NYAB Event - Felix Melia “Ozu’s Arsehole”

Felix Melia “Ozu’s Arsehole”

Interstate Projects

This event has ended.

“The eyes dart as the result of sudden and absurd cognizance; the spasmodic recognition of a body that just ticks over. Not his, theirs. His sound changes constantly. His sound is not in time with the rhythms of the train. They tick over, subduing the cries that ache silently between repetitions of the same buckling down.”

Felix Melia’s new film, Ozu’s Arsehole, 2016, examines the alienation each of us experiences while negotiating everyday spaces and everyday interactions. Outside spaces and internal anatomy are intersected by ghostly figures and sleeping bodies, while three interconnected stories weave a silent narration through and over the work.

Ozu’s Arsehole explores the preservation and destruction of the body within contemporary living spaces. Its characters, both visible and invisible, are symbolic beings, effected and conditioned by hegemonic ideas of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ space – and by extension ‘good’ and ‘bad’ bodies. The space of the film and space of the gallery are permeated by an atmosphere of physical and social disaffection.

The themes and effects of the film are extended through the entirety of Melia’s installation. Quasi-architectural and totemic sculptures recall a variety of exterior and interior constructions that impact on the significances of the body. They evoke narratives that inform our habituated actions as citizens. Everyday rituals– throwing something away, putting on shoes, mopping a floor, hanging up a coat – are objectified, and become static, but the presence of a living body remains, waiting to be resuscitated. Together these sculptures form a kind of interior design, based on the shifting freedoms and fetters of a city. It’s a space waiting to be inhabited.

Felix Melia (b.1990) lives and works in London. He has had projects and exhibtions at; Serpentine’s 89plus Marathon, Cinema Palace, Marrakech; Biennale of Moving Image at the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; LimaZulu, London, Carreau du Temple, Paris. Melia is currently Writer in Residence at Whitechapel Gallery, London.