steve
roden
light
forms, 2002
8 mm color & black and white film transferred to video
16 minutes, sound.
exhibition: lightforms, singuhr
- hoergalerie in parocial, berlin germany, 2002
light forms is a film/sound work created for the singuhr
- hoergalerie in parocial space. the space is a baroque church
in berlin's mitte district and exhibitions take place in the bell room,
the nave, and sometimes the main chappel of the parochial church. the location inspired
me to work with source materials related to light and bells.
the film
work was created using a super 8 camera i have had since childhood. the
16 minute film uses color imagery created with colored lightbulbs and
construction paper following the colored paths of various 1880's bell ringing scores of jasper snowdon;
and black and white images of my hands "speaking" the phrase "truth is the bell, bell is the truth" using a self invented method
of translating the alphabet into a series of hand movements. all of the audio was created using the sounds of light
bulbs.
the space was lit only by the light of the monitor as well as two
small shafts of natural light on either end of the space. the audio was
installed on 4 speaker in two opposite rooms with the film showing in
between.
the following text accompanied the exhibition:
in 1997, i was in sheffield england, sleeping in a small room in the home
of saxaphone player mick beck. it was raining rather loudly, and i woke
up out of a dead sleep in the middle of the night and wrote down the phrase "truth is the bell. bell is the truth" on a piece of paper and fell back
asleep. when i awoke the next morning, i had no idea why i had written
this text.
in 1998, i was in liverpool england to participate in isea 98. i was visiting
a large cathedral and the bell ringer showed me a book of 'scores' for
bell ringing by jasper snowdon. it was written in the 1880's, (and still
apparently in use). these scores were not only very beautiful; but had
an uncanny connection to much of my own visual work.
in 1999 i visited berlin for the first time to partipate in the sampling
rage festival at the podewil. we wandered into the singuhr - hoergalerie
in parochial next door to find a very beautiful installation by julius.
i hoped someday to make a work for this beautiful space.
in 2002, carsten seiffarth called me on the phone to ask about my performance
for the resonanzen exhibition in saarbrucken, and told me that the evening
would have a slight theme to it -'light'. he then asked me if i would
be interested in doing an installation in the singuhr - hoergalerie in
parochial.
a week or so later i found a 1944 edition of jasper snowdon's book - a
coincidence too rich to ignore! while looking at these drawings; the church,
the bell room, and the notion of lights collided.
in developing the performance for saarbrucken i began to use the sounds
of various light bulbs tapping together... to be played in total darkness...their
fragile glass surfaces and tiny springs.
for the installation at the singuhr - hoergalerie in parochial, the light
bulbs become the 'bells' as their sounds float around a space where bell
sounds have always existed. the visual element is a simple abstract film,
shot with my super 8 camera and transferred to video. the black and white
images are a translation of the phrase 'truth is the bell, bell is the
truth' done using my own method of alphabet translation via hand movements.
the color imagery was created using blue and red light bulbs and stencils
following the line patterns of jasper snowdon's bell scores.
as always, my own interest is not particularly in the bells nor the lights
- rather in what these two things can inspire within myself and my own
working process (the limitations of making sound with a lightbulb, the
deviation from original intentions in using a 'score' as an aesthetic
presence, the untranslatable nature of a sign language known only to the
'speaker', etc.).
the final work is not about lights, nor is it about bells - but is an
abstract presence developed through these things to simply exist as sound
and visual music.
steve roden august 2002
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