Ghosting OPA
At gallery entrance
When you enter the gallery you are greeted by a shiny black grand piano hanging upside down overhead. It remains motionless. Suddenly it plays violently and abruptly stops again. The gallery is crowded. Some of you walk underneath the piano. You try to guess when it will play next and what is causing it to play. The children here especially like this installation. Suddenly it plays again. The sound fills the room and you get the feeling that at any moment the piano might come crashing down. The scale is grand; black contrasts with white, silence with sound. Clearly it’s an object hanging in the space, but you can’t help having a relationship to it. You wonder how it feels with such a crowd looking up at it. This piano behaves unexpectedly. It is like it is trying to speak to us. It is like it is angry with you all. Without a performer the piano above us performs.
Move to sculpture in gallery
In front of us now is a sculpture. The sculpture is made of plaster. And all around us there are other sculptures. However this one is quite small. It is only 25 to 35 cm high. On the base is a small piece of land, of earth. A naked figure - a female figure - is seated on it. Seated may not be the most accurate of words. It is huddled up. One knee is close to the chest, the right one, and the right foot is squeezed against the small square base, glued to it. The left foot, however, is held in the figure’s two hands, in the intertwined fingers, level with its head. The sculpture’s face is hidden between stretched arms; it is literally ‘smashed’ into the right knee. Legs, thighs and head, brain are one. Everything is compact and yet movement is made really present. You’re trying to recall whether this peculiar pose comes from literature. Not even Inferno describes it you think. The pose probably comes from a dancer, a performer, who sat for the artist. You try to imagine performing this pose. A moment, a piece of time, a still dance, a performance caught in clay, confined into a compact pose only 25 to 35 cm high. You wonder if you would be able to balance holding this postion, if the sculpture is stable or unstable. You recall that when the sculpture was first exhibited it was called ‘Shade holding her foot’. So, the sculpture before us now is of a spirit. The ghost of a dead person, dwelling in shadow and holding onto their foot.
Let’s move on. Move to centre of OPA space
So, as you can see, she's colossal and overwhelmingly bright. She is so very impressive! You investigate her huge, perfect plastic body with your eyes. Fifty years have passed and there’s not a single wrinkle on her face. The shape of her naked body is perfectly formed. Her shiny blond hair reflects the light. It’s blindingly bright. She offers her body to you, but it’s difficult to look. Looking up at her eyes they’re completely blank. She looks as if she’s dead. Something’s happening now and you get worried; you go closer and stand on your toes. You’re nervous about what you’re doing but find yourself going closer and standing on tiptoes to touch her. Suddenly you get embarrassed. Her breast is bigger than it should be. She looks so realistic that you ask,
What's the matter? But she doesn't answer. She’s just standing here motionless making space. Nothing else. You feel embarrassed. You’re sure that her oversized plastic breast hurts. You can't confront her just by looking. You jump up and see that she's pregnant. Your mother is standing behind you and you turn around and ask her when Barbie is going to be a mother. At this exact moment a tear runs down her perfect fashion icon’s cheek.
Move to horizontal monitor inside plinth
Over here, in the corner of the gallery are three glass cubes … perhaps 4, I’m not sure anymore. One of you almost falls over one of them, be careful. The glass cubes are exhibited on top of cardboard boxes of the same size. I would say they’re about 30x30x30cm. They have cracks in their sides, are all partly broken, they’ve got crushed corners. They each have varying degrees of damage. Next to them, on the wall over there, is a text. It explains that these glass cubes are packed in the boxes they are displayed on when they are sent to an exhibition, the cracks and crushed corners are the traces of their journey from exhibition to exhibition. Knowing this you look at these once perfect objects differently; it’s like they have a story to tell. A story that will continue in the future when they’re sent on to the next place, the next exhibition. The objects turn into something else, part of an ongoing event.
Move to partition wall
Over here there’s a video being screened. It’s projected directly onto the wall and there’s a few chairs scattered about in case to sit down to watch it. The video is filmed through a car windscreen. It’s raining and sometimes the wipers pass across the window and clear the screen. It’s night and the car is driving through the streets of Berlin. It stops at various places. Each time it stops one person gets out and carries out an action in front of the car, in front of the windscreen. So, you’re watching these actions through two screens, this projection in the gallery and the car windscreen. It’s all filmed in slow motion. They seem far away, like from another time, but at the same time close. At this point a man gets naked and starts dancing in front of the car… then the car starts driving again, on to the next place. A woman gets out, places herself in front of the camera and starts crying. The car drives to the next place. A woman gets out, stands in front of the windscreen and starts squashing strawberries onto it until we can’t see out, until the screen is covered. The car goes on to the next place. Here a man gets out and begins throwing a lot of salt around, shaking it from a salt shaker in slow motion in front of the car. You’re sure there were more journeys, more stops, more actions but for some reason these are the ones you remember. You don’t really remember anything specific about the places; perhaps one of the actions took place in front of the airport. Maybe a gas station. While the car is driving no music is playing, you just hear voices chatting in the background. They must be the people sitting in the back of the car. When each action is performed Queen’s “Who wants to live forever?” plays. It’s surreal, it’s poetic, it’s beautiful. Sometimes it’s funny and sometimes it’s sad. You don’t know what it is exactly but you know you could watch this video forever.
OK, let’s move on. Look into the projection space from outside
It’s night, on the edge of a road, once in a while a car drives by, on the edge of the road a horse stands still, waits, in the dark, you can hardly see it, you can just make out its silhouette, only in the headlights of cars when they pass, we can see, the horse moves a leg, his tail, weary, heavily. You can see its bones, its skeleton shines through the drab fur, only in the headlights. The famished state of this animal and its trapped situation on the edge of a highway is disturbing, moving. It is a projection and you can’t help. It might remind you of our inability to care, but it turns pain into beauty. It might remind you of our vanishing existence, but it lets you see often overlooked and forgotten details. It is always looping in there, repeating the same.
into projection space and gesture to small projection on wall
We’re in a cinema in Helsinki a couple of years ago. This film is part of the festival Avanto. One word SO appears on the screen … then IS … then IT and so on one word after another. For the whole film, which is about an hour long, you simply see single words on a screen, nothing else. But it’s so much more than that, because it’s not just a text but also a film. So, after an hour’s passed you’ve had a huge experience. It’s shot on 16 mm film, and the use of film as a material is very minimal but conceptual. Sometimes words are on the screen for such a short amount of time that you can hardly read them. Sometimes they’re there for a long time. Sometimes the word 'long' hangs on the screen for a long time and so on. The film tells us about itself in this film. A few of us laugh occasionally; a few laughs are heard amongst us during the screening of this silent film. In a way you fall in love with this film. It touches you strongly and you think that you wish you had made it. Or at least that you lived in the time when the film was made.
Walk to balcony overlooking Art Athina art fair
It’s a gallery with a high ceiling and over there there’s a vast window looking out onto the Thames in London. There’s loads of light streaming in and your eye is drawn by something glinting at the far end. In front of you, behind a low rope, to keep visitors at a distance, are two sheets of hammered gold, shining in the sunlight. These gold sheets are the size of rugs and each is the thickness of hair. They’re lying one on top of the other, touching lightly, in front of the window. There’s someone over there, say you, looking intently and smiling to themselves and you wonder what it is that they can see. You go round to where they’re standing, by the window and look back at the sheets of gold. Where there’s a gap between them, there’s an intense glow, like there’s a fire inside. It seems like a trick, like there’s an electric light in there, but it’s simply the daylight from outside reflected. You notice that this work is dedicated to the artist Félix González-Torres and his lover, who both died of Aids. Someone tells you that when the artist who made this work first showed González-Torres she said: 'There is sweat in between.'
Move to the wall, between two video projections
OK, this work is hanging on the wall here. It’s a painting. Green and yellow and red mostly and the background is dark ...very dark...almost purple bordering on black...but the red is standing out and the yellow ...you’re losing your sense of where you are ...you feel like you’re alone, even though the gallery is crowded...it’s just you and this thing that is full of colour, just you and it. The wall behind it is begins to disappear...it is not there at all now and you’re feeling pulled in by the colours, the red and the yellow and the purple-black...You feel like you’re inside the painting. It’s a feeling that can’t really be expressed...it’s the flowers that make you feel this way..it’s the flowers on the wall...the flowers in a jar on the wall and you alone and feeling something indescribable. You feel a tear well up… you start to cry from looking at the beauty before you. It’s like there are layers of beauty one on top of the other and it’s stunning, breathtaking. You feel held by the painting, stuck there and unable to tear yourself away and move on.
OK, we need to move on. Walk through OPA space and beyond into an Art Athina gallery and stand against a pillar
We are in an underground space with a vaulted ceiling, a railway arch perhaps. You hear a metronome, which measures time as it passes. The sound echoes through the cellar. The walls are damp and you’re all feeling a bit cold. She’s standing there before us, naked, vulnerable or definite, or maybe like a woman possessed. She’s full of contradictions.
She enters this strange space we’re in in killer heals and lipstick. Almost as soon as she arrives she’s slowly retreating and now she looks at us as if searching for an answer to a question.
We move out of her way as she passes though us. It’s cold and we’re all implicated in this strange encounter. It is like she fills up the crevices and the lonely places in the underground space. This piece acknowledges all the darkness, it speaks of isolation and despair but mostly it speaks of courage against the odds.
Get up onto a plinth
Now I’m standing on the stage of Hastings Pier in the south of England. I’m playing a guitar. I’ve never played the guitar before. You’re all beside me on stage, there’s 31 of us. I pass the guitar to one of you and pick up a drum stick.
We continue to play a kind of version of "Then I kissed her." There are four
people in the audience. Ten minutes ago they were the ones on this stage. They’re the band playing tonight. They’re called "The Lurkers." We are the audience. But now we are performing for the band.
I’m sweating and bleeding. The shirt I had slashed specially for tonight's gig is reduced to tatters. I’m laughing and I can’t stop. The song goes on and on. It will not stop. Tonight is, let's say, Saturday 30 October 1979.
Over the next ten minutes we, the audience, and they, the band, change places again as easily as the first time when we slipped onstage one by one and they handed us their instruments and climbed off stage to watch. Soon they will be back on stage we will all be watching again. The same song will be playing. But right now and right then and right now I’m laughing because I’ve broken through a wall and that wall will always be gone for me.
Credits________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
All the words I’ve spoken were edited from submissions made by artists participating in OPA. They were invited to describe from memory artworks that had moved or influenced them. So, thanks to my collaborators on curating this (imaginary) group exhibition and thanks to the artists who made the works they saw and remembered.
