7 and 2 | Black is Water, June 2011
Sound installation: 2 x ipods with headphones, scale drawing with Chinese symbols (pencil, biro and lined exercise paper 60 x 40cm), part I 23.47 mins, part II 4.47 mins
‘7 and 2 | Black is Water’ was made for Furnished Space (an occasional project space run by Tamsin Clark from her flat in Camberwell) in June 2011, when I invited a Feng Shui consultant to conduct a reading of the flat and then present his findings. Entering the space the viewer found a hand-drawn scale plan of the flat, marked with various symbols, and two sets of headphones (one in the living room and one in the bedroom) where they could listen in to the consultant making his report and discussing the findings with me. Recorded binaurally, the viewer has a sense of the interlocutors moving around them, and as aspects of the flat are considered and various objects referenced and examined, it gradually becomes apparent to the viewer that the room under discussion is the very same room they have walked through and are now sitting in.
The work deliberately forces an encounter with the domestic nature of the surroundings, taking the curator and the space as its subject as well as its frame. It is also an examination of the complex nature of ‘tense’ within an artwork. At one level the work is ‘live’ and exists in the present as the viewer actively makes connections between the objects they see around them and the conversation they are listening to – a conversation which has been recorded and is now past. The work of the Feng Shui consultant is itself explicitly concerned with making connections between elements of time, fashioning the history of the occupant and her surroundings into a possible future space. This criss-crossing of tenses is played out as the Feng Shui expert and the artist move around the viewer, discussing findings, measuring out the new space, shifting objects, inventing dividing walls and imagining the flat repainted in an array of different colours.
As a practitioner of classical Feng Shui, the consultant rigorously applies a combination of geometry, precise measurement and ancient belief to the space as he makes his audit. Disregarding the white, contemporary aesthetic of the flat he paints images of fire coursing through the rooms and creates a world of vivid yellow and chocolate brown. The rigid application of traditional teachings introduces elements that might at first seem absurd – a shower curtain hung around the kitchen counter, portable heaters strewn about the floor, a small china dog and stuffed owl evicted from the bedroom – but the sincerity and meticulous approach is both affecting and at times melancholic. Mapping one ancient system of belief onto another, less clearly defined, frame of reference (determined in part by prevailing aesthetics and personal taste) brings these sometimes conflicting philosophies into sharp relief, ultimately reflecting on the drive and motivation of them both.
:: Credits
Furnished Space – occasional projects run by Tamsin Clark from her flat in Camberwell
Laurent Langlais – Feng Shui Consultant
Special thanks to Richard Bevan