Agnés Varda, inner mental spaces & inarticulacy
Recently I’ve been looking at Agnes Varda’s installation Une Cabane de Cinema: a humble shack-like structure constructed of 35mm film (strips). It’s an installation that plays with tensions between public and private spaces in that she used a typical domestic form to invite spectators to literally step inside her inner mental space and interpret her films and dreams through their embodiment of senses and memory. The cabane is a simple space that has the potential to hold ideas, reverie, creative processes, the living of a life. The physical and imagined spaces captured in Varda’s films are held together by the cabane structure: the house holds the archive, distils the vastness of time into unison.
Film was a deeply personal medium for Varda because she used it to explore her creative instincts and to find connection with her subjects. Varda’s cabane is an extension of this search for connection. Within the cabane, the viewer is allowed to recognise something of their own creativity in Varda's inner mental space; to find connection with it. The cabane’s intimate atmosphere is accentuated by the softened light filtered through the greyed negative strips; a counterpoint to the impersonal, public space-denoting gallery lighting. The material’s transparency indicates Varda’s desire to connect with the external world, and that her inner mental space sought collaboration with others.
I’m interested in attempts to overcome the tensions between an inner mental space and the external world. It’s so difficult to express ideas and feelings that have only ever ruminated inside an internal space. I’ve realised that communicative language makes it almost impossible for another person to truly empathise with what another feels inside: language is limited. I struggle to formulate my ideas in writing, there’s always a quality that I sense is missing on the page in my ambivalent search for words. I think I’m drawn to film and architecture because good examples of both contain atmospheres or spaces that invite you to experience what someone else sees and feels. They are shared inner mental spaces that are inarticulate with ideas, references and experiences.
This quote sums it up: 'Imagine... all these gestures hung in time & logic & human experience: all about inarticulacy stretching towards communication.' John BERGER
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| Varda's 'Un Cabane de Cinéma' on the cover of a book on her work. |