Running time: 24 mn
Conception and production: Steven Cohen
Film: Fiona Mc Pherson, Coco Van Oppens, Elu Kieser
Premiere: Johannesburg 2002
The video of Chandelier was shot in South Africa in 2001, in the middle of the bidonville (shanty town) of Johannesburg, where hundreds of homeless black people watch as municipal employees (dressed in red) tear down their “homes,” in a strange ballet where violence is omnipresent.
“Artists have always shown us the social life of their time; I do it moving through their nearly destroyed bidonville wearing my chandelier-tutu – and because we are filming it, I do it too, a digital painting of social life, half imaginary and half horribly true.”
in STEVEN COHEN, David Krut publishing, 2003
Chandelier reveals through dance, performance art and film the contradictions between Europe and Africa, blacks and whites, the rich and the poor, the shadow and the light, public and private, the strong and the oppressed, security and danger.