Louise Curham and Lucas Ihlein – Australia
Excitement!
Sue K & the Nanolab gang have announced their collaboration in presenting the Australian International Experimental Film Festival http://www.aieff.org.
Put this one in your diaries! Festival dates Melbourne, 30th April, 1st-2nd May, 2010. Submissions mid Dec 2009 to 15th Febuary 2010.
The fabulously energetic Mark Williams at the NZ Film Archive is poised to screen the documentary essay Conceptual Paradise: There Is a Place for Sophistication. Unfortunately this screening is in Wellington, NZ, not much good to us at present but maybe someone in the community will be spurred to show it! Hope so!
The film is directed by Stefan Römer traces out the debates that allowed the intellectual art movement of conceptual art to emerge in the 1960s, and which has subsequently led to the most relevant questions in contemporary art.
As Mark’s e-mail today said, it features some of the most interesting and dynamic artists and art theorists alive today, presenting a diversity of voices to show conceptual art as a socio-historical development of various movements; that it has no one valid definition. Yet there are several ideas that are framed throughout the documentary; the fiction and ideal of art as political engagement; the history of art as a history of struggles around strategies of representation, and, in making a film about conceptual art, the trope of reflexivity that produces a study on the documentary as a genre in itself.
Artists:
Vito Acconci, Art & Language (Michael Baldwin, Mel Ramsden), Michael Asher, John Baldessari, Robert Barry, Hartmut Bitomsky, Mel Bochner, Gregg Bordowitz, Klaus vom Bruch, Daniel Buren, Victor Burgin, Luis Camnitzer, Jan Dibbets, Mark Dion, Sam Durant, Valie EXPORT, Stano Filko, Andrea Fraser, Liam Gillick, Dan Graham, Renée Green, Shilpa Gupta, Hans Haacke, Július Koller, Joseph Kosuth, Sonia Khurana, David Lamelas, Sol LeWitt, Thomas Locher, Marcel Odenbach, Yoko Ono, John Miller, Adrian Piper, Yvonne Rainer, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, Peter Weibel, Lawrence Weiner, Stephen Willats, Heimo Zobernig
Curators/Theorists:
Alexander Alberro, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, Sabeth Buchmann, Charles Harrison (Art & Language), Geeta Kapoor, Geert Lovink, Seth Siegelaub, Gregor Stemmrich.
TLC workshop Monday 27 April 2009 – Working towards a re-creation of Guy Sherwin’s Man with Mirror.
Chronology
10.35 am Lucas collects Louise from Central.
10.45 am arrive Petersham.
Discussed contribution of new iteration given Guy is still performing this work – discussed the value of ‘slips’ in our iteration, and the significance of transmission of the work to a new generation, both contributions we hope we are making.
There was lengthy discussion about integrity in re-enactment, informing audiences where work knowingly departs from the form and/or intention of the original. Also a long discussion about William Raban’s Diagonal, recently shown in Canberra by our Brisbane colleagues who brought Guy out last year, Otherfilm. Noteworthy that this film was made as a single film that runs concurrently through 3 projectors, ie one film, laced to run through 3 projectors one after the other.
Reviewed Lynn’s YouTube documentation of a London performance of Guy’s along with our ‘gash’ telecine (ie very rough video tape of projected film) of Guy’s 1976 super 8 that we made in Brisbane last Aug. We checked out the timings of the three cycles and the position of the roll changes. We double checked our understanding of how the actions unfold. We studied the actions that occur around the roll changes.
12.30 pm
We loaded the camera, measured focus, set tripod, set sun/shade/dapple position on the mirror, set the framing. We selected to wear singlets as the tension in Guy’s body in performing with the mirror is noteworthy. For me, I pondered the implications of the pregnant body by June when this work is shown.
1pm ate minestrone with rocket salad from Petersham garden
Framed up Lucas so we might detect a neighbour in the background. Discussion of where Louise would be visible when the mirror side faced out.
Discussion of the role of the second person turning the camera on and off – not sure if Guy had a helper, we think we detect a second person in the 1976 footage.
We checked the duration of an S8 reel at 18FPS. We enlisted a timer to help with the choreography – a word I really understand now as the placement of action in time.
We filmed Lucas, a most exciting development. Questions about whether the sun moved too far during the 9 mins as by the end the dapple was quite subtle and his face may be darker than we’d like. The dapple of the clothes line and the mulberry leaves was very beautiful and such a sharp autumnal Sydney day.
c. 2 pm
After filming Lucas, we went up to the glazier to get my mirror cut down. We had a long chat with the glazier, who explained the difference between a glazier and a glass cutter, separate trades in the UK but rolled up here in Australia.
We then filmed me. By the third roll I found the mirror very heavy – felt like I had no real control over it, mostly desperation at the weight and lack of inspiration as to what to discover with it given the battle to hold it.
4 pm
We concluded with discussions about staging the work.
– immovable requirement seems to be clear floor space
– discussed possibility of four performance pairs – Louise, mother of Louise, Lucas, father of Lucas
– requirement to carry through commitment to construction of this performance as the work we are exhibiting.
5.18 train Petersham to Central
To view these larger visit them on Flickr, images titled TLC 03 and TLC 04.
To view these larger go to Flickr, see TLC 01 and TLC 02.
The discussion had two starters. One was the Val conversation re-cap which appears below. Secondly, Lucas discovered the curious picture plane fracture that the mirror introduces in the photos taken in the garden in our last meeting. The mirror appears in each photo of the measuring-up images. It is striking only in one where the mirror is completely surrounded by the rest of the garden. It seems that the mirror reveals a fragment that you know is there but can’t pre-visualise hence its dynamism.
General discussion of mirrors and works using mirrors followed. Discussion covered Learning from Seedbed, a work that gave the audience a physical experience of actually being under a version of the platform.
Ideas that came up:
– Give the audience the experience of actually re-enacting the work. Film the source footage with a group of people. Present the footage on long looped S8s in the gallery or present the footage on video. have mirrors there for the audience to use to enact the work for themselves and their companions in the gallery. Give them the ability to have visual ‘foldback’ of what they do when they re-enact.
– Invite participants to work with a parent or a child to make enactments. Explore if this adds the generational reveal we observed in Guy’s Brisbane performance.
– As my mother was here getting ready to take the plane back to New Zealand, we worked with her to actually make a source footage version that I hope to try a performance with.
– After working with Val, we realise that we need to work with one pair at a time so that we can teach the work in the same way that Guy so generously passed it on.
Conversation with Valerie
Louise took the train up from Canberra with her mother Valerie this morning. On the train, discussion about re-enacting Man With a Mirror took place.
Notes from the train conversation with Valerie:
She described our project as translating a watching experience into a doing experience. She drew in the Degas exhibition she saw in Canberra on Monday. She described Degas’ process of moving from copying the reality of others to depicting his own reality but keeping a mimetic approach. She commented that our process was in a sense the reverse – we start with the evidence of the original work and we try to build up a picture of the work but we’re also looking particularities that crop up because of where, when and who we are and we’re looking to accentuate these. I’m not quite sure how this is the reverse of Degas now, but at the time, it seemed obvious.
Val and I also had a discussion about the working method Lucas and I have used with these re-enactments, particularly preparation – that in the past we’ve looked at limitations as a resource, taking the approach of working with what we have in terms of (scarce) time, money and information. With Man With a Mirror, we have a great deal of information from Guy. The exhibition means we have some financial resources and therefore time. While we haven’t set out with the intention of doing things differently, it’s my observation that these resources mean we’re increasing our attentiveness to each step in the process which seems to have the effect of making it freer.
Measuring Up:
Illustrating this comment and this page of sketches and calculations, I’m posting these photos to show how we worked out the relative dimensions of the mirror/screen. Not very complicated! Lucas’ armspan (188cm) was assumed to be similar to Guy’s – thus, we reasoned, Lucas would use a “full-size” mirror of 24X32 inches (61X81.3cm). Louise’s armspan (163cm) means that, following the ratio, her cut-down mirror should measure 70X52.5cm
Looking Back:
However, looking back at these photos (especially the one immediately above this text) I’m now struck by something a bit more interesting to think about.
Check out the mirror which is leaning up against my leg. There is the illusion of continuity between the “real” grass and the mirror grass, as if grassy space continues unbroken “through” the plane of the mirror. So when your eye travels up the mirror, the reflection of the chair comes as something of a surprise. I find it confusing and visually compelling, like a mind-bender puzzle. To my eye, the horizontal space of the grass seems to be prised up and over my leg. As if it’s been collaged (or photoshopped) on top of the portion of the photo where I am standing.
And then, this photo, with Louise holding the mirror/screen, with the “screen” side towards us, has a completely different visual effect. If you squint your eyes, it is as if the rectangular area of the screen has been sliced out of the picture altogether, giving the impression that you are seeing “through the page” to the blank void on the other side.
These twin/opposite visual effects (collage and excision) started happening for us, without our even trying, just in the shooting of a few documentation photos. Later, when we started to experiment with Louise and her mum, the visual puzzles began to pile up more…
The above photo exhibits the same illusion that happens in Guy’s performance of Man with Mirror: the white square reflected in the mirror looks like a small object held by two hands – one Louise’s “real” hand, the other Val’s reflected hand…
Chewing Over:
Chewing over these thoughts, it occurred to me that this Man with Mirror re-enactment project presents more opportunities than we had originally imagined. Mirrors are incredible tools. They’re so ubiquitous in everyday life that I think I usually forget about them, just use them without realling “seeing them” for themselves.
When we started with the idea of re-enacting (or re-making) Guy Sherwin’s piece, we watched Guy perform it, studied the video documents, and mirrors were re-enchanted for us. We were able to see mirrors once more, with “fresh eyes”, as the amazing artefacts/tools that they are. But it wasn’t until we made our own mirrors, and started mucking around with them in the back yard, that we realised how much fun they can be. Now, a sort of transformation of consciousness is happening – I am beginning to see mirrors everywhere. Last night, in a Thai restaurant, I was given a Mintie after dinner, and the above drawing on the wrapper leapt out at me!
-Lucas
Yesterday we started to prep ourselves to actually shoot the work. We looked very closely at the preview material – Lux preview tape, Lyn’s documentation on YouTube, the rough ‘telecine’ we made up in Brisbane from Guy’s actual film strip literally minutes before he used it for his performance. We also found part of the Brisbane tape of him demonstrating with baby table how to actually do the mirror movements.
One of these pages documents our notes on the timings of the mirror movements, the other is us working out how to stage it in the garden at Petersham and how we should re-size one of the mirrors so it’s relative to my arm span.
We discussed how we imagine presenting the work – clear at this point that the position of the projectors in presentation needs to be a mapping/index of the position of the cameras in the shoot.
This one documents timings from the documentation.
This one documents where to position the shoot in the garden and the correct distances for the cameras and the sizes for the mirrors.
