Things to remember while making workNumber three: Details matter
It was one of the great pleasures of the last three weeks to attend the scenographer's exhibition yesterday.
I was enthralled by the minutiae...
Yellow yarn tied in a bow holding cardboard to a metal frame
Bubble-wrap leaves outlined in chalk
blue liquid draining through medical tubing
a perfect perspective illustration of the upper-deck bus seating.
a carefully repeated curve of white paper
Each new world offered a myriad of theatrical possibilities. It was difficult for me to perceive them as finished because I've been conditioned to respond to space, add to it, and develop scenes from it. I know this is unfair of me but it is how I see the work.
(all work, in fact. When I saw the weather project in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern I almost immediately began devising a performative event within it. I guess this is my version of Hitchcock's "exercising the story muscle.")
During our peers presentation, I found myself engaging in a journalist's game - who, what, when, where, and why? Not in any realistic, or naturalistic way, but in a more mysterious way. In our wrighting cluster we've been re-investigating some basics of story and it was a joy to go back to a place dominated by the unfamiliar.
who's face is this?
where is this light coming from
what is this smell?
when is this image taking place?
why....oh there are so many wonderful WHY's to ask...
!
And those questions arise, in my opinion, from the details. When we encounter a new space it is our instinct to begin by absorbing the macrocosm and then to work progressively toward the microcosm. The most exciting work I've ever seen is compelling on both scales - the work of people like Jackson Pollock or the sculptor Tom Friedman.
I have a theory that work will sustain interest as long as the viewer can continually observe ever-deepening layers of detail.
Two weeks ago I visited Eltham Palace. I happen to be a fan of Art Deco and this home, located in southeast London is one of the best examples of the form in the UK.
This is the main entrance hall. When you first walk in, the center dome, made of hundreds of circular glass blocks, overwhelms the viewer. It's sparsely furnished and leaves copious empty space (to be filled by cocktail party-goers, I'm sure!) but if you look at the far wall, you'll see a delicate wood-paneled wall filled with some excellent modern-era marquetry ( a wood inlay technique.) And then, if you haven't had too many gin and tonics, you'll notice a small clock, built into the wall over one of the staircases. It has small and delicate brass numbers laid directly onto the wall and needle-thin arms that still tell the correct time.
And don't even get me started on the light switches!
As I wondered from installation to installation I found myself being engaged in a similar way. Each layer yielded a new set of questions - or "asks" as Hannah Ringham might say.
Watching people stick arms and faces into the path of the projectors reminded me that anytime a human form enters a physical form a dynamic tension is present. Sometimes that tension is mild, perhaps even a bit sagging - for example, a well dressed man in a clean and neat living room - this holds a low level of tension. In simple terms, he belongs there. But if you were to insert that well-dressed man into the installation pictured above, there would be a very different tension present.
There's that saying - how does it go? The devil is in the details - is that it? I'll have to remember that.
I visited Eltham Palace on my birthday--mostly to visit the gardens, as it was gorgeous outside and I'm a sucker for flowers, but I had my English Heritage card on me anyway so I wandered the house again, blue bags protecting the elegance from my muddy clod-hoppers, fingers clasped between one another to keep them from touching all the tempting inlay...
ReplyDeleteWhile I love the details of the deco design--the delicately tooled leather, the ludicrously ornate gold bathroom, the frankly bizarre palm-papered lemur enclosure, complete with ladder into the butler's pantry--it's the details of the house itself that really speak of not only the times, but to the Courtaulds themselves. The pseudo-secret door that joined their boudoirs was the closest thing the glamorous socialite and her shell-shocked husband had to shared space, to intimacy. The freely-available exotic cigarettes in the room next to the household payphone remind one of the sweeping value changes in life over the past 80 years. Indeed, the fact that the house exists at all is an astonishing example of how we as a culture have changed, particularly since the architectural travesty that was the 1950's--if a wealthy tycoon approached the National Trust today and said he'd like to build a manor house on the ruins of a 13th century palace he'd have his ass kicked out the door so fast his legs'd have to run to catch up. What we value does show itself clearly in what we leave behind--in our homes, our architecture, our garbage--and paints a picture to future generations that, regardless of its truth, can be one hell of a story.