to be continued …
Several notes by Helena Sidiropoulos and Douglas Park toward an ongoing column in com[motion]
The blackness in the streets throws a new light on the city. Deadened sounds and silence.
Night.
Everywhere small scenes are performed.
I see the outlines of the window. A light bulb, mirrored.
A person is moving through the space, a shade. A bookcase, a red book.
The remaining I can only guess.
(The trees hide the house.)
And so a story arises, a life is created.
They are Japanese, a family with one daughter. The parents are extremely hectic; they seem to be running around, always. Moving from one room into another, communicating through the complex choreography of their everyday lives in between kids and furniture. Tiptoeing on high heels and balancing on the airwaves of (again) life.
When they fight, the somewhat reasonable movements mutate into angular gestures: spastic puppets perform agitating responds. Order gives way.
Colors reflect the current status of the household onto the white walls, varying from black to red and loosening into a soft blue. All varying on the moods that flip flop through the house.
Now the trees speak and the inside tells me nothing. Secrets are kept during the day, not at night as one dares to say.
What kind of room contains a red book and serves as a passage toward the two other rooms?
The family is moving a lot today. The silence, which you can sometimes (briefly) grasp in their lives, is once again abandoned for their usual racing around.
Now there is no window, no light bulb, and no red book.
I miss my room in the other city.
Life feels light there.
The red book is still there. Though the trees lost their leaves, one can’t see much more than light. A desk lamp in what I thought what was the kitchen; now I have doubts, although we have a desk lamp in ours…
An empty lit house.
Our entire household (with influx of guests and callers) finds we ran out of activities and actual ability to do anything, even if we wanted or needed to. Far in advance, our wills had been dredging every desire shelved in storage from the depths of our innermost selves; resource saved up for projection out of our bodies and heads.
Regardless of mere obstacles or inadequate outlets (such as windows, closed doors and letterboxes), this resource fitfully shines right through solid barriers and swerves past anything in the way. Over opposite, where little, nothing or not enough seems to happen or even simply exist usually –suddenly hosts or rather becomes some drive-in magic-lantern and x-ray vision movie and theatre.
Credit meter accounts overfed, thrown switches held locked in place and lit fuse detonator ignition kick and jump start engines for lift off, on full-steam-ahead, to set sail. Peep-show given birth to is granted and assumes real-life. Congregation watches proceedings unfold before them –and also influentially contribute as well.
Not all enactment and contents are shown on display though, much is often partially hidden. Whether this tableaux-vivante cast and troupe are self-conscientious or considerate towards their audience is unclear; they certainly often present challenges or make life difficult, by possibly deliberately taking into account what lies between them and the path of visibility –especially when action and scenes gets recognizable, strange or exciting in whatever manner. However, any hindrance to clarity adds to games played, furthers attractiveness to scene, boosts interest and holds attention. Incomplete and unclear state confusion reigns.
Instead of being a building, the mostly hollow and transparent premises are bare-boned foundations to cage that nearby trees and plantlife from parks and gardens take refuge in then add to –only for it to become death-trap, prison-sentence, time-bomb etc.
These beams and rays pass through the facing premises, travel, carry and steer focussed on and targeting distant destinations elsewhere so far off and away from here. Payback returns at us, headed for our direction, both from this local source in front of us and these other distant locations.
