"The Plover's Wing' - Video Still, by Marcus Coates featuring Moti Sasson, Mayor of Holon, and Galit Eilat, and Marcus Coates

Marcus Coates Film ‘The Plover’s Wing’
By Sarah Lightman

A man walks into the Mayor of Holon’s office in Israel, wearing a badger on his head and a hare poking out of his light blue Adidas tracksuit top and says, ‘Please ask me any question you like.’ It could be a joke. It could be a serious breech of security. Or it could be the new film by Marcus Coates, ‘The Plover’s Wing’ filmed as part of Hapzura; The Festival of Experimental Music and Sound Art, a project of The Israeli Centre for Digital Art, Holon that is now being screened at The Tate Gallery as part of the Tate Triennial that opens this February.

And what did the Mayor ask? Moti Sasson asked Marcus how he should handle the problem of the violent youth of his city. This theme of a struggling community links to previous recipients of Marcus’ shamanic services: the citizens of Stavanger, a middle class Norwegian town dealing with a sudden influx of Nigerian immigrants bringing with them the social problems of poverty, prostitution, and a spread of HIV; and Liverpool locals whose housing estates were being demolished. When I asked Marcus what drew him to situations where these kinds of complex social problems would be the obvious question, he explained to me: ‘I strongly feel that the artist, [in particular] my role as an artist, has a responsibility, and I feel that my imagination can be put to good use socially, even politically. I’m encouraging on a personal level very different ways of thinking about problems. It’s a massive challenge for an artist to come up with answers rather than posing questions.’ As a country, Israel with its internal and external tensions and threats, is a site rich in material for Marcus and again presents groups in society in crisis and conflict that are certainly not only art gallery visitors, ‘Art performance is usually to a specific audience that is well-primed, which is very small in a way, it has a function in the art world, but it struggles to have a function in society. My objectives is to by-pass the art process and take it straight to public audience and not really present the performance as art but as a functioning process. And with humour, and the capacity to shock, it brings people together, through scepticism and also wanting to believe in the person standing there.’

There certainly is a great deal of humour and shock involved. After a sip of tea, Marcus pulls down the reflective lenses of his sunglasses and entered a shamanic trance. This involves going on a journey and communing with animal spirits. With each animal he meets he responds to their call, thus filling the Mayor’s room with a litany of incredibly bizarre sounds - squawking, calling, cooing and honking. When I participated in Marcus’ recent London performance at Wallspace, an art space in All Hallows Church, I was a member of the choir, which mirrored Marcus’s cacophony of bird and animal sounds. Unfortunately my noisemaking capacity was limited as a result of an urgent need to giggle at the hysterical situation. And when I watched ‘The Plover’s Wing’ I was particularly delighted to see Galit Eilat, curator at The Centre for Digital Art, and interpreter for the meeting with the Mayor, smile and smirk throughout. But is this an acceptable response, especially since Marcus appears to take his performance very seriously, building up quite a sweat? Moreover, this is an official residence, the camera pans behind where there are flags of The State of Israel, making the seriousness and incongruity, and the question, to laugh or not to laugh all the more apparent and loaded.

The answer lies in the next stage of the performance. When the trance is over Marcus sits down, lifts up the reflective lenses from his sunglasses, and describes what he saw and explains its relevance with sensitivity, intelligence and eloquence. Like the act of midrash, biblical exegesis where stories are explained, drawn together and interpreted for the audience, Marcus takes his visions and applies them to the reality he is confronted with. ‘In my process I look for commonality between myself and other species, that are extremely different from me, like birds for example’. And the audience themselves, joined by watching Marcus, and through their communal laughter, are also opening themselves up to another consciousness. As Marcus explained to me: ‘Talking to animal spirits is a very strange thing to confront but, being so incongruous, it can take people out their set ways of thinking’. The audience surprised by what they see, can hear a new approach to their situation.

Enter the plover. When Marcus saw the birds on his journey, a number of which were unfamiliar since they are the local birdlife of the Middle East, most called to him and he responded. All except the one bird, the plover. Marcus described to me that ‘It was walking away from me on the ground, and since it nests on the ground, territory is very important to it. It was dragging one wing behind it - this is a known strategy that this bird has; it is not injured but by imitating an injured animal it distracts predators away from the nearby nest with his young in, by being easy food. My feeling about this was I wasn’t a threat to the bird, it was a default situation.’ But how does the plover enlighten the Mayor, and how could it relate to the wider issue of the Middle East situation?

‘I explained [about the plover] this is so part of your identity, defending yourself, a victim position, where you go to immediately. The important thing for [Israel] as a nation is, through education, to emphasize shifting identities and an empathy with a different position. It’s a fundamental position of resolution within a conflict, to be able to emphasise with your enemy or oppressor.’ Marcus intimated the local problem in Holon might have greater, national implications and the Mayor whose gives special importance to education in his policies seemed sympathetic to his suggestions.