Inner Voice a film about Meredith Monk by Babeth M. VanLoo
I thought I was
familiar with the work of Meredith Monk, a household name in the art world.
After viewing Inner Voice, a new
biopic about Monk by Babeth M. VanLoo, I feel like IÕve just met Meredith
Monk, the composer, singer, director, choreographer, filmmaker and artist
whose singular work defies comparison.
Yet I was reminded of two artists while watching this film, Georgia
O'Keefe and Andy Goldsworthy, whose works share a similar process of
inspiration derived from experience of the natural world. Goldsworthy's biopic
Rivers and Tides depicts the
artist's practice as impacted by a daily involvement with nature, as does Inner
Voice. I was reminded of O'Keefe
because of the time Monk has spent in New Mexico connecting with the
stateÕs incredible landscape and creating many works inspired by it.
Inner Voice features rare
archival documentation of several of Monk's early performances as well as
her most current work. The film is rich with interviews with her many
collaborators, and insight into her everyday life, roots and artistic
process. It begins with attention to her familial roots. Monk's mother, a
professional singer who performed in radio and early television, worked in
a live format that required a degree of improvisation. Monk's maternal
grandfather, a Russian immigrant, was also musically inclined, a singer and
violinist who taught both subjects in Harlem. Monk's father was also a
talented musician.
The film reveals how Monk's musical lineage gifted her with a clear
perspective before she first entered the New York City art scene in the
1960s, during the full flowering of the Fluxus art movement. That community
of artists embraced her, and she began her performance career there with
presentations of both individual and collaborative performance works at a
time when her personal aesthetics merged perfectly with the zeitgeist of
that era. The decisive sway of the Fluxus art movement on her work is clear
when Inner Voice treats us to
archival footage of her early work.While the time and place were ripe for Monk to emerge, as one of her
Fluxus artist collaborators observes in an interview, ÒWe saw her as this
young kid with a mind of her own.Ó It's a pleasure to see documentation of
Monk's fabulous 1966 performance 16 Millimeter Earrings, showcasing her early solo work as a young
interdisciplinary artist incorporating vocals, choreography, dance, guitar
and taped music.
An interview with Monk and Lanny Harrison, one of her first
collaborators, elucidates her teaching and performing practice, and reveals
how Monk's theater and Dharma practice came together early in the
development of her work. Inner Voice also
provides rare footage of her workshops and early performances such as The
Girl Child and Gotham Lullaby, the latter inspired by her mother's death, and
documents the creation of recent large-scale works that Monk has brought to
the stage that will inspire anyone who follows their heart and soul in
creating art.
