Tonight we (Saulius and I, Andrus if he’s back) will draw a line of light through a location in the city.
I found the spot on a tip from Anja Westerfroelke – an artist from Linz who, with Marie Francoise Stewart Ebel from Brussels, is here for the project “ON SITE in Vilnius” in a recently-vacated prison. One part of this prison is a domed church that the Soviets converted into a sort of three storey activity centre for the prison. At the top, you’re standing at the apex of this baroque dome.
It’s about to be returned to some nuns and Anja has mapped the interior. The work, which looks like a huge sewing pattern, is moving through the building from being draped and hung to being folded in order to be packed away.
We’re using the laser beams I brought with me and some special, highly technical and very flat glass disc mirrors that we’ve rented from Geola, a laser and holographic firm in the city whose details I acquired before I left home – just in case. The mirrors come from Belarus and they’re gorgeous – we’ve been playing “catch the beam” with one that I borrowed, all weekend.
We were asked to respond to history and memory in the city. After that it’s open. Our location is a passage that leads from a street to a park. There’s a car park for a diplomatic apartment block on the one side, an ancient decrepit warehouse complete with Dickensian wooden lean-to shack on the other. It leads to a small area of trees and parkland which, at the other end, houses that odd Soviet underground toilet block.
The shack is shelter to an old man who started to grumble when we sketched out some ideas last night – God knows what he’ll make of the TV crew, magic arm clamps and (hopefully) several people milling around for a few hours that’ll hit him tonight.
Our task is to draw this line through the location, to make this line work, to acknowledge these buildings and to be strong enough at the end of this passage to turn a corner and beam up to the sky.
The beam will, of course, refract and get larger the further it goes, though these mirrors will help to minimise that (the compact mirrors that we began experimenting with last week didn’t work so well).
For sure, we’re working very much at verb level, but the process ahead of us has me wondering how Richard Wilson might approach it. Maybe we pierce the carpark, taking the beam in to it, along the inside and out again.
The director Donatus will be there with a steadycam and we have rented magic arm clamps to hold our mirrors. Fantastic to have access to such resources without worrying about the money.
For the first time, I’m really beginning to feel like, however simple it is, I’ve started to do what I came to do. And that’s very exciting.
Relaxed in Kernave, yesterday evening. Here are some pics.
