Cate Blanchett is a great actress and an intellectual. She gave up the Hollywood life for years in order to manage the Sydney Theatre Company and ever since she got back into film she is following a multitude of interests. She developed the “Manifesto“ video installations with German artist Julian Rosefeldt which were shown in Hamburger Bahnhof in 2016. 13 screens in two big halls, 13 different film roles for Cate Blanchett where she recites the manifestos of 20th century art movemements.

Dadaists, surrealists, futurists, constructivists, the “Dogma 85“ directors, and many other well-known and lesser known art movements have left behind their manifestos along with their art. Utopias and statements of beliefs rooted in their time, reckoning with the old and a call for change, to a revolution in art and in life. Blanchett‘s roles and the backdrops serve different functions. The conservative mother at the dinner table is the biggest contrast to Claes Oldenburg‘s pop art manifesto which she says like a grace, a funny highlight. Blanchett embodies the futurist manifesto while playing a stockbroker in a perfect office, her role as a reporter and news anchor conveys conceptual art. By showing these scenes on the screen audience members don‘t have the opportunity to choose the order themselves and make their own connections and contrasts, which was possible in the exhibit. But Blanchett‘s transformations from a punk to a lady, a homeless person to a factory worker, and the dive into the steams of thought in art history is fascinating.

Susanne Stern

Translation: Elinor Lewy