to begin with: a river and a tree
(installation in a completely darkened space; video projection onto blowing fabric on floor; slide projection onto hanging tranluscent paper; audio element panning slowly around the circumference of the room; 1999-2000)
The 'river' is a video projection of the surface of a river projected onto a piece of white fabric (aprox. 1.25m x 4.5m) which runs allong the floor across the gallery space. The fabric is raised at one end allowing a fan to undulate the projection surface. The 'tree' is a roll of vellum hanging from the ceiling onto which is projected the image of a tree. The image can be seen from both sides. A twenty minute soundtrack, with frequent pauses of up to five munutes, pans slowly between speakers located around the gallery giving the illusion that a voice wanders slowly around the outside if the space.
The visual components of the piece (a tree, a river) are architypal symbols both in western theatrical history and in the general vocabulary of human story-telling, myth-making, metaphysics, religeion, etc. The tree often recurs, for example, in the works of Beckett and the river is an incessantly repeated device; for example in the Mahabharata, in greek mythology and in spiritual / popular music. Reducing theatrical architectonics to its simplest traces, the tree is a vertical line and the river a horizontal one. The tree or vertical element is a means to an end; a ladder, a passageway, a scaffold. the horizontal element perhaps represents the infinite, the incomprehensible, that which is strived for, feared, crossed over, transcended. With these two simple props any story can be told. A voice awakens and begins to recreate its 'self' in a geography of the crudest fabrication. Nothing is real. Representations are decidedly provisional yet surprisingly adequate. The voice must build on what is at hand. Triggering memory, suffering the inevitable narrative, returning eventually to a point where silence is once again possible. In this darkened space the question is whose voice? Who speaks? To whom?
© 1999-2000 andrew forster (all rights reserved)
