Life is a continuous stroll, and it is its interruptions that change its direction over time. The interruptions can be intentional, or non intentional, conscious or unconscious, brief or long. However, they create a transformation nonetheless. Those interruptions are usually in the form of dialogues, between you and someone else, you and a space, you and an object, you and yourself. And no matter the ephemerality of the meeting, both parties emerge changed. In the movie "Wings of Desire", the angels whom -being from a totally different dimension- are unseen, unheard, undetected by us humans. However, the brief meeting they share with us through mere presence and intention, creates a small yet significant change in our perceptions and feelings, a healing temporary bridge. Following the parallelism between those meetings and the nature of theater, I couldn't help asking myself: What are the scenographics of dialogues, of those temporary meeting spaces?
Cassiel: Do you recall our first visit here?
Damiel: History had not yet begun.
We let both mornings and evenings go by, and we waited. It was a long time before the river found its bed, and the stagnant water began to flow. Valley of the primeval river. One day, I still remember, the glacier melted, and the icebergs drifted in the north. A tree passed by, still green, with an empty bird's nest. Over a myriad of years, only the fish had leapt. Then came the moment when the swarm of bees drowned.
Cassiel: Some time later, the two stags fought on this bank. Then the cloud of flies and the antlers, like branches, flowing down the river. All that ever grew again was the grass growing over the bodies of wild cats, of wild boar, and buffalos. Do you remember, one morning how, out of the savanna, its forehead smeared with grass, appeared the biped, our image, so long awaited. And its first word was a shout. Was it "Ah" or "Oh" or was it merely a groan? We were at last able to laugh for the first time and through this man's shout and the call of his followers, we learned to speak.
Damiel: a long story. The sun, the lightning, the thunder above in the sky, and below, on earth, the firesides, the leaps, the round dance, the signs, the writing. Then one of them broke through the circle and ran straight ahead. As long as he ran straight ahead, swerving perhaps from joy, he seemed free, and we could laugh with him. But then, suddenly, he ran in a zigzag and stones flew. With his flight began another story: the story of wars. It is still going on.
Cassiel: But the first story, too, that of the grass, the sun, of the leaps, and the shouts, that still goes on. Do you remember how one day the highway was built, which the next day saw the Napoleonic retreat, and was then paved? Today it is covered with grass and sunk like a Roman way, its tank tracks too.
Damiel: But we weren't even spectators. We've always been too few.
Cassiel: you really want...?
Damiel: yes. To conquer history for myself. What my timeless downward look has taught me, I want to transmute to sustain a glance, a short shout, a sour smell. I've been on the outside long enough. Absent long enough. Long enough out of the world. Let me enter the history of the world. If only to hold an apple in my hand. Look, those feathers. Look, there on the water, already vanished. Look, the tire marks on the asphalt, and the cigarette butt rolling. The primeval river has dried up, and only today's puddle still quivers. Do away with the world behind the world!
I've always been fascinated by writing letters. I used to receive many of them from my dad when he was working abroad and it always felt like he was sending a part of him, rather than just wirtten words. It felt like I could smell, hear and interact with him through it. And what makes it even more special, is that through the letters, I could meet my dad, even for a bit, across time and space.
So in a way, it felt like a fleeting yet significant meeting space, that I could always come back to.
"We constitute spaces when we come into encountering with something outside ourselves" said Merleau-Ponty, he further explains that space comes into existence as the outcome of unpredictable mental and physical interaction.
So I thought, how I turn the landscapes of written language into a temporary meeting corner, that withstands time and space?
As Merleau-Ponty inspired me, I started with translating language to different mental and physical experiences.
And to define the boundaries of the spaces of the sentences and the ones in between them, I wrapped the letters. What resulted is a new form, a language independent of the context.
The shapes I got from wrapping the words of my letter reminded me of Antoine de St. Exupery's drawing of the Boa constrictor.
What could this new language be hiding? What else could the boa have eaten?
How long before we forget a sentence? What remains over time?
The same question can be asked about theater, about any dialogue we have ever shared.
After time has passed, how is the piece preserved in our memories?
For our last assignment, we were asked to choose a space that could be a context for our collection.
The only spaces that came to mind were building sites, as they hold a very important value to me.
Other than them being a sort of interruption of a work in progress, a kind of transitional places, they also and more importanty are the spaces that inspired my choice of going into interior architecture (the first step in my spatial design exploration), for I spent most of my childhood wandering and daydreaming in the building sites of my father's civil engineering projects. They were my temporary, yet precious meeting spaces with his mysterious world.
I found a building whose interior hid an elephant I never thought I'd find. It had been a temporary home to mysterious visitors, whose meetings imprinted on the space way beyond their encounters ceased.
Not to mention that the
abandoned quality of the space made
it feel as if any human presence had been extinct for a long time, and what remained was a memory of their presence there.
Time had passed, and a new dialogue was born, one between the space and the objects.
And that made me wonder, what would happen to the beans, the wool, the wax, over time? When language, the human presence disappears,
what remains? In a post-human world,
what conversations would survive?
My task was clear, collect a great amout of clues from the space, reverse the process, interpret what kind of images can become words, and find the desintegrated boa.
And just like a detective investigating a crime, I started with a few simple but crucial questions, and went from there.
Plot: Story of a group who found a place and decided to make it a temporary home. (the promise of a self-made home on an abandoned island).
QUESTIONS I have:
- Who are the members of the group? (those who were meeting)
- What was the subject of those meetings? (the discussions)
- When and Why did those meetings stop?
- Who is the mystery visitor?
