Pass
the Time of Day
Until May 14; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh
In the early 1920s the Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov conducted a famous
experiment, inserting identical shots of a blank-faced actor into
three contrasting scenes. His audience raved about the mans
acting skills, looking hungry at soup, distraught at a coffin, and
happy with a cute child. With that, Kuleshov discovered the momentous
cinematic truth that meaning was not conveyed by the shot itself,
but by its context.
Music can affect our perception even more emphatically. Film can look
horribly mundane and naked without its soundtrack, but in one fell
stroke a powerful piece of music can elevate the banal to new dramatic
heights. With the right music, the viewers emotional response
is guaranteed. With the wrong music, the viewer will cast around in
confusion, trying to find meaning in conflicting signals.
Thats where the Collectives exhibition comes in. Artist
Paul Rooney has brought together a dozen works, mostly around five
years old, which deal with the everyday through music. Transformed
by its soundtrack, the commonplace becomes special, strange, and disconcerting.
If youre familiar with the Collectives compact and bijou
exhibition space, youll wonder how they can cope with so many
sound works squeezed in together. They have in fact coped surprisingly
well. With a door especially fitted to separate two rooms, and with
headphones judiciously provided here and there, most works manage
not to interfere with each other. The only unfortunate exception is
Rooneys own piece, which drowns out the subtle nuances of a
room installation nearby.
Rooneys work, In The Distance The Dawn Is Breaking, consists
of five monitors suspended from the ceiling. On them are dim images
of empty shops at night-time, so generic that they could be in any
town or city. Wistful chanting accompanies the suffocating images;
the words are descriptions of the overnight dreams of the shops
staff. Its as if the souls of these poor, frustrated employees
are trapped below the ceiling of the gallery, unable to float away
and escape the frigid reality of their shop-bound existences.
Stephen Sutcliffe employs a similar approach in Please, Please, Please,
Let Me Get What I Want. Shelf-stackers trudge around a closed supermarket
while the Smiths song of the same name pumps through the tannoy. Without
the music, this video would be nothing more than documentary. With
Morrisseys song, its suddenly dripping with melancholy
lyricism.
The transformative power of music is even more apparent in Rosalind
Nashashibis film of 2001, Open Day. Ordinary scenes are presented
on shaky, hand-held, grainy film, and the minute the music starts
your perception of them changes. Take the enthusiasts on the climbing
wall; at first the scene is full of natural creaks and shouts, and
the skinny guys, all elbows and knees, look a bit ridiculous. When
youre hit with a blast of Puccinis opera, La Bohème,
the figures suddenly appear to be overcoming all odds in a battle
with gigantic forces.
Theres nothing gigantic about Falkirk band, Arab Straps
lyrics. I dont think Ill need a jacket, the
lead singer intones, as he heads out to the park with his bottle of
economy cider. A non-descript weekend in Falkirk, seen through his
eyes, becomes almost beautiful in a muted, unexpected way. Rooney
has included two Arab Strap songs in the exhibition, ignoring conventional
boundaries between art and music.
Croatian composer Marko Ciciliani finds beauty in the sounds we ignore
every day. For his room installation, Home, he has recorded the ambient
noise from his Amsterdam flat: children shouting, dogs barking, people
on the stairs and doors banging. The six speakers on each wall, ceiling
and floor, convey the sounds to you in the Collectives bare
project room.
As I sit in one of the three chairs provided, I hear foot-steps thumping
on the ceiling. Are these the real feet of an Edinburgher, or the
virtual feet of Cicilianis Amsterdam neighbour? The uncertainty
disarms me: I feel sucked into a no-mans land between two physical
spaces. I am projected into that room in Amsterdam, even though I
only really know about its exterior.
Many sculptors have been more interested in articulating space than
the stuff around it you just have to look at Barbara Hepworth
or Naum Gabo, where the wood and perspex moulds the vital element
of nothingness. Cicilianis installation is the sound equivalent,
creating a room by shaping the noise outside it.
On the subject of outsides, Mark Leckey will park a car outside the
gallery on 14 May with his sound piece playing on the stereo, and
Susan Philipsz will surprise visitors to Greyfriars Churchyard with
unexpected sounds some time soon. Apparently its proving difficult
to arrange the date, in case some poor, unfortunate wedding party
thinks its collectively hearing voices. Now theres something
that doesnt happen every day.
Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 17.04.05