Yael Bartana

"Once upon a time there was a king", "he loved horses and so did his circle of friends" appear in succession on the screen in white lettering on a black background in the introduction to the video installation You Could Be Lucky, created by Yael Bartana in 2004 for the Biennale in Liverpool. The work is installed in an old, plush cinema with rows of red upholstered seats, carpeting, heavy velvet curtains and three framed photos jumping horses on each of the sidewalls (in imitation of a cinema at Liverpool's city museum in which horse race documentaries are shown regularly). With it, the artist sets her sights on England's biggest steeplechase race, the Grand National in Aintree. Yet, rather than turning the spotlight on the horses participating in the competition, the artist focuses on the spectators cavorting at the racetrack. Thus, in the course of the film, the camera often moves unnoticed and from a variety of different angles through the assembled crowds - drinking, noisy, sometimes relaxed, sometimes tense - in order to document the codes and habits of the citizens of Liverpool at the horse races. Whereas the Royal races at Ascot attract the nations richest and most beautiful people, it quickly becomes clear that in Liverpool the smartly dressed working class gathers over beer and sausage to have a good time. The camera wonders through the crowd, follows men sharing a toast, switches to close-ups of shoes, shows banknotes being tucked into trouser pockets - all of it punctuated by short panning shots onto the actual centre of activity: the race itself. The scenes are accompanied by the sounds of the ever-present babble of voices, the suspense-heightening public address announcements of the commentators and the effusive cheers of the spectators. With time, the hectic voices grow increasingly faster, as if they were competing with the velocity of the galloping horses. For a moment, the sounds die away, individual picture sequences slow down and a spherical sound is heard is heard at a low volume. However, it does not take long before the shouts of the crowd penetrate the sound again and eventually drown it out completely. The camera continues a drift through the "glamorous" spectacle, passing by women eating, a fistfight, a line in front of the ladies' room and a person wearing a horse head mask. Ladies wave their betting slips; some spectator's break out cursing. The voices follow one another in quick succession sounding more emotional the nearer the race comes to its conclusion. People throw their arms up in joy or jump jubilantly into the air. Finally the title You Could Be Lucky appears on the black screen of the little cinema. (from: Yael Bartana, exh.cat. Kunstverein in Hamburg, Hatje Cantz, 2007, p. 77)