Green Porno: Scandalous Sea

The incomparable Isabella Rossellini officially became a filmmaker a few years ago with My Father Is 100 Years Old, a surreal and spectacular collaboration with Guy Maddin. Many of us imagined that she would continue to explore her filmmaking after a career as a celebrated actress and model, and as the child of cinema titans. But no one could have imagined this most extraordinary project. By turns titillating, hilarious, delicately beautiful and shockingly educational, Green Porno is as singular as its creator.

First focusing on bugs and now with sea creatures, Rossellini has collaborated with a range of artists, filmmakers and scientists to create outrageous filmed performances, which are then repurposed in various clever ways. The work begins with the construction of elaborate paper sculptures and costumes (designed by Andy Byers) that represent the creatures as larger-than-life, vaguely expressionist but anatomically correct versions of themselves. She then places herself among them and begins a monologue, portraying herself as a covert operator within this bestial sculpture garden, a sexual predator (or victim) giving us the inside “scoop” on the intimate coital details of insects or marine life. Her monologues are almost always side-splittingly funny, frequently haunting in their metaphorical force and full of information we might never have known (such as the size of a barnacle's penis!) The direction and design – a collaboration with Maddin veterans Jody Shapiro and Rick Gilbert – is exquisite.

For Future Projections, Rossellini has partnered with the Royal Ontario Museum, Canada's leading natural and social history museum, to make a magical installation out of the sea-creature films and sculptures. In the museum's Spirit House, the many stunning paper models used in the project's filming will be assembled with a projection of Green Porno films nestled among them. It will be the first time the work is presented in an “immersive” context. In its effect, the sea creatures reclaim Rossellini, protecting the secrets her mouth reveals by surrounding her projected image. A touch menacing, the experience recalls the first childhood visit to a natural-history museum, the awe and fear provoked by a growling stuffed tiger or a towering dinosaur. In those pre-sexual moments, we all become initiated into nature's mysterious power, our innocence briefly and gloriously compromised. The title of the installation, Green Porno: Scandalous Sea, elicits the moments of shock and wonder that make these works oddly (and evocatively) personal for this enticing artist.

Noah Cowan