Descent 2005
DVD projection, silent black and white 33 min loop.
Projected into a totally blacked out space across a constructed corner ‘stage’ in
R O O M, Bristol, in 2005. Viewers entering the space were totally disorientated until their eyes had adjusted.
Our most primitive experiences of architecture were formed first in the body, and then in the cave. The flickering light of flames on cave walls has often been described as the earliest means of animating images. Descent juxtaposes two disparate architectures; the cave and the modernist cube, by using light, darkness and the moving image to reveal and conceal our surroundings. The work makes reference to the ‘ phantasmagoria’ of pre-cinema with its crepuscular imagery, shifting the boundaries between reality and illusion, and creating more of a tactile, erotic experience than a revelation.
‘A cave is a room is a cave. Thinking of the relationship between the projection, the architecture, the body and the eye – the space as a kind of ‘oculus’, a mouth or an eye, the back of the skull. How and where interior images meet exterior images...’ Tabatha Andrews 2005
Peter Suchin's review of 'Descent'