'Silence, simplicity, humility... the only proper state for the artist as for the human being.'  Patrick WHITE

Trying to finish some writing for this blog on Federation Square, although I've run out of words and direction.  Found this perfect quote by Patrick White from his book The Vivisector.  Sometimes it's easier just to leave an impactful quote- to summarise a thought more simply than perhaps an essay can.

Federation Square is a multi-layered but ultimately disjointed gesture of public architecture, and I think that's the main thing people conjure when arguing against its visual appearance and atmosphere.  It's definitely challenging and subversive; an example of where post-modern architecture goes against the grain of perceived notions of beauty.  Where a public square should be a utopian place that 'federates' people and allows them to gather in unity, interestingly, Fed Square has done the opposite and polarised opinion.

It's hard to pinpoint some of my arguments against the Square, because I admire how it resists public expectations and sort of subsequently questions the nationalism of public squares.  Although I feel as though it's often misunderstood and under utilised for this reason, which is a great shame. 

Ghostly self portrait disappearing into the depth of the Square.

Memoria

Memoria is Apichatpong Weerasethakul's strongest distillation of feeling, emotion and atmosphere.  I left the cinema in a state of exaltation; my senses heightened, my mind alive and thinking.  On my walk home, my attention was attuned to new things in the city.  I was standing amongst a crowd of flash mob dancers in Federation Square, watching how they engaged with the public space.  Everyday sounds, such as the pedestrian lights, ticked with greater clarity.  The voyage down the escalators and into the underground station felt like I was getting close to the core of the earth (reference to the tunnel boring depicted in the film).  

Nathaniel Dorsky describes the "post-film experience" in his Devotional Cinema as something that either disturbs you or uplifts you.  It changes the way you interact with the world and can defamiliarise the everyday.  For me, Apichatpong's films allow the viewer to tap into an uplifting 'devotion'; to easily enter a dream-like mental space during, but also particularly after the film.

Memoria was made in collaboration with Tilda Swinton, and captures her in a foreign city in a state of inarticulacy and isolation.  This physical and psychological isolation is caused in part by a loud bang that is only audible to her and difficult to explain to others.  I connected with this sense of being isolated by having something inside your head that you cannot truly communicate.  It's a metaphor for making art and film; trying to articulate personal ideas and share them with others in the hope that there will be someone else in the world who connects with it too.  Looking for shared experiences, by way of tuning into the sounds around you, in a society that one feels alienated by, where one hasn't found their tribe.  In Memoria, the bang is also used as a metaphor for the ongoing trauma of state violence in Colombia.  The most touching moment of the film is when this connection finally occurs between Swinton and another bereaved man.  An intensely powerful soundscape replaces dialogue.  The connection is inarticulate and deeply empathic.

In what is a typical Apichatpong trope, all of these layers are juxtaposed with images of natural beauty.  The sublime countryside of Bogota, Colombia is implicated by the collective trauma of its society.  The landscape is a receptacle for feeling, and its memory can be drawn out to great emotional affect. 

I found that this quote from Robert Bresson's Notes on the Cinematograph spoke quite directly to Apichatpong's work: 'Your film should have the beauty, or the sadness, or what have you, that one finds in a town, in a countryside, in a house, and not the beauty, sadness, etc. that one finds in the photograph of a town, countryside, or house.'  Robert BRESSON

 

Image from the book on the making of the film, Memoria, by Apichatpong Weerasethakul. 
Fireflies Press, 2021. 

Lonely reverberations

Melbourne's city streets hum with the sound of construction and machinery.  Movement is constantly diverted by workers digging into the footpath.  Cranes above overshadow pedestrians, and layers of scaffolding obscure buildings.  Anti-vaccination protesters dominate these streets now, passers-by cough in your direction, cops are visible on most street corners, and late-night revellers vomit into gutters.  

I often feel a strong sense of alienation and anxiety in this city; by the streets, sounds, and culture. 

Little Collins Street: indentations of things concealed and obfuscated behind a tarpaulin.  Repressed emotions, thoughts, loneliness in the city. 

Hope

Still images from the garden during Spring 2021.  Looking for colour, shadow and light variations.  Hopefully they make you feel hopeful during these final days of lockdown. 

Layers of reflection from lockdown

I'm quite drawn to the layers in these images: glass, timber frame, refracted light, foliage, self portrait and differing building styles/eras coming into question through their reflection in a modern-designed building.  It made me excited to see the house from a different angle as I've been confined to the same views for so long now. Hopefully these images they're a contrast to the 'sameness' of the recent images I've published here. 

 In today's light: 

Framing the staircase

Condensing space 

I love making architectural models.  I feel like the only way I can think logically, but also imaginatively, about space and atmosphere, is to condense it on a smaller scale.  

I'd love to make model reconstructions of all of the memorable spaces I've inhabited, as I imagine them in my head: my bedroom, childhood house, the classrooms where I'd have philosophy and art classes in high school, bookshops, cinemas, the inside of an airplane going to London.  Enclosed spaces of solitude and daydream... where I've dreamt of the external world and where I've been most creative.  I like the thought that the models would condense and contain all of the feelings and thoughts experienced within these dream spaces.

This a W.I.P model for a current design project: a continuous undulating roof and opaque curved walls form a corridor and guide linear movement out into the landscape.  It's a space that's intended to act as a  corridor to access inspiration and connection for those living within the oppressive and capital-driven confines of a suburban housing development.

The anticipation of moving towards something; either the camera lens or the mystery of what might lie at the end of a corridor

Additional images to accompany the previous post:

Stills from footage

In addition to the previous post, I'm also thinking about promenades, arcades, laneways, corridors and tree-lined paths as framing devices for this same project.  Here are some stills from footage I took to think through these linear, horizontal spaces.  

Working on a new project looking at contrasting weights and forms; weight and weightlessness.  These pillars gently support (in a Glenn Murcutt-inspired 'to touch the earth gently' way) an undulating roof that ascends over the landscape and appears almost like a bridge over the Yarra. 

I finally went searching for this house that I've been admiring from a far distance.  It's perched on an escarpment that leads down to a creek and is partially hidden behind clusters of spindly eucalyptus.  The house curves around, imitating the countours of the hill and drawing reflections of the trees into its panoramic glass facade.  The modernist influenced exposed truss-like steel structure and the terracotta-coloured strips embellished across the top and bottom initially reminded me of Richard Rogers's houses. 

There doesn't seem to be any information on the house or architect online, so I'm not sure of its provenance.  This is also as close to it as I could get; slightly closer, by the embankment looking up through the trees. 

Concealed, diffused, revealed

One square of clear vision of the view out through my bedroom window and another of hazy and subdued light through opaque glass. 

Passionate purple flowers are subjected to gradual alterations of light as I work at my desk and try to make sense of things.  There are changes in colour and perception, as the desk lamp moves, and as I try to overcome difficult emotions, thoughts and tasks.

                                         

                        shifting                 

                                         

                    light                     

                    purple, green, white 

intensifying and coming to a desirable conclusion.                     

                                         

And then finally there is relief as things do in fact come together, deadlines are met, etc. 

Stills of various views from out the windows of my house.  Looking out for ideas, longing for connection and trying to contain my grief after receiving dire news regarding my dog's health.  

From Spring of 2019

I took these images while waiting for a friend to arrive, and then depart.  Longing for company with and without people. 

These small rocks- that exist in the atmosphere forever- tied to snippets of the short-lived news stories and cultures of today.  

Some of these rocks are souvenirs/memories from the UK, specifically from trips to Margate in Kent and from the banks of the River Cam, Cambridge, while others are from walks in Wimbledon Common.