“Eden in Stasis” is a show I staged recently with my friend Vlad, who assembled an organic soundscape for it. The idea was to create a pseudo-Edenic capsule with music that cycled through the four seasons eternally. It was to be staged seven days into the new lunar year of 2013 at the heart of winter. The drawings themselves were ‘greenhouse’ capsules (done just before Winter) marked by an eerie stillness in which reverential, symbolically dense icons, beings, and creatures are held in eternal stasis.
We projected clips of forests in the main room, and clips of sea, sky, and clouds (with the occasional lashing snake between two rising moons) fading into each other in the womb-like ‘moon’ room. They were projected over the actual drawings in baroque white frames so their movement interacted with the emblematic stillness of the drawings, thus in a way animating them. The drawings were tied into a triad-triangle in the main space were attached by string so they looked as though they were holding arms within a prism. Their shadows are cast into the forest, and when you come close you also join their uncanny presences within that space; hence, immersion and interaction is inevitable. The pixellated foliage also adds interesting texture and makes the drawings almost pop out. As they were film clips projected, you could see movement in the trees, creating the uncanny effect of being in a space yet absent from it.
I was meditating vaguely on the relationship between real-time and circular eternal time, and the threshold between these two realms- what some call the sacred and profane spheres. I also loved how the space transforms with the music. Darker, ominous music can make a clip of clouds passing seem post-apocalyptic, whereas calming, minimal music can make being in the room like falling into a dream realm. We also covered all the ceiling with billowing blue-green cloth so it feels like a canopy, making the space feel truly immersive.
This is the show statement:
Amy Goh’s greenhouse hibernation triptych explores the liminal space between the sacred and profane, myth and ritual, reality and dream. The four-part triptych was conceived just before winter, in preparation for the cold days to come. Her self-sustaining capsules are not bell jars, so much as quasi Edenic spaces governed by the movements of birth, death, and rebirth.
Amy is interested in threshold worlds, and how the projection of drawings upon a wall, accompanied by an enveloping soundscape and presented during a chosen moment in time can open up a sacred space within the heart of Winter. Togethre with music provided by Vlad Constantinescu she endeavours to create an immersive world where the hypnotic motifs and patterns that saturate her mental landscape coalesce and meld with waves of lactating audio and visual textures.
Some pictures can be viewed here: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.567708536572484.130273.188672774476064&type=1
Read more about… Eden in Stasis: an audio-visual installation
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