‘I’m Lying, I Promise’ is an anthology of the experimental film works of British filmmaker John Smith, a prominent (and world famous, he reminds us) pioneer in the film art of the avant garde. Smith, in addition to being a professor of Fine Art at the University of East London, is our amiable, quirky guide through the three-part, 270-minute litany of his 35-year body of work. The pieces range from 1 minute to around half an hour and span the full spectrum of what might be considered by your average layman (including this writer) to be quite more “avant” than “garde.” Each entry stands in distinct contrast to the last, yet is tied together by the string of Smith’s comfy, gradual nudgings about perception v. reality. ‘I’m Lying, I Promise’ is showing now at Sala Diaz during Contemporary Art Month.
In The Girl Chewing Gum, he’s mundanely filming people milling about and crossing a busy street corner in London, acting like he’s commanding them as they make the smallest and most innocuous gestures and movements. It’s a rolling snicker that develops, briskly quickening to a solid chuckle and a very definite LOL once the punchline is delivered. You see he was lying to you, and the laughs you receive are his apologetic present for the harmless practical joke he just pulled on you.
When he decides to be overlty funny, he’s subtly and brazenly hilarious. In The Waste Land we’re apparently watching and hearing some sort of bullshit, drunken narrative Smith is delivering poetically while he pisses softly at a pub. Like the constant alarm bell in The Girl Chewing Gum, the distant background sound of liquid tinkling is not revealed to be his urination until the camera pulls out of its extreme close-up and pans around an ancient, grimy pisser. So, now we think we know he’s drunk. We’re pretty sure he’s micturating, but that could be a trick. He’s rambling poetically, as drunks are oft wont to do, and which probably seems to us to be stereotypically typical of a drunken Englishman. It’s an elaborate lie of perception. The truth? The concluding punchline begins as the camera, in first-person viewpoint, exits the loo. “Good night, Bill,” slurs the narrator, and the viewpoint pans back around to the rest room door, which isn’t labeled “Men” or the like, but rather “TSELIOT.”
In the brief Om, the “Buddhist monk” unblinkingly (and unbreathingly) sneers “tiddly ommmmmm” as his head is shorn for the camera, the buzz of the electric clippers melding seamlessly with his syllabic chant. It’s an utterly pointless image—and utterly hilarious—until once again we see via the final punchline that Smith was lying to us all along. And now Smith’s pattern is apparent, a moral dilemma: Perception can be totally different from reality, and quite often is. But reality isn’t believed until it is perceived, even though it most certainly existed the entire time.
This is the inherent beauty and defining hilarity of Smith’s art: After a brief acquaintance with his films, and not very far into the anthology as a viewer, you’re aware ahead of time in every instance that what you’re looking at isn’t real. You know he’s lying, but you can’t help but believe what you see because it’s right before your eyes. He teaches the same lesson over and over in each film, but it’s never tedious. He’s determined to make you laugh before he makes you think.
A wide range of muted emotions develops as you progress through his work: The Black Tower is unnervingly suspenseful and vaguely silly, as the narrator conjectures what a mysterious black tower that seems to follow him around is used for, where it goes when it disappears, and why no one else around him seems to have noticed its existence. It’s almost physically scary, and probably would be if the medium of the Sala Diaz gallery wasn’t so bright white and sunny. The Kiss is silently beautiful and Gargantuan is a childishly silly song about a newt. Each is quietly and kindly provoking.
The last chapter in the anthology is comprised of Smith’s recently completed Hotel Diaries series. It is exactly what it sounds like, and so what might typically be the initial mystery in any other work of Smith’s is taken away. Gone is the sleight of hand and trickery. We’re aware from the outset that he’s in his hotel room, delivering late night musings—chastisingly, sometimes bitterly—about politics, life, and hotel corridors. His pedagogy in these final few films is what’s most alarmingly different from his previous work—he’s trying not to be funny. He still is on occasion, perhaps reflexively, perhaps accidentally, but he resists the easiest goadings as he talks about Palestinians and Israelis, Blair and Bush with the rare boredom of a disenfranchised liberal lecturer. His detached passion rambles around the room and the hotel corridor, as his fancy dances from the overpriced Toblerone in the mini bar to the Gaza Strip to the drop-ceiling tiles that rustle overhead every time a breeze blows through the window. He is disarmingly resigned to the fate which the world seems to have chosen for itself, despite his greatest efforts over the last 30-odd years to show people that perception is quite often the definite exception to mankind’s rule of reality.
‘I’m Lying, I Promise,’ is showing at Sala Diaz during Contemporary Art Month, and the Southtown gallery is a comfortable, cozy space perfectly complementary to Smith’s stark imagery and narrative. I sat on an old church pew for a smidge over four hours and watched the films on a blank white wall via projector. The space is cold and bright and Smith’s East London twang (in his part as narrator of nearly all of the films) echoes sharply but coolly around the creaky old house. There is also a personal viewing space with an individual screen and headphones so you can skip around if you like. Or, you can bring yourself some wine, as my fellow viewers did, and perhaps a friend to poke in the shoulder at each quirky giggle. Grab a pew and allow Smith to play a series of harmless practical jokes on your eyes and your ears, and—quite more importantly—your perception of people, flowers, newts, imperialism, and Toblerone.
Through it all, Smith is the gently prodding, meekly protective, patient shepherd of our perception. He’s never shrill, even when we’re pretty sure he’s ranting. He’s aware of what you’re thinking as he manipulates the images on screen, taking them away and bringing them back, cutting them out and pasting them in. He knows you’re wondering about stuff, and you’re going to keep on wondering about stuff until he relieves you with a snicker. But he’s lying, he promised. He’s kidding… we think.
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