the blue room

I have just read this elegant, critically incisive commentary on the swiss architect Peter Zumthor written by Thomas de Monchaux in 2009. 

Here is a taste of de Monchaux's article The Mystery of Peter Zumthor: "Our long visually saturated and celebrity-fascinated era seems to have left architects straddling opposite roles or chasing two different forms of fame: the fame that comes from always being on an airplane, and the fame that comes from never getting near one. In the first instance, we have the architect as majordomo, as cohort or courtier to titans and tyrants; such architects mention their hotel rooms a lot in their lectures, and their aesthetic currency is a jolie-laide awkwardness — implying that pure forms matter less than recondite global data garnered from anthropology, economics and other dismal sciences. In the second instance, we have the architect as sage or guru or ascetic — someone who writes soon-to-be-out-of-print books in which early childhood memories of light figure strongly, and whose aesthetic currency is breathtaking beauty, skilled material craft and the aura of the eternal. The first role is a dream of timely access; the second, a dream of timeless refusal. There’s a grain of truth in both stories."

The ascetic and sensual simplicity of Zumthor's work sets him apart. I share de Monchaux's sense of disappointment at Kunsthaus Bregenz (whilst simultaneously liking it), have a strong desire to visit the Thermal Baths at Vals, and yet the building that has intrigued me the most is the humble St Benedict's chapel (see below). As a product of the post-modernist 80's (1988), its simplicity is even more remarkable.

 Thanks to Rory Hyde for the photo.

As he silently observes the now apparently uninhabited homes of New York artists who died from AIDS, filmmaker Ira Sachs provides a simple reflection on the silence that has accompanied this disease; of the political silence that contributed to so many deaths, and the silence of the departed marked by the very fact of their absence. The silence is interrupted only by the sound of the city; the kind of sounds that accompany our observation would have been those that these people would have heard had they still been living in, walking out or looking out of these homes. These unchangeable sounds of the everyday almost suggest that no time has passed.  I kept thinking that if the camera were to linger in front of these homes for just a little bit longer that I might see Reinaldo Arenas (referred to in the blue room in an earlier post titled A Blue That is Almost Black 4) on the terrace of his building and Felix González Torres photographing his window from the inside.   

In his film Blue, the late English film director Derek Jarman used a luminous Yves Klein blue as a meditation on encroaching blindness and approaching death, coming to terms with the disappearance of images from his vision. 

This film played a pivotal role in my PhD research as an abstraction of personal and creative space. In Blue this space is constructed around Jarman's emotional, sexual and personal history.  I was interested in how this personal space is manifested in different ways (by other artists, writers, architects) and how the emotion of an artistic impulse can be felt in something as physical as architecture.  

As I wrote in my PhD:

If only he (Stephen) could convey, in architectural terms, the droning blue screen of Jarman...and like the effect of the images conveyed on the screen, he wishes to be absorbed by the image of light reflecting through blue, to see what Jarman sees (nothing as it were), to feel what Gonzaléz Torres feels; an experience of intimacy and sensuality.

This helps to form the story of the the blue room.

The blue room provides an essential form of retreat; a place to dwell in the shadows of thought, to translate the visual essence of the un-translatable (the things which remain silent). 

Paradigms of Observation

Azul Oscuro Casi Negro

 A Blue That is Almost Black

Stephen Collier

Doctor of Philosophy by Project

“Turnbull’s Blue—Antwerp Blue—Berlin Blue—Prussiate of Iron—Chinese Blue—Saxon Blue—Blau de Berlin”: Reading the world’s first artificial color.

"Artists in the West had no reliable blue until the early eighteenth century."

A post on TripleCanopy by Joshua Cohen titled Thirty Six Shades of Prussian Blue offers a portrait of the colour, described as a "blueprint of its origins and use through chemistry, painting, photography,warfare, Holocaust and nuclear terrorism."

Kino Sydney is a non-competitive short film night that takes place each month. Run by The Festivalists, it encourages independent, experimental contributions by Sydney filmmakers.   

Last night's Kino#34 challenged participants to make music videos and featured a live performance of Sydney band MA to mark the launch of their Remix album.  

This music video is Jason Hooker's amazing contribution to the collaboration between MA, ISAAX and Kino Sydney. Constructed from over 9000 stills, shot on location around Sydney using a Canon EOS 5D MKII, the colour, movement and life of the city's public spaces are observed with a heightened intensity that challenges our understanding of what is real and imagined.