A review from last month

Nick Relph & Oliver PayneMixtapeGavin Brown's EnterpriseMost of the mixtapes I've made and received over the years are thematically constructed, collaging disparate elements under rubrics of love, summertime, quiet nights, long drives. Nick Relph and Oliver Payne follow this model with Mixtape (2002), a video that evokes youth through the carpe diem reappropriation of situations and objects.The visuals are accompanied by Terry Riley's 1968 woozy, multitracked remix of Harvey Averne's "You're No Good." The soundtrack structures the video, determining its length (22 1/2 minutes is the length of one side of a vinyl LP at 33rpm) and editing style. Two singers intone "you're no good, you're no good, you're no good" on repeat, hypnotically overlapping while ever more images pass by, mostly pegged to the incantations. However, in defiance of these assertions from the narrative voice, an underage rock band enthusiastically rehearses, a woman breakdances on a sidewalk chalk rendering of Botticelli's "Venus," the artists' "Besht Mate" kisses a statue at the center of a park fountain, another quintessentially British youth leans against a building wearing rainbow-colored pants and walking a rhinestone-studded turtle on a leash. All have discovered unique forms of self expression, as have the artists.Relph and Payne often zoom in on details, emphasizing the songlike rhythm underlying daily life; the repeated rhythms of the teenager's drumstick beating the ride cymbal, the tapping of the old man's cane against the sidewalk, the all-white trainers of the breakdancer swishing back and forth above the pavement. But not all is happiness and spontaneous creativity. Several scenes in Mixtape remind us of the underside to all this dancing and celebration; most direct are images of hunters and their prey, tied to the sexual tension of the scene that introduces them. Yet this knowledge is to be taken in stride, never fully derailing the sense of euphoria imparted by this mixtape. "You're no good" begins to sound like "you look good" as these actors celebrate life's little moments and their own idiosyncracies. Relph and Payne stress that there is beauty and value in youth (mis)spent.(October 2002)