Art Research Communication

Captured texts

February 1, 2006 at 8:46 pm in News, Views No Comments

Chris Byrne and Iliyana Nedkova elaborate on performance, video, art and philosophy in a trio of texts commissioned to accompany the premiere of Captured, an exhibition at Glasgow’s Tramway, part of the National Review of Live Art in February 2006.

The writings are also published on the web site of CRATE – a grouping of artists and curators working with Contemporary Art and New and Future Media Art, based at the University of Dundee.

Captured: Situations observed
Chris Byrne

“The chronotope is where the knots of narrative are tied and untied… Time becomes, in effect, palpable and visible; the chronotope makes narrative events concrete, makes them take on flesh, causes blood to flow in their veins… Thus the chronotope, functioning as the primary means for materialising time in space, emerges as a centre for concretising representation” [1]

Thus did Mikhail Bakhtin point us towards the crucial juncture wherein time and space combine in the flow of literary form, a concept which has become essential to dramatic theory and the practice of theatre. The playing out of a narrative sequence through performance creates an analogous distillation of the moment. The act of framing such instances for the video camera, of selection, recording, editing and playback, further defines and enhances them: the ‘Captured’ of the exhibition title.

The Captured screening programme presents a diverse grouping of short works which operate as nodes within an interrelated network of observed fragments of time/space, the grasping of the viewer’s attention to reveal a sequence of possibilities. Individual artists take us on different journeys: for some, the importance of ritual, of playing a role, is paramount; others choose to address specific physical, geographical, social or critical contexts. What these videos make evident too is the importance of situation in determining the nature of the artwork: the specific parameters which dictate the point at which latent potential is transformed into visible action.

For Simon Fildes & Katrina McPherson, the governing principle for their short ‘Tsysk’ is rhythm: of movement, editing, and life. Fragments of motion unspool on tape: some quite warm, touching moments. The mood and pace shifts from frenetic to calm, tense to relaxed. The work articulates the expressiveness of human physicality, whether that of trained dancers or people constrained in their ability to control their bodies as most of us can. Touching, holding, moving, interacting: the actions of everyday life and relationships as well as dance. In Jackie Hatfield’s ‘Canine Staccato’ the basis is a visual/musical composition, assembled through the process of editing. A scratch video portrait of woman’s best friend, or rather, Walter. He displays various facets of his personality: barking, running, jumping, growling. This is juxtaposed with a bracing walk in the woods, building an ambient snapshot of the everyday. ‘From Walk To Run’ by Bob Levene is reminiscent of the performance videos of Vito Acconci. The aesthetic of the stripped down studio or gallery space; bare walls; process-based repetitive actions which push the performer’s bodily limits. Levene applies a certain humour, the scenarios constructing pathos and absurdity in equal measure: she is too short too reach the microphone as she tries to speak into it, and attempts to extend a vocal note ad absurdum, beyond the point of endurance.

The familiar sight of traditional morris dancers performing their ancient pagan ritual is the core of Peter Richardon’s ‘British Grenadiers (adjusted)’. Yet this emblem of folk culture is isolated from its normal context, the street or square, taking place instead in a former industrial space. The dark shadows and echoing acoustics are emphasised with stark lighting, creating a formality which has more the air of an experimental theatre or contemporary dance performance. The moving image of the entire dance is viewed in slow motion, the resulting change of pace and transformation of the soundtrack creates an impression of the men moving underwater. The regimented and martial aspects of the dance come to the fore, reminding us that folkloric performance often deals with our complex and contradictory relationships to masculinity. ‘Sacred Turf’ by Holger Mohaupt posits the sporting field as a ceremonial site. The groundsmen are part of a priesthood, preparing the temple for the occasion. There is a touch of wry wit in the use of the song “You’ll Never Walk Alone”: there are two men, one closely following the other in perfectly synchronised sequence. Matt Hulse’s ‘Take Me Home’ is at times frantic, as an absurdist dream-like narrative unfolds. Pixellation of the artists’ naked body in various unusual positions and situations, performing repetitive, almost obsessive looping actions: perched on ledges or office furniture. The post-industrial mise-en-scène and grainy film aesthetics by turns evoke Muybridge, Kafka, and Lynch.

Taking its structure from 12th century ‘Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon’, Caz McIntee’s ‘Soshi’ interweaves fragments from ancient and modern Japanese cultures. Multilayered and complex, McIntee’s experimentation with the documentary form builds a candid portrait of contemporary Japanese society from a feminine perspective. The work allows us a glimpse of the lives of Japanese women, their thoughts and observations on family life, love, and the society in which they live. The intimacy of some of the women’s revelations is paralleled by the direct mode of address. All this is inscribed with a delicate attention to detail which is fitting for the people and culture which the artist takes as her subject. ‘Assumed Position’ by Michelle Deignan plays with roles and interpretation. The artist questions the role of the critic, in contextualising and interpretating her actions. A kind of metatext evolves within the work, a knowing, self-reflexive irony which pokes fun at the tradition of street photography and its pretensions to directness and authenticity. In analysing the act of photographing as a performance, Deignan is consciously framing this as a dramatic device. She deconstructs notions of artistic authorship and the interrelations between subject, artwork and ‘text’. Elke Reinhuber’s ‘Perruecht’ follows an intervention in public space. Using raw cotton, she performs the détournment of a significant historical landmark in former East Berlin: a Socialist Realist statue of Marx and Engels. A lampooning of both official art and the political symbolism of the former GDR, there is also tenderness as the artist stated ‘ I just wanted to give him a nice white beard and hair.’ [2] While engaged in ‘feminising’ the stern likeness of Karl Marx, the artist, dressed like an art restorer-cum-hairdresser, even has ready-made postcards of the event for the assembled tourists forming the audience. Reinhuber re-activates an over-familiar image/site, altering perceptions and questioning assumptions about public statues and their meaning in a world of global tourism and hyper-capitalism.

Notes
[1] – ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel: Notes Towards a Historical Poetics’, Mikhail Bakhtin, in The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl Emerson & Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981)
[2] – Cited in a public talk by the artist, Dundee Contemporary Arts, 16 February 2005, (from the author’s own notes.)

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Skyscaping
Iliyana Nedkova

Imagine strolling through Cornish fields and walking into a large sky sculpture. It is reminiscent of a do-it-yourself planetarium where one could sit on a bench along the sides and worship the sky through an opening in the roof. As an art rambler you can drop by, look up and absorb the atmospheric changes over the course of the day and night. As an art aficionado you can contemplate space and the light that inhabits it, the act of seeing and skyscaping (1).

On one level the performative video art piece Waiting (2005) by Pernille Spence is a study of space and light. On another level it is a day in the life of the fugitives, i.e. the clouds and the two actors performing for the camera. The video sequence opens and closes in dark blue with a young couple slowly emerging out of or retreating back in the darkness with the sun rising or setting. The young people are both seated next to each other with their backs to the viewer and their eyes staring through the window in a room with a view of half skyline and half seafront. As the day goes by it becomes clear that neither she nor he would ever move from their panopticum. It is only their gaze, which presumably moves in rhythm with the clouds pirouetting in the sky.

The attempt to capture perfect stillness has prompted durational performance artist Spence to choreograph professional life sitters where previously she would cast one’s own self. The emphasis is no longer on the vulnerable own body fully exposed to the gaze of others. Spence’s preferred style of live performances lasting for hours now gives way to directing others to persevere sitting for an entire day (2). The couple appears fixated in a state of cloud watching. Memory’s ruthless calculator edits out the trivia and condenses the essence of the day to a few minutes. As a result the photographic illusion of a still life is shattered by the speeded up the motion of the skyscape.

The static camerawork evokes surveillance and the live recording re-affirms the rigidity of the seemingly documentary script. The confined space, recurrent in Spence’s work such as specially fabricated glasshouses, induces despair and repression. The Waiting room reminds of a cell furnished with a pair of upright bodies seated on uncomfortable chairs. The individuals appear as hostages imprisoned in their own world or that of their perpetrators (3). The visual composition of Waiting and the soundtrack by long-term collaborator John Scott are both carefully orchestrated as if to suggest imposed or self-inflicted discipline (4). One can almost get deafened by the sound of silence or dazzled by the sky light throughout the day.

Clouds and art history have a long and often troubled relationship. These fugitive forms are notoriously difficult to depict with meteorological accuracy not to say poetry in landscape photography or painting due to the disparate light levels of the sky and the land. John Ruskin alone stressed the importance of focusing on ‘the beauty that canopies the earth’ in art throughout his critical writing (5). Most recently, artist and poet Alec Finlay sent out an open invitation to anyone to contribute to an Internet database and a published anthology of ‘wind blown clouds’, an endless photography project recording the skies of the world (6). Also inspired by the Japanese haiku tradition artists Dalziel and Scullion and composer Craig Armstrong have created One Minute, a series of minute-long films capturing the skies of Scotland and the increasing compression of time in our lives (7).

The clouds in Spence’s Waiting are treated with visual prominence and an eye for cinematic detail. Dark and ominous at dawn break or white and fluffy later on, it is the clouds rather than the self-absorbed couple, which truly perform for the camera. Reaching to the skies, seems to be Spence’s favoured allegorical device, employed also in her earlier work I look up, I look down (2001). Setting the camera in Waiting on a daylong exposure towards the vista of the sky is a poetic assertion that there is hope of deliverance from being a detainee of misfortune.

Notes
(1) The ‘skyspace’ is Elliptic Ecliptic (1999) by the American land and light artist James Turrell. This seminal work was installed in Penzance, Cornwall specifically to view the sky in the moments leading up to, during and following the total solar eclipse, which occurred on August 11th 1999.

(2) In Spence’s earlier works Kinaree (2003) and NaCl (2000) the artist would use her own naked body following the tradition of live performance art, whereas in Waiting (2005) and I look up, I look down (2001) Spence would resort to directing actors in scripted roles in an artist’s film.

(3) In conversation with the author, Spence recalls being affected by stories of hostages and in particular by the incredible account in An Evil Cradling by Irish author and former hostage Brian Keenan who was kidnapped in 1986 while working as a teacher in Beirut, Lebanon. Militant group Islamic Jihad held him hostage for four years.

(4) In another conversation with the author, Spence brings up her childhood memory of elderly people in nursing homes who would spend days on end indoors hardly moving about and often glued in front of a window or a television.

(5) For an outline of various cloud challenges in art and successful cloud studies by Gustav Le Gray, John Linnell, the Pre-Raphaelites and J. M. W. Turner see Aaron Scharf: Art and Photography, pp. 77-117, London: A Lane, 1968; Penguin Books Reprint 1986

(6) ‘So – when was it – I, drawn like blown cloud, couldn’t stop dreaming of roaming, roving the coast up and down . . . ‘ Basho, Oku no Hosomichi translated by Cid Corman, In Alec Finlay: Wind Blown Cloud, Morning Star, BALTIC: The Centre for Contemporary Art, 2003

(7) One Minute was performed live by Royal Scottish National Orchestra at the opening gala concert at the Perth Concert Hall in September 2005.

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Shadows of memory
Chris Byrne

“For in and out, above, about, below,
‘Tis nothing but a Magic Shadow-show,
Play’d in a Box whose Candle is the Sun,
Round which we Phantom Figures come and go.” [1]

For his work ‘Callous to Misfortune’ Clive Gillman has chosen to utilise the form of the slide show, as a means to present landscape images from Gallow Hill, Angus. Superimposed upon the slides are texts chronicling the final words of condemned inmates on death row in Texas, before facing execution. Alongside, a panel of text carries a quotation from Cesare Beccaria expounding on the injustice of capital punishment. [2]

Here we see the artists’ fascination with intertextuality which has been explored in many of his works. [3] The interplay between text and image, the layering of meanings formed through juxtaposition forms a dialogic performance within the space of the work. As Nicholas Bourriaud has suggested “Making a work involves the invention of a process of presentation. In this kind of process, the image is an act.” [4] ‘Callous to Misfortune’ explores historical and philosophical confluences around punishment, injustice and death, through creating connections between texts which do not have direct geographical or temporal relationships.

Constructing translocal linkages between the historic resonances of a specific locale, the heartfelt despair of prisoners awaiting their fate, and moral argument against the cruelty of execution, Gillman makes a strong statement: an act of remembrance. He positions image and text as markers, part of our collective memory. The work reflects upon the process and implementation of law, the effect that unjust laws have on the common people, the poor. “Who made these laws? The rich and the great, who never deigned to visit the miserable hut of the poor,” is Beccaria’s impassioned rebuff to the inhumanity of the State. [5]

Gillman’s use of the conventions of the slide show bears echoes from another artist concerned with injustice, namely the late Bill Douglas, whose cinematic account of the Tolpuddle Martyrs [6] used the transitions of the magic lantern show as a central metaphor for the forces of history and the desire to transform society for the better.

Notes
[1] – From FitzGerald’s translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, quoted by film-maker Bill Douglas in ‘A Lanternist And His Comrades’, The New Magic Lantern Journal, volume 5, number 2 (August 1987)
[2] – ‘Of Crimes and Punishments’, Cesare Beccaria, c. 1764
[3] – For example, the CD-ROM publication ‘Advent’, 1998, Ellipsis. Further information on Clive Gillman’s work available at www.mg.u-net.com
[4] – From “Relational Aesthetics” by Nicholas Bourriaud, Les Presses du Reel, Dijon, 2002 (English version), 1998 (French version).
[5] – ibid.
[6] – Comrades, 1986, Douglas, Bill. The film tells the story of impoverished English workers in the 19th century and their transportation to Australia for forming a trade union.