Eaux d'artifice (after K.A.)
"Filmed in [gardens of the Villa D'Este] Tivoli, Italy, and accompanied by the music of Vivaldi, Camilla Salvatore plays hide and seek in a baroque night-time labyrinth of staircases, fountains, gargoyles, and balustrades. The camera zooms into and away from the mask-like faces, water spirits carved in stone, as the figure in eighteenth-century costume scurries through the maze." [Eaux D'Artifice, Dir. Kenneth Anger, 1954] Film description from bfi, 'Avant-Garde' Catalogue. [1]
Three keywords are used to describe Kenneth Anger's 1953 short film 'Eaux d'Artifice' for a Dutch film archive: "gardens", "water", and "light" [2]. Cerith Wyn Evans single work, 'Eaux d'artfice (After K.A.)' happened over the five Sundays in July in the London Barbican's oasis-like pyramidal glasshouse, where Wyn Evans was able to find this trinity of elements in abundance: an immense tropical garden, ponds and streams of water, and a flood of natural daylight. Architectural historian David Heathcote's recent publication about the London Barbican explores a fascinating history of the hopes and realities of planning and building this complex, envisioned and begun in the 1950s. The Barbican as a whole, he states, "was conceived as a residential development that would emulate the grandeur of West End squares and the elegance of European Baroque formal gardens, but expressed in a Modernist idiom"[3]. His description of the conservatory describes the architects Chamberlin, Powell and Bon (CP &B) inspired by the form of the "eastern formal garden", and goes on to praise the conservatory: "The gardens in general are a uniquely complete vision of a Modern urban park that rival the municipal parks of the 19th century in their combinations of formalism, exoticism and fantasy." [4] Following an invitation from Barbican curator Mark Sladen to make a project at the Barbican Centre in 2005, Wyn Evans was keen to take the opportunity out of the formally problematic exhibition spaces, and create a more performative, socially-driven work, that could homage, enjoy, be inspired by, and be tangential to ideas in Anger's highly regarded short film. This continues Wyn Evans complex and intriguing relationship to his influences, in this case the ability to translate cinematographic codes into a performative work's atmospheric.
With 'Eaux d'artifice ' imbuing the mood of his planning and making, Wyn Evans was able to communicate a thoughtful enthusiasm for the natural and man-made details of the greenhouse environment, and bring to his 'set' people, sounds, and objects as if with a film-makers lens. According to one commentator on Anger's film, "Of all his films Eaux is the most abstract: the rushing, flowing, trickling waters become as interesting as shapes and rhythms."[5]. Chance encounters with telescopes, performances, musicians, the audience themselves, and with the plants, birds, insects and fish that inhabit the room suggested this fluidity of experience - a sense that you were invited to see the Barbican conservatory anew, through such eyes. Anger's highly recognised ability to use music incredibly effectively in otherwise 'mute' films, was reflected clearly in Wyn Evan's whole approach to filling the gardens with music, sometimes inspired by the plants and birds themselves, or other times invited in simply for their ability to agitate, resonate and enthuse.
There was a marked subtlety and consideration by the Barbican curatorial and marketing team that the eschewal of a more formal exhibition of objects or arrangements in the gallery for the less tangible weekly performative work be balanced with a less volubly publicised project than an exhibition would have been. A simple email with images attached -a portrait of the conservatory by Wyn Evans, and a portrait of Cerith by a hotel window by Ali Janka- were circulated. The open and generously orchestrated way Wyn Evans (and all whom he got involved) approached this was evident in the absence of strictly adhered to programmes of timed performances, event leaflets or designated intervals- freedom from which allowed a certain pleasurability to emerge from gentle unstructured-ness.
The atmosphere on the last, silent Sunday that I was able to attend with filmmaker Marcus Werner Hed, was that of a slightly furtive, word of mouth gathering of people motivated to come and discover something. We were met with the change-of-air appeal that the sounds and smells of the conservatory imbue, and a feeling that we were there to be investigative, seeking clues in the chance encounters with people and objects (the telescopes) that had been positioned, but not necessarily 'explained' by text or tour-guide. Previous weeks had at times been very exuberant or ceremonial: choirs, musicians, DJs and sound engineers had made music in and out of the contents of the conservatory. The 'Pleasure Gardens' promise of 'Eaux d'artifice (After K.A.)' I'm sure would have been different with more than one encounter -I only experienced one fifth of a work- but the feeling of an intelligent, referential contemporary pleasure garden was present. That this was a 'home town' opportunity for Wyn Evans may have somewhat inspired a decision to host such an openly structured gathering place - an ongoing social possibility for the circle of friends, supporters, curators, artists, gallerists, visitors and chance Sunday conservatory goers. As auteur and director he expressed a sense of being gratified to be the host, especially to see new relationships form between Barbican sound technicians and botanists, who all worked in the large complex, but had never before found themselves with an opportunity to collaborate, problem solve or converse before.
In a 1984 issue of i-D magazine there is recognition of a recently graduated film-maker, Cerith Wyn Evans as a talented and eccentric figure who stood out in an already exuberant early eighties scene. A portrait of him on a bed is used to illustrate an article on dreams. Skinny and shaven-headed, he sits semi naked with legs apart, wearing a swathe of white material and large black boots. Half-lying half-sitting up on the sheets there is a row of single stem, erect cacti arranged on a shelf at head level behind him, under a noose. Whether this is a pictorial illustration of the kind of dreams he was having, or a literal portrait of his bedroom, or otherwise, it bookends my available pictorial knowledge of Cerith Wyn Evans and cacti. Watch Marcus Werner Heds' very apt and beautiful edit of his footage from the final day of the 'Eaux' series, alongside still images by i-D's Fashion Editor (in unnofficial capacity) Erika Kurihara, official project photographer Polly Braden and curator Ariella Yedgar of that Sunday and others. In the ephemera section there is a sneak look at the March 1984 i-D image, and a helpful leaflet of the conservatory ground plan available to Barbican visitors that I liked. I hope these all go to help make sense of what was a powerful, impermanent set of esoteric event-gatherings created by an astute and compelling artist-host.
[1] http://www.roberthaller.com/firstlight/anger.html
[2] http://framework.v2.nl/archive/archive/leaf/other/default.xslt/nodenr-133942
[3] Heathcote, David, 'Penthouse Over the City', Wiley-Academy, a division of [4] John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Great Britain, 2004. Unpaginated frontispiece image section extended caption.
Heathcote, David, 'Penthouse Over the City', Wiley-Academy, a division of John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Great Britain, 2004. Page 218-219.
[5] http://victorian.fortunecity.com/updike/723/films/artifice.html
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Credits
Text and Editorial Direction: Christabel Stewart
Cinematography and Edit: Marcus Werner Hed
Photography: Polly Braden, Erika Kurihara, Ariella Yedgar
Editorial Assistance: Maria Eisl
Thanks to: Cerith Wyn Evans and Juliette, Mark Sladen, Ariella Yedgar, Kate Ballard and Robert Barker.
