Concrete Playground

You’re likely to have heard of 'Pavlov’s dog', but did you know famed physiologist Ivan Pavlov actually had four dogs — Druzhok, Sultan, Zhuchko, and Tsygan? It was with Druzhok (‘Little Friend’) that he made his breakthrough. Deficiently put, Pavlov discovered that Druzhok’s behavior could be determined by coupling feeding time with stimuli such as bells, whistles, and images. Thus, when the stimuli returned, this time without the food, a similar response occurred. According to Wikipedia, Pavlov called this ‘conditioned reflex’.

If you’re wondering why Pavlov and Druzhok have made their way into my telling you about the French film-artist Sylvie Blocher’s upcoming exhibition What is Missing? at the Museum of Contemporary Art, let me explain: Blocher uses her camera like Pavlov used his whistle. This doesn’t result in people salivating, but there is a certain behaviour that occurs in her films, a certain disclosure from the characters being interviewed, each revealing their own story, situation, peculiarity, or shared concern with an ambiguously induced ease. Of course any camera seems to engender strange behaviour from its subjects, but Blocher’s films (which she has labelled ‘Living Pictures’) draw out a ‘conditioned reflex’, with extras.

But What is Missing? The title of the exhibition comes from a new work with residents from Penrith, presented concurrently at Penrith Regional Gallery where further projects by Blocher’s Paris-based collective Campement Urbain will be exhibited.

And what themes arise with Blocher’s camera and stimuli? Cultural identity, authority, migration, masculinity, and self-expression. Things that Druzhok would have definitely identified with.

By Tom Melick