Conventional narratives feel inauthentic because they want control, says Moyra Davey, a Canadian artist long associated with New York, who intentionally evokes the words of essayist Hilton Als in Horse Opera. In her visual diary, juxtaposing image with sound, the director gallops towards the fringes of cinematic avant-garde. In the visual layer, we glimpse life in the American provinces, often through a circular aperture. Mostly, it features horses grazing, but the camera also captures an inquisitive bear or birds at a feeder. The pandemic's unease doesn't affect nature. Occasionally, a woman recording herself on a phone appears in the frame—that's Moyra Davey. Via her voiceover, the artist leads us through the flickering labyrinth of New York's nightlife in the 1970s, accompanied by someone named Elle. It's a story of party euphoria and breathless dancing, a diary of youthful twilight, of the need for community and the shame of drug-induced crashes. Is Elle Moyra Davey's alter ego? Where do these two identities converge? Is it a celebration of the past or an antidote to the suspended state of the pandemic? In Horse Opera, the raw intimacy of Chantal Akerman's cinema meets Jean-Luc Godard's radical gesture, breaking away from film as classical narrative.
Moyra Davey is a Canadian visual artist, photographer, and writer associated with the New York art scene. In her work, she combines sampling techniques with autobiographical themes. In 2015, she directed Notes on Blue, a film that engages in a dialogue with Derek Jarman's famous Blue. I’ve always stuck to George Orwell’s idea that you can’t trust an autobiography unless the writer reveals something shameful about themselves, as she expressed in one of her interviews. Horse Opera screened at festivals in Berlin and Toronto and featured in an exhibition at MoMA.
1990 Hell Notes
2014 My Saints; 31 min.
2015 Notes on Blue
2016 Hemlock Forest
2017 Wedding Loop
2019 i confess
2022 Końska opera / Horse Opera