barren day 9
White silence
Sacred spaces are shrouded and encased with white with polished surfaces. Valuable materials to common materials such as concrete are subject. In the tiresome exposition of concrete we have found words such as contemporary, brutal and austere while we still attribute qualities of soft, luxurious and awe to hard materials such as marble. Building materials, stones and such appear in many works of art and reflect so much intensity, they have a deadening affect to sound so that while we think we are being quieter in such spaces we are already silenced.
The white space now floating here has a similar affect. The whiteness while not illuminated and projected by stone or anything magnificent but by its very reflection of light and its more enveloped feel has an effect upon behaviour which quietens and also appears to absorb and swallow sound. The result is even with a radio there is persistent hush.
It does appear to echo the space within myself which is one of clamour and hush equating quiet and freedom. A sharpening effect to materiality occurs and elements of what it is to dwell breathe. The artist Cabrita Reis produced works based on the domestic architecture recalibrated as stage set in including The House of White Silence (1990). His use of situation and experience from childhood memory instigate these sets, a common thread. It i snot that these are recognizable experiences or the intention to incite and understanding of childhood memory but rather to investigate how our unconscious displaces place and at the same time focuses a consciousness – makes sharper.
If I honestly trace much of my work back 10yrs it did not start as I thought at the time with memory, movement and the body, but rather with place and the body. Sitting in stairs and feeling the cold wall infuse and push movement through my body like passing through a sheer veil. Doris Von Drathen (2004)recounts how this work dislodges place from the everyday configuration and focuses certain states of consciousness. In Reis’s work Von Drathen refers to threshold. In all my work the shift of that threshold and precisely what it is when dealing with body, architecture and place is essential. For Dave the assertion of the state of consciousness is predominant referring to finding the ‘other’, his eye becoming the sharpening tool for that seizure.
In tracking our intersections I would say we have a ratio of both threshold and a narrowing of gaze towards a certain censoriousness anticipated, however it is this combination which is showing the nature of our collaboration. We are not of adding physical components to each other we of adding tipping and countering that ratio with each other in every discussion of the work that is in this place. Dave identifies the uncanny of space and the body and we both have swallowed Anthony Vidler (Warped Space; 1994)quite whole on this. For my part I’m not sure that is what I’m doing now, but simply upending what causes discomfort rather than focussing on the unsettling feeling itself. Perhaps inverting everyday configurations is my preoccupation with the architectural components of certain spaces and a conviction that I find it unsatisfactory.
In that vein the white silence and this temporary white house I am living in appears to silence that dissatisfaction and shout loudly at possibility – It is perhaps the O’Doherty (Inside the White Cube;1999)idea of the blank canvas and by returning to it quietly imagination can imprint a more satisfactory space.
