Thinking Aloud

Michael Nyman: Videofile
William Furlong: Anthem

You are invited to tea with Artist Glenys Jacques on Saturdays at 3pm. Glenys will be holding weekly discussions about the Michael Nyman and William Furlong exhibitions in particular and about how sound and vision are used in contemporary art practice more generally.

Discussion offers us a unique way to engage and develop our ideas. Just as in Rome the Forum was a central hub where the people gathered to discuss philosophy and justice, we are aiming to create a place to discuss ideas, themes and principles in contemporary art.

Satruday 14 & Sunday 15 February - Final Weekend

A beautiful spring weekend brought more sunshine dazzling over the Pavilion. This, sadly, the final hours of the William Furlong and Michael Nyman installations. A last chance to be washed like a beach with Furlong‘s orchestrated voices or sit before Nyman‘s last Route Master and Portuguese guitar tuner. Here are some of the reflections of the visitors on their last tour;

V1. I loved seeing the hands of the old men playing the game, so intense.

V2. I‘m not sure his music fits all the pieces. But the chance meetings are interesting. Did he know those people on the

bus?

GXJ No, he just wanted to go on the last route master, the 38.

V3 That reminded me of travelling by tram, when I was young I saw the last tram and the route master was new!

V4 (child) I like the dolls it was like a dream.

V5 The dolls were really good. It had all that American darkness. Where was it?

V3 Oh it was dreadful. All that ‘twinkle twinkle‘

V5 Exactly, very powerful.

V6 My favourite is the man with the guitar, taking so much care, and that little bit of credit card for a plectrum.

V3 Fancy going to all that trouble.

V6 I couldn‘t work out if he had just strings or tightening pegs.

GXJ. Say a bit more about the kind of music he‘s chosen with the films, what is the function of the music?

V3 I think his score can either pull you in or reduce your capacity to watch.

V2 Yes, it‘s a shame it can‘t be more sensory, like having the smells that go with the film, like the tea.

GXJ Can the sounds do that?

V3 The metal banging had that effect, you can feel the oldness of those streets.

V7 I like putting on a big pair of earphones and shut out everything else in the gallery. Like a different world.

V3 Yes there was too much noise in there, hard ot focus on one thing.

GXJ Does the work inspire you in any way?

V5 Yeh, it makes me think about the work I make. I do video, I don‘t show it but I might go back and do something with it.

V2 It‘s a good show, its good to have this opportunity to talk about it and hear how other people see things.

V6 Yes I think its been really interesting, you should do this more. When I go to see things, I often wonder what other

people think of the work.

GXJ Perhaps a permanent discussion corner would be a good thing.

V3 Yes, especially with a cup of tea.

Thank you to all the participants who have come to share their views over the last three months, it has been a pleasure to meet you all.

Glenys Jacques

Satruday 28 February

What is art anyway?

It was a great pleasure to facilitate a discussion with the Bexhill artists. A creative group of painters of water colour and oils who‘s experience spans several decades. I asked how their experience and perspective informs their work. I was interested in how they approach their subject matter and what influences them.

The Keatsian aphorism ‘art is beauty, beauty is art‘ exploded as a central initial theme of conversation. The proposal that art should help us to get away from the distasteful things of life, to create and present us with beauty. It occurs to me that our poets, especially the Romantics, are responsible for this compulsion towards tranquil escapism which lived long into the Victorian period. Other members of the group argued that art should make us think, and is effective when we feel uncomfortable in the presence of certain images.

Wordsworth engaged in trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasized intuition over reason and the pastoral over the urban. The long shadow of the desire for landscape filtered through in our discussions. ‘Love Train‘ a continual image of the iron couplings of a train, draw us to the backside of things, the engineering grime, the crucial working parts that the Romantics looked away from. It was a serendipitous suggestion then, made be one of our party, that Nyman should have put some lovely fields alongside the ugly metal. Our desire for the contrived romantic is very much alive in the psyche. A recent study on the ontology of art imagery discovered that in all cultures, a grassy landscape and a rolling hill were the dominant desired visual motifs.

The discussion rolled into debate like a steam train and opinions were divided as to how far art can be permitted to reveal the darker side of life. Bacon and Picasso were quoted, can the difficult be made beautiful? In Witness, the Bexhill artists agreed Nyman had mad a successful and moving piece. The music was profound and complemented the elusive faces. Our dissenting voice agreed that in this piece, the ugliness of humanity had been transformed. What did I think, they asked. This is my least favourite, because I feel manipulated by the music to relate to these images in a way that I feel is sentimental and, yes, a romanticising, of a brutal period that was anything but romantic.

More discussion. Sat 14^th and Sunday 15^th March. GJ

Saturday 21 February

“Architecture is frozen music” Goethe

GJ: What have you enjoyed about the show?

V1: Today the building looks so amazing and I can listen to this music and have my own live film while looking out the window. The films really sharpen my way of looking at things.

V2: Yeah, I‘ve never been to this building before, what a fantastic space.

GJ: How do you feel about the sound with the films?

V3: I really like the metal bangers, I brought my friend to see it, I love the craft, its like seeing the last timeless centuries…

V4: and the men‘s hands, that‘s my favourite.

V3: I could stand listening to those metal bangers all day, it‘s really ancient.

GJ: The sound for both of those pieces is less composed, less controlled.

V4: Yes, it‘s part of the film, that‘s why I like it.

V1: I love the Furlong. The way those speakers are arranged and the time taken to mix those sounds. I‘m very impressed.

GJ: Say more about the mix. Do you mean the voices?

V1: Yes, the voices, but also the way the whole piece has been designed. Hours of thought have gone into that installation.

GJ: Do you have experience of making sound work?

V1: Yes, bits of music, but nothing on that scale. It‘s really beautifully put together. It‘s my favourite piece. I don‘t think people appreciate what they‘re looking at.

GJ: Well, that‘s an interesting point perhaps about how people can appreciate art, do we need to know the work that goes into something to value it?

V2: We shouldn‘t have to, but I see some people go in and out in two minutes, they don‘t really stay and experience the sound, they try to listen to it, rather than experience it

V1: Like the films, they just take you somewhere as an experience. That‘s how art should be. It doesn‘t have to mean anything.

V3: Like this building. It‘s just beautiful to be in it.

More discussions. Saturdays at 3pm. GJ

Saturday 14 February

Metaphors and Symbols

Virginia Woolf asked. "Is there some secret language which we feel and see, but never speak, and if so, could this be made visible to the eye?"

An apt theme for Valentines Day, with the signals of looking and looked at are highlighted alongside the observational studies of Nyman and Furlong. How is our silent language made visible?

Film can be explored as an expression of thinking. Making the invisible visible. When we direct a camera to a position it captures information we are not fully conscious of, where we are focussed on a specific figure, the camera is not. When we re-play or re-look, we see more symbolic references and depth as the unconscious is made conscious. Art has no requirement to make sense, yet as meaning making creatures, we look for the signifiers and signs to help us create meaning in a meaningless world. Perhaps the camera is helping us see our very process of meaning making. It reflects back our incidental way of looking and being seen to be looking. It shows us what our eyes are doing in the gaze. Art is what gives meaning to life, rather than meaning being given to Art. Just as our gaze is given a frisson on Valentine's Day, so the world of sound and moving image intensifies our senses, helping us contemplate the way we look at the world.

Join me for more thoughts, Saturday at 3pm. GJ

Saturday 7 February

Perspective and Space

About dozen people joined me for tea and coffee in a blinding post-snow sunlight on the top floor of the Pavilion. Perhaps the bright light and first glimpses of the spring sunlight brought with them an awareness of perspective of the body in space. When entering the downstairs Gallery and walking into Nyman‘s soaring violins, several people experienced intense claustrophobia. The enveloping strings for Love Train demanded attention. The mesmerising sound held no options of choice and the leaking into other sound works can be overwhelming. It‘s interesting to consider that a phenomena of installation work of moving image and sound often seems to choose its own way of impacting the viewer. I suggest this perspective of considering the work, that it chooses us, as a way of thinking about the gallery experience. It offers us the possibility of entering an energy field not entirely dependent on our illusion of self containment and allows us to be taken by surprise. This leads to an important aspect of what the art gallery has to offer, it opens us to something disquieting, something that we can encounter not under our own control.

Perspective became a central theme of the discussion. Participants were inspired by the works and the Furlong sound piece particularly created a variety of experience. Hearing sound as pattern. Allowing other associations to arise in fragments. Suggestions to move the chairs, so that you weren‘t directed to sit in a line, but could occupy random space.

Join me for tea and coffee and share your ideas. Sat 3pm. GJ

Saturday 31 January 2009

Art is often inaccessible, an exploration into a wordlessness world. The current Nyman and Furlong work create spaces for us to be carried into a dream of sound and vision.

So how can discussion, using words, help us find out what we get from art? Here‘s the paradox; talking, is a way of discovering the nature of our experience. An important part of this is listening to our own words as we find a language for our experience. All concepts of art come from this process.

So having the wonderful privilege of listening to people talking about their reactions to the work increases everyone‘s understanding. Is understanding is a goal? Can we have experience without understanding? Can we encounter something and not have to give it a meaning? In a world cluttered with information, art offers us a liminal space, like the dream, to be somewhere other. When you stand before an artwork you can share another persons dreams and access a different personal space.

Through discussion, we find a way to say what these experiences mean for us, not to be told what to think, but to find a meaning of our own. Digital work of other artists come to mind and inspire our ideas.

One of the most memorable video experiences I had was in 1996. I saw Bill Viola‘s “The Crossing” in New York. A large double-sided screen, on one side a man is slowly showered with water, on the other, he is consumed in fire. These fundamental elements were locked in a constant rhythm of opposites, with life in the centre. It was a transforming moment, I felt exhilarated and taken to a place of primitive beauty.

Digital technology gives us the ability to see invisible things, as well as visible things. We can break down sound, like William Furlong‘s sound wall, and create sounds that we usually screen out. He brings our awareness to the fragmentations of sounds. We can hear that sounds are codes. Signals we use every day.

The ‘digit‘ in digital technology is also a code, a signal, with no physical existence. Yet we use it constantly to communicate and create human systems. (Like the way you found this blog.) The technology of film and sound equipment, like a new paint brush, can change the way artists are able to document the world.

About a dozen people including two gorgeous children squeezed onto our sofas on the top floor of the Pavilion to discuss the work. Discussion concerning the use of sound in the gallery, does it intrude onto other works or create an inclusive sound experience?

Some preferred the quiet solitude offered by headphones. We explored the rights of artists to use film as observation, what happens to us as the subject of the artist‘s eye? Is the street whistler exploited as he tunes his guitar carcass, or is it a moment of deeper understanding between two musicians?

Come and talk more about the work with a free cuppa. Saturdays 3pm. GJ

Saturday 24 January 2009

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