VOL.2
Echoes in the Vessel: Disembodied voices, Embodied objects, and Lost Body Parts
Lewisham Art House
4th September 2011
Engaging with anthropomorphism, appropriation and choreographed movement, Echoes in the Vessel: Disembodied voices, Embodied objects, and Lost Body Parts brings together artist practices which manifest the transformative potential of moving image mediums and how this can affect the portrayal of their subject. Here bodily representations extend beyond the onscreen presence of characters within a narrative and places become more then just backdrops. Instead they become a material manipulated by the artist, a process that is directed by the possibilities and limitations of the medium, from the archaic and tactile 16mm film to the contemporaneous and intangible digital files on film streaming websites. The films refuse generic cinematic tenets and instead dislocated narratives, material manipulation and disjunctive editing illuminate otherwise hidden stages of production, as the act of filmmaking is both enacted and portrayed and alternative corporeal associations are unearthed. The result is work where both what is recorded and what records are equally a point of focus.
Mark Leckey’s multi-disciplinary practice works to appropriate the objects and models of contemporary histories, environs and experience to transformative affect. Through actions as disparate as the meticulous compilation of archival footage to performances which lend mysticism to ordinary objects, the artist activates unexpected potentialities in his materials. Leckey’s juxtapositions bring disparate codes and seemingly incongruous objects into parlance. March of the Big White Barbarians sees still images of London’s desultory, often homogeneous public sculptures paced to the syncopated beats of Maurice Lemaitre’s concrete poetry, interpreted within a free translation by Leckey’s band, Jack too Jack. The sculptures are articulated by the atavistic rhythms and descants of the soundtrack in a satirical panegyric. They become a series of increasingly consonant forms, whose purposes and identities are anonymous to both their indifferent publics, and the lens of the camera.
Emily Richardson's films examine how activity and movement reveal the history of any given location. Traversing a diverse range of landscapes including empty East End streets, forests, North Sea oil fields, post-war tower blocks and Cold War military facilities Richardson deconstructs place and time. The Plaza is part of The Cinema Series, a series of single shot films made in independent cinemas. The films are all shot using the same technique: a single 360 degree shot from the centre of an empty cinema, the continuity of which generates a distilled viewing experience. As the shift from 35mm to digital projection systems takes place the position of these cinemas is increasingly fragile. This uncertainty is reflected in the films as each shot is time-lapsed, accentuating the absence of an audience. However the viewpoint is more akin to that of the projectionist. The interactive cinematic atmosphere is therefore removed: the emptiness is at once edifying and poignant. Sound was recorded in the projection booth resulting in a cacophony of past projections. The Plaza, located in Stockport, is a restored 1930’s Art Deco cinema, complete with working Wurlizter organ. Using light as an activating agency, Richardson’s focus on cinematic architecture considers how cultural histories are inscribed within place. Her manipulation of time, space and sound endeavours to resurrect forgotten pasts, charting how spatial utility has altered with the development of new technologies and customs.
Daniel McClennan creates video work as well as sound and moving-image environments that investigate the transformational potential inherent within the process of presenting footage of events, exposing the tension between the ‘real’ and its subsequent representation. Crash 4 is part of a current series of work which utilises un-stylised footage of traumatic events such as a jet plane plummeting towards the ground at an air show or a sports car spinning out of control on a race track. These clips are appropriated from video streaming websites and then transformed through an editing process and the addition of an accompanying sound track through software routinely utilised by amateurs and professionals alike. These huge masses of mechanical hardware now move ponderously across the screen like a burning piece of paper or a leaf lifted off the ground and just before the impending catastrophic impact the footage segment loops back on itself, suspending the object within a cycle of repetitions. The spontaneous un-stylised reality turns into unearthly poetic vision of a tragic ballet creating a tension between the traumatic event and the discomforting and displaced spectacle of its presentation.
Manon de Boer’s films reflect an acute attention to detail and the intersecting relationship between sound and image. A fascination with visible or audible forms of memory and their relationship with the body has developed across her practice. With Dissonant De Boer focuses upon dancer Cynthia Loemij as she performs a 10 minute response to Eugène Ysaÿe’s Three Sonatas for Violin. Dislocating the musical score from choreography Loemij only begins dancing after Three Sonatas has played out. Capturing this response on 16mm film, De Boers draws attention to the presence of a body through the medium of sound. As Leomij dances her breathing and incidental mutters, that are released as she performs, become the new audible score to her movements. The use of the 16mm film also provides its own set of limitations to the overall piece, with the length of the film roll (three or four minutes) directly influencing Dissonant’s temporality. Refusing to edit out of the final work the changeover of new film rolls, the length of each shot is determined through the context of the length of the film roll, whilst the sound recording maintains narrative of the piece during the absence of images.
Artists: Mark Leckey, Emily Richardson, Daniel McClennan, Manon de Boer
Curated by VOL*