Thursday 3 June 2010

Imagine a cinema built 1000 years ago















Clemens von Wedemeyer is well-known for his video art works, which often consider the role and position of the audience versus that of the actor, in relation to both cinema and theatre. His 2009 solo exhibition at the Barbican in London (that then went on to tour) was titled “Fourth Wall” - the name given to the “imaginary screen” that actors conjure in order to believe that they are alone and without an audience. It is this “fourth wall” that Clemens attempts to break down in many of his art works to offer the viewer an insight into notions of representation and belief. For example, his video work “Occupation” involves a group of 200 extras being given contradictory directions on a set at night, so that it is impossible for them not to question the situation and its purpose. As the atmosphere grows increasingly confused, the extras become conscious of their roles as both protagonists and viewers of the cinematic set-up that has been created for them to experience their own condition.

When we meet to talk about his forthcoming public art commission for the Turkish city of Mardin, Clemens explains that he initially imagined making a feature film, but that after several site visits he began to feel that this kind of response would not be embedded enough. He could foresee that the complexity of language barriers may be limiting and was very aware that he did not want to put himself in the position of “scripting others' roles.” Instead Clemens began looking back on reels shot during each site visit and the daily activities and people they involve. From his personal experiences in Mardin and following on from works like “Occupation” he is now keen to form a work that is composed of and for the people that live in the city. The work will emerge as a kind of documentary practice, but one that focuses purely on the act of filming with a subjective view. When completed and screened the inhabitants of the city will be able to see themselves in relation to the city and against the city as backdrop via a cinematic set-up created for them by Clemens.

To achieve this mirrored perspective of the community with and upon themselves, a major element of Clemen's My City project will be a solid and permanent form that will initially host the film and introduce the potential for an alternative public space. He says: “One of the first things that fascinated me in Mardin was the stone used to build the historical city. Now, today, when new buildings are built, even though they may be structurally assembled from concrete, they are clad in the same locally quarried stone blocks!” It seems that the importance of the stone and its weight in the city, as well as the lack of any visible public art, greatly inspired Clemens' considerations of what to propose for the My City commission. The context of Mardin and the potential of leaving something behind that would become part of history came to be pertinent for him: “I felt it was important to build something, as this challenge is about fitting something into the city and it is a place that experiences confusions of territory. It is not clear what is public and what is private.”

A new cinema had been built in Mardin in February 2009 and a film festival has been running for two years in the city. But, before this cinema was completed Mardin had no projection space for some time as the previous cinema had gone bankrupt. Clemens realised that it would be interesting to contribute to this new cinematic endeavour, because as he describes: “a cinema can contribute a different, or a third form of cultural arena.” He adds: “Mardin's historical buildings are the city's main visitor attraction and as these are renovated in the hope of creating a new touristic museum context, in which parts are rebuilt and others demolished, it seems fitting that public space is incorporated.”

All these thoughts have fed into Clemens' idea to create a “screen of desire” that he will locate in Mardin as a statement of potentiality. This screen, in its first sketch-ups, alludes to the one built by the architect Le Corbusier atop his infamous modernist residential project Unite d'Habitation in Marseille, France (1947-52). Le Corbusier's idealist community proposal can be imagined as the perfect, classic, public cinema. Since Clemens' first observations of the historical stone constructions of Mardin and his ideas of trying to create a cinema that could have been imagined as part of the city's history, the project has developed to focus more on how a modernist structure would function in the city. Along with a group of architects in Istanbul Clemens is now developing a design for a screen that will fit into the city context as a current addition to its layers of history and that reflects the basic elements of an open-air cinema venue.

Initially, a plinth with a projector will stand opposite the monolith screen and projections will occur after dusk. But Clemens is very clear that he does not want to create something that has one function and meaning alone, and that what he produces should be open to interpretation and use. After an initial screening program that will include Clemens' own video work, it is possible that the projector will travel throughout the city to create a moving cinema with a life of its own. The screen meanwhile may continue to be used for film projections, or it may simply sit as a reminder of how a site of public and active space can be created. Located on the west edge of the city, overlooking the plains to the south in Syria, the screen will connect to the sun's pattern of setting and through this relationship with light and shadow another trope of cinema reveals itself. Regardless of whether there is a projection taking place, the structure will, like a sundial, be altered and shaped according to changes in the weather and time. In this way its timeless nature will both represent the type of cinema that could have been imagined many hundreds of years ago, when Mardin was first being established, while at the same time it will physically introduce a contemporary arena for the city that will exist as a current, valid and active public space.

Tuesday 1 June 2010

DOMUS