteer—each played by Blanchett.

It is, as Rosefeldt puts it “a manifesto of manifestos”.

Moving between the various screens, each appears to be a vignette in and of itself, the seemingly separate from the rest… until moments of glorious syncronicity reveal a greater connection than is immediately apparent.

The words, borrowed from art movements including Dadaism, Futurism and Fluxus and artists and performers such as Claes Oldenburg, Lod LeWiit and Jim Jarmusch, conspire to question the role of the artist in society—the setting of each scene bringing the writings into a modern context and highlighting the poetry and passion within them.

Manifesto, commissioned by ACMI in association with the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Germany’s Hamburger Bahnhof Museum, shows alongside three of Rosefeldt’s previous works, highlighting his extraordinary talent for blurring the line between film and visual art.

Rosefeldt’s mesmerising, extraordinarily choreographed work transports the viewer into a theatrical, surreal world exploring themes of alienation, dislocation and social and psychological disruption, drawing on humour and satire to make the familiar appear, at times, downright strange.

 

Manifesto: Julian Rosefeldt until 14 March, 2016. ACMI, Federation Square, Melbourne.