THE TIDE IS HIGH
Day four of the installation of my installation and we are on schedule. I have a seven metre line of photos to go on the wall butted up to each other and I am glad of the assistance to put them in a nice straight line. The walls are pretty good but it’s a working space and inevitably they are not absolutely perfect. There are two breaks where a ‘secret’ door leads to the store area so I have to make a compromise and break the photographic line. This is the real world though so I aint going to cry over that too much.
There is a point when you think – yes this does make sense and I feel I have handled the space well. We all feel the overall layout has a cohesive feel to it. Having bought a toy trumpet to go with my Marion doll I now place Kip Heron’s real trumpet in the cabinet covered in my recycled plectrums. People have to peer through the gaps to see what lies within. Even to do this we have to get clearance from the museums service as I want to stand it on its bell end rather than the somewhat obtrusive perspex stand that has been made for its display in the museum. We get an ok on that one as long as it isn’t going to fall over.
When you’re dealing with audio visual material (and despite the addition of other elements in the show, this is ostensibly a video installation) the main concern has to be how it plays back. The monitors look great. Somehow the two sets of headphones for each screen is only currently one as the others have apparently gone missing… hopefully these will re-appear at some point. The main screening looks good too in its own discreet cinema space, but there are a number of variables, like the fact that each day the sound will re-set itself to lower than it should be, so I have to hope that the gallery staff get on board with checking that. I have stretched the resources of the gallery a tad and one of the videos has to play off DVD rather than digital. I have had to compromise on that which is fair enough. The audio is a little low though so we agree that a pre-amp needs to be installed at not too much cost. This won’t be done for the opening but soon after.
Luckily I have made a video to accompany the song – something I didn’t at first intend but decided to do at the last minute. My 1940s gramophone doesn’t pass the council PAT test and they aren’t allowed to do any work on it. I could get my own electrician to sort it out but in the end I decide to steal my daughter’s all in one screen/ DVD player and play the video of it instead. The gramophone stands silently on a plinth next to it, my record tantalisingly held in the stacker ready to play someday, someway, sometime… never?
There are indicators of what I always knew but still have to get used to; the fact that some people will be enthralled and others will be thrown by the fact that it’s not what they expected. It’s great to see people sat in a row in the ‘cinema’ and watching the 30min video all the way through. It’s puzzling to watch others move around the space, pondering screens as if they expect them to somehow transmit the meaning telepathically. For some there seems to be a real resistance to engage directly, as if to put the headphones on is a commitment too far. It’s as if they expected to see a static picture on the wall and that this moving stuff has thrown their world off kilter.
One woman says to me (not realising I am the artist) “this isn’t what I was expecting – it’s all people talking, I thought it was going to be about the Rink”. I wonder how she could not find anything about the Rink here- it is stuffed full of references and recall.
