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Vision
Request
by Colleen Asper
Horror has long understood the advantages of trying to extend fiction
into the audience's awareness of their immediate surroundings. Seeking
an instant thrill, horror has the greatest incentive. The Ring,
a series of films that turn on the premise of a cursed video-tape, insinuates
that the viewer will meet the same end as the characters in the film,
after all, we all watched the same tape. Poe's The Fall of the House
of Usher builds suspense with the protagonist's realization that
the story he is reading is coming true around him, a notion only scary
to the actual reader if we imagine Poe's story materializing around us
in much the same manner. What, then, do others art forms have to learn
from this example? |
My gothic lead into this review may make an unlikely introduction to the
setting of its subject: the stark desert region in Joshua Tree, CA, that
is the home to A-Z West. This May I was invited along with fifteen other
participants to be part of Vision Request, an exhibition and collaborative
performance at A-Z West hosted by Andrea Zittel, and organized by Jennifer
Dudley, Sarrita Hunn, and Ben Kinsley. In addition to becoming a space
for artist's projects made at Zittel's invitation, A-Z West is the most
recent testing ground for her ambitiously comprehensive designs for everything
from living units to uniforms.
Vision Request's own collaborative performance, the Play of Light
and Shadows, was set at night in a sandy wash nestled between steep
rocks, a space as close to my vision of the middle of nowhere as any I
have inhabited. The play began with participates forming a semi-circle
on the desert floor that mirrored the semi-circle the audience formed
in front of us, with the doubling further emphasized by a lantern placed
in each group's center. We held hands, closed our eyes, and attempted
to conjure spirits. There was some giggling. After a sufficiently uncomfortable
interlude without activity, a flashlight illuminated a white tent from
within and a shadow play began. As time progressed participates got up
in small groups and began shadow plays on the rock-face directly behind
our sandy stage, each group directing their flashlights to a higher point
than the last.
Each play within the play deviated further from a traditional shadow play,
creating a chronology that moved from easily constructed illusions to
mysterious ones, and from familiar images to those more obtuse. Puppeteers
secretly concealed within the rocks continued the slowly progressing climb
of light and shadow till an illuminated figure with transparent wings
suddenly immerged from the top of the rock-turned-backdrop. From this
birdman's pinnacle a glowing orb shot through the desert sky over the
sand, admittedly on transparent fishing line rather then propelled by
its own magic, and landed on the opposite rock-face. Here a costumed figure
that mirrored the last rose, shirked from the flashlights now all pointing
at him, and fled away. The participants returned to their original positions
in the circle and the séance, presumably, was over.
By implicating our audience in a performance that was contextualized as
the result of conjuring, Vision Request was not so bold as to imagine
frightening our viewers. We were, however, asking our audience to not
only enjoy our illusions, but also remember that they were precisely that:
illusions. Just as the film within the film, the story within the story,
or the play within a performance can ask the audience to imaginatively
extend fiction, these devices can be used to deconstruct that same fiction.
The Vision Request artists were: Colleen Asper, Elena Bajo, Katie Creyts,
Ben Dowell, Jennifer Dudley, Takehito Etani, Sarrita Hunn, Ben Kinsley,
Yvonne Lung, Katja Mater, Lilly McElroy, Andrew Ross, Adam Shecter, Mark
Taber, Montana Torrey, and Robert Wechsler.
Beautiful/Decay
August 2007 |
