PASSAGES, 1997
(3 hour performance)
This project was a collaboration with Glasgow-based artists Hugh Watt, and took place in a circular basement gallery space in Glasgow. The projected text, hand-written by Hugh from the writings of art theorists on the mutable relationship between artists and society, covers the performer and the audience who view the piece by circling around the edge of the space against the curved wall. The light beams that make up the text move over bodies in the space and are fluid like light under water.
The performer enacts a series of 10 gestures over and over in the center of the space that demonstrate how to fly. A narration of these 10 steps is available at a listening station via headphones in an adjacent space, so the viewer can see the movement with or without its exact context. The movement has the clarity and ritualized quality of one demonstrating something important, but degenerates through many repetitions over the course of the 3 hours to take on a futile and labored quality.
The overall effect of the two combined elements is to create in the space a tangible sense of the vivid intensity of the attempt at communication, clarity, transcendence.
This project was a collaboration with Glasgow-based artists Hugh Watt, and took place in a circular basement gallery space in Glasgow. The projected text, hand-written by Hugh from the writings of art theorists on the mutable relationship between artists and society, covers the performer and the audience who view the piece by circling around the edge of the space against the curved wall. The light beams that make up the text move over bodies in the space and are fluid like light under water.
The performer enacts a series of 10 gestures over and over in the center of the space that demonstrate how to fly. A narration of these 10 steps is available at a listening station via headphones in an adjacent space, so the viewer can see the movement with or without its exact context. The movement has the clarity and ritualized quality of one demonstrating something important, but degenerates through many repetitions over the course of the 3 hours to take on a futile and labored quality.
The overall effect of the two combined elements is to create in the space a tangible sense of the vivid intensity of the attempt at communication, clarity, transcendence.
