Took some better photos of the installed “Deposition”. During the Easter period, there did seem to be quite a number of people looking at the cast and writing in the thoughts/meditations book I had provided.The reality of it was both better and worse than I had imagined. I had really wanted the traces of the body to emerge and change as the light merged from red through to white. As it was, I set up red light through lent, and then manually changed the lighting to white early on Easter morning. The lighting was better than a projection, coming from four sources.
I am now starting to create a lit, watery world using a tank of water, colours in the form of lights, cellophane, plastic bottles and food colour. I will then take a time lapse of this in order to project it onto a cast later. Bill Viola, (contemp. video artist), describes a drowning incident when he was 10, as he sank to the bottom of a lake, as the most beautiful world he had ever seen (he was then hauled out). This death-life baptismal experience has stayed with me. Baptism itself is a symbolic drama of death and resurrection, especially the full immersion sort. The cast to be lit by this time lapse film will probably be of my own body, perhaps pressed onto a foam mattress, or under draped fabric.
Grass sown into agar gel grows well in the casts, although making the plaster go very fragile. Wax spray seems to prevent this, but then makes it harder to keep the seedlings and agar hydrated. Chamomile has germinated, but not grown much yet. I plan to sow into the whole body cast, to use this living, body shaped textile either still in the cast, or to remove it and put it on perspex. The growth aspect, combined with the projection (probably on the back of the cast), will go some way to expressing the drowning-living echoes within baptism.
