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Lost in the Memory Palace | The Dark Pool
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you, you notice it. It's like we're all
sleeping half the time and all of a sudden
we're awake again.
GBM: It makes us aware of our senses.
JC: It makes you feel alive, it gives you
those "Aha!" experiences. It's also about
reflecting what interests us, because
basically George and I want to make art
that we want to see.
BC: I guess you can't afford to allow the
process you're taking people through to be
boring.
JC: It's okay if it's boring for a little bit,
because you can use that sense of
slowness to put people into one state and
then switch it to shock them into some
other one.
BC: I assume the difficult part is arriving at
the rhythms that allow you to make those
switches.
JC: Yes. We try to go to dance
performances because we both find them
interesting. It's like the way you feel
watching Pina Bausch; you're sure you've
seen this scene and then all of a sudden
she switches it and these fragments of
narrative open up, one upon the other.
BC: Do you privilege any one sense, or are
you after something more like synthesia,
where you engage as many of the senses as
you can in the experience?
JC: I think the concentration is on sound
and how it affects the body physically.
That has been the case with all my work,
even things like
To Touch
the
Table
or
Whispering Room
. I'm very interested in
how you can build things in a
three-dimensional physical world that's a
virtual world. It's not really there. Even
though sound waves are invisible, they
have a real physical effect.
GBM: I do a lot of movement and kinetic
sculpture, so I don't know what sense that
is. Again, I'm after disorientation. I often
talk about my work as creating spaces
that imbalance the viewer. If you take a
chandelier and start moving it, it creates a
space, and because you're not used to it
moving, it affects your whole body. I
guess a lot of my work is about balance,
but our collaborative work deals with that
as well. I think any artist wants to do
something that changes people, or that
somehow makes them more aware. In our
most successful pieces, that actually
occurs.
BC: What about
Forty Part Motet,
the
piece you installed at the National Gallery
in Ottawa and which won the Millennium
Prize?
JC: It relates to our talk about the
physicality of sound. I was listening to
this piece by Thomas Tallis, a
16th-century British composer who did
an amazingly beautiful polyphonic piece
called Spem in Alium. He's a choral
composer and he wrote it for 40 different
harmonies. When you listen on your
stereo it's so frustrating because you
know all these people are there, but you
can't hear them. I just wanted to climb
inside and hear them individually.
Originally, he wrote the piece for a chapel
that had eight different alcoves, so he had
eight different choirs of five voices each.
As the choirs sing, the sound moves back
and forth. Sometimes they're all singing. I
worked with a British producer and with
a choir in Salisbury and we recorded each
individual singer. So as you listen, you'll
be walking through this sound piece, as if
these performers are standing there.
You'll be able to hear the music from the
viewpoint of a performer. As I said, one
of the main things about my work is the
physical aspect of the sound. A lot of
people think it's the narrative quality but
it's much more about how our bodies are
affected by sound. That's really the
driving force.
well as what's around you. Because of the
way George and I work, we don't want to
do another version of something we've
already done. It's always about asking,
how can we push this medium, this
format, into the next more interesting
thing?
BC: So how are you extending
Muriel Lake
in this one? Is it moving closer to
environmental art?
GBM: Definitely installation. In a way it's
like
The Dark Pool
except that you know
it's a model.
The Dark Pool
had models in
it too. There's something fascinating
about them; a lot of artists, especially
Canadians, are working with miniatures.
JC: It's about throwing your mind and
your body at this particular little space.
It's also about being a child again.
BC: What's satisfying about the miniature
is that it allows you to comprehend its entire
meaning in one glance. Your work operates
in quite a different way in that you're inside
the thing and it's around you. I imagine it as
a much more intense experience of
comprehension.
JC: It'll be disorienting and, we hope,
intense.
BC: Why is that your intention?
JC: It's a good question. I think it's
because we live so much of our lives as
robots and when something disorients
left: Janet Cardiff,
The Missing Voice
(Case Study B),
1999,
Whitechapel Public
Library, commissioned
by Artangel London.
Photographs courtesy
Luhring Augustine,
New York.
middle: Janet Cardiff,
The Missing Voice
(Case Study B),
1999,
Liverpool St. Station.
right:
The Missing Voice
(Case Study B),
1999,
Bishops Gate.
left: Janet Cardiff and
George Bures Miller,
The Muriel Lake Incident,
1999, wood, audio,
video projection and
steel, 71 1/2 x 90 1/4 x
62", detail.
Photographs courtesy
Luhring Augustine,
New York.
right: Janet Cardiff and
George Bures Miller,
The Muriel Lake Incident,
1999, audio, video,
mixed media.
Robert Enright, "Pleasure Principals: The Art of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller,"
Border Crossings
(78) 2001.