- Venue
- Chisenhale Gallery
- Location
Once inside the Chisenhale gallery, hidden away from the real world outside, you enter a dark, dark space and are confronted by six large video screens. Hiraki Sawa transforms this gallery space into a world of his own whereby reality and fantasy collide. His six twelve minute videos with subtle digital animation depict extraordinary transforms of space. Benches at the back of the room, offer you a view whereby of all the video screens can be seen, though slightly overlapping, at once. Each piece is a separate titled video in its own right, they unrelated to one another yet together they play in sync to form what is ‘Hako’.
At the head of the space is ‘Fragments’ a video of a toy clock, animated it keeps the viewing of the videos ticking by in real time. Clockwise around the space we enter various locations next exploring a nuclear power station at night set dramatically at the oceans edge, still and seemly silent until fireworks explode, imploding their sickly wonderful colour across the dark sky. Behind this another screen is set in the forest surrounding a two-thousand year-old Shinto monastery. Still, beautiful and dark we watch it filmed at night as the light shifts around the space. Near by animated birds flock around the warn churning water pumped into the sea at Dungeness. Our eyes are then drawn to a studio based model of an interior shot through with oblique shadows, and finally drift to romantic land and seascapes which morph into one another.
The locations of these videos all have a sort of poetic resonance to them and I find my main fascination with ‘Hako’ lies within the atmosphere and ambience. The overall effect of this show is calming. The music and the soft romantic imagery lulls you into an unconscious state of mind, a day dream perhaps. However with this almost perfect calm a strange sense of unease creeps around. The lingering stillness and human absence of these videos causes me to begin to wonder if the peaceful surroundings are in fact slightly disquieting. The mix between these two contradictory elements absorbs me, the ideas of the images as beautifully dark, or beautifully dangerous, or perhaps creepily calm and peaceful radiates. I recently heard a talk by the sonic artist David Toop whereby a discussion was formed regarding the idea of ‘silence’, or I should say silence as the noise of just listening to your surroundings in quietness. I am interested in the psychological impact of this ‘silence’. For example being alone a silent house can be in some ways peaceful, calming and comfortable, however at other times the noises of ‘silence’ provoke anxiety, and feelings of the fearful, disturbing and discomfort. This is in some ways the same way I view ‘Hako’, as if sitting alone in silence, yet my eyes do the listening. Sinister undertones lurk in the overwhelmingly calm atmosphere and I find myself drawn into these almost worlds which aren‘t quite tangible.
One of the videos I feel particularly drawn to out of the six is a piece entitled ‘Talking to a Wall’. The video strays between lingering scenes of an almost empty interior space. This space has a definite real yet imaginary feel to it. Before reading the information statement, which confirmed its constructed nature, I couldn’t quite decide whether the space was real. I personally think of the interior as domestic despite its empty and absent appearance. A single lampshade hangs, the bulb lit to a warm glow perhaps offers this feeling of homeliness. At the same time, of course, this implies presence which makes the human absence in the space even more eerie. Alike what I mentioned before regarding the ambiguity of silence, this seems to apply directly to this particular video as it is of an empty home. The idea of an empty home for me fluctuates between peace and quietness, and fear and anxiety. Maybe the light is left on to imply the house is occupied, yet it is void of furnishings, my mind wonders and I question its reasons for possible abandonment. We move down a corridor, watch a flickering light, focus on empty corners and walls of the space, peer through windows, and through this the viewer becomes alike voyeur implying a darker side to this video. There is an open doorway outside we see the sea.. An animated sea. Which leads my eyes to the next piece.
‘The Way Back’ displays a shifting night lit seascape over which a curious tower presides, fantastical, yet real in its filmed location. These settings feel still like a soft painterly photograph that dreamily urges you to step inside, alluring you into the mysterious dark roiling sea. This appearance is both beautiful and sublime which alludes to the sense of the romantic, however with Romanticism the beautiful and the dark go hand in hand. I find that there a sense of Romanticism within each of Sawa’s videos, alike as I mentioned before regarding the peaceful yet fearful interior spaces. The fact the landscapes in ‘Hako’ are vast and unoccupied prevails both a sense of adventure and foreboding, even perhaps loneliness, as if you are yourself an alone figure within the space. The psychological impact of such spaces also radiates around the room. For example in ‘The Way Back’ the associations and meanings of the sea are strong with 18th century notions of the sublime as elemental forces viewed as emblems of turbulent human emotions.
I think I find myself attracted to this work because it is beautiful on some levels, and there is something about it that entices you in. It has the feeling of modern Romanticism towards space shifting between aspects fear and intimacy. In these settings I am an alone watcher, I look out the sea and I feel lost in its vastness, I am fearful during the dark times in the pretty forest, I find intimacy watching the fireworks light up my nights sky, the hum of the birds is a rhythm in my mouth, as I spy intrigued yet half afraid through the windows of the ‘abandoned’ quiet house. The clock ticks on, the surroundings fade out, the wallpaper emerges, and it begins again…
