Tropico-Vegétal...(19/7)

Not until the ninth night of the programme of Tropico-Vegétal did I visit the tropical forest in Palais de Tokyo tonight, and quite directly to the point, it was humid and hot inside the exhibition hall...the museum is one of my favourite places for arts and installations in Paris, and indeed paying 20€ for a yearly membership is really a good buy. The museum is spacious in a sense that it nicely (and simply) makes use of the space for the seasonal installations it has, and the essence is the experience and feeling of the visitors and the interaction in between the artworks and experiments. This time, the tropical palace was decently set up, and so there can be indoor forest and plantation, a tropical park, a journey to the zoo as well as a fantasy with the crocodile. The "Land Mark" of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla was quite pleasant especially when it was using the curving area in the museum. The installation is rather simple but the space offers a strengthening effect to it. The video "Zoo" by Salla Tykkä was a funny approach to put the tropical element into a Hitchcock-style thriller. The video attempted to explore the relation between human and nature, psycho and empirical, but obviously, it must be a work sponsored by Canon, and the focus of the Canon camera on the screen makes it a good piece of advertising video. The sound effect in the video is very appalling.

A duo techno-pink group from Brazil named Tetine played in the evening. Their performance was just so-so, and apart from the sexy dressing of Eliete Mejorado and her iMac as control of their sequencing and music, I did not have much recall about the show. Quite disappointed indeed. Their video projection was the copied & pasted and yes, it could improve a bit the atmosphere of the performance and keep it away from total boredom. Luckily, I got a tequila sunset to ease my mood.
I passed by the bookstore in the museum, the one that appeals me quite a lot, and I found a videocassette of Bill Viola - the Passing. It's been long time since I have seen his work.