Monday, January 16, 2006
The Fourth World
And I looked upon the true sea - the sea that plays with men till their hearts are broken, and wears stout ships to death.
Joseph Conrad
When the Ice Age ended, the ocean levels rose and the lower ground became ocean floor again, submerging any record of the pioneers' coastal civilizations. The land bridges disappeared under higher seas, and the people who had ventured to Australia and Tasmania each evolved independently, cut off from contact with the rest of the world until modern times.
Thomas Suarez, Early Mapping of the Pacific (2004)
If a person asked my advice, before undertaking a long voyage, my answer would depend upon his possessing a decided taste for some branch of knowledge, which could by this means be advanced. No doubt it is a high satisfaction to behold various countries and the many races of mankind, but the pleasures gained at the time do not counterbalance the evils. It is necessary to look forward to a harvest, however distant that may be, when some fruit will be reaped, some good effected. Many of the losses which must be experienced are obvious; such as that of the society of every old friend, and of the sight of those places with which every dearest remembrance is so intimately connected. These losses, however, are at the time partly relieved by the exhaustless delight of anticipating the long wished-for day of return...
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839)
___________________________
Working Title
"Fourth World"
The Site
The Australian High Commission sits in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, on a street opposite the Twin Towers. My first memory of the place was when I applied for a visa to study in Melbourne. One is admitted through two glass sliding doors and then greeted by a wide concourse area. You go upstairs where your application will be processed and if all goes well (it usually does) a sticker is put in your passport. For this reason I have always thought of the High Commission as a sort of portal to another life in another place. The very beginning of a journey with an inconceivable outcome.
Now, about four years later, I am back living and working in Kuala Lumpur. The journey is over, and I am to create a piece of work in the very place I started from! It has not altered in appearance, but I am wholly changed. The ticket of that outward journey has led me back to where it was first issued to me.
Proposed Work
The work I propose for this exhibition is a large-scale installation taking up much of the right side (from the direction walking in the entrance) of the High Commission. It will consist of near full-size representations of a suite of sails from a square-rigged sailing ship. These sails are not to be made from the usual canvas, but from heavy green netting - the type that is used in scaffolding, that you may see shrouding any number of half-built high-rises around town. The sails are hung from the ceiling and weighted down by clear little bags filled with raw concrete. They face the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that makes up one side of the space. The audience walks amongst the sails, and if they look up they will see layer upon layer of green, much as if they were upon the deck of a ship.
Just beyond the aforementioned glass wall is a narrow space about 1.5m wide that separates the interior of the High Commission from the outer wall of the building. To me, this is the most poignant of in-between spaces, caught between the outside and the inside, perfectly in limbo. I propose that its floor should be filled with sailing ships, cast in concrete from small-scale models. Like ghosts or dreams these small ships are caught within the space, within view but separated from the interior of the High Commission and from the audience.
Conceptual Scope
To my mind, a ship is like a tiny country floating on a vast expanse of ocean. It always departs from and arrives at a specific place, but in the course of the journey it belongs wholly to itself. I offer these ships not as a nostalgic recalling of the romance of an age long past, but as a way to rethink how we might define ourselves should we find ourselves afloat, away from the familiar territory of bordered lands, our laptops and luxury cars. What positions would we find, what hopes would we cling to for the unseen shore, and what would compel us to cast ourselves adrift upon an unknown and vicious sea?
Although we have a clear idea of what defines the first, second and third world (having indeed pinned these down on a map), the term 'fourth world' is still vague. Perhaps we might think of the fourth world as the condition of being afloat, of not belonging to any particular territory. Rather than a world defined by the concreteness of land, it would be a world defined by the uncertainty of the ocean. For a long time the sea has retreated from our consciousness. Yet we continue to speak of things in terms of flows and floods - the increased flow of information and the overwhelming flood of people. As it rises steadily from year to year, it would seem that the physical sea is in accordance with our theories and practices of globalization. It might not be long before the sea returns once more to the forefront of our day-to-day reality.
Yet quite apart from a physical state, 'the fourth world' could also be an internal world of thoughts and emotions. With this in mind, I have made my sails from green netting, and they can never catch any wind. Rather they serve as filters, or sieves if you like, that facilitate the flow of intangible things - ideas, dreams, humanity, languages - many of which flow back and forth through a diplomatic place like the High Commission. This work is much to do about the movement of these intangible elements, and how a great journey of the imagination may be evoked even with very real and concrete construction materials. However land-bound and enclosed one may be, movement and transformation occurs as long as the mind is free.
Joseph Conrad
When the Ice Age ended, the ocean levels rose and the lower ground became ocean floor again, submerging any record of the pioneers' coastal civilizations. The land bridges disappeared under higher seas, and the people who had ventured to Australia and Tasmania each evolved independently, cut off from contact with the rest of the world until modern times.
Thomas Suarez, Early Mapping of the Pacific (2004)
If a person asked my advice, before undertaking a long voyage, my answer would depend upon his possessing a decided taste for some branch of knowledge, which could by this means be advanced. No doubt it is a high satisfaction to behold various countries and the many races of mankind, but the pleasures gained at the time do not counterbalance the evils. It is necessary to look forward to a harvest, however distant that may be, when some fruit will be reaped, some good effected. Many of the losses which must be experienced are obvious; such as that of the society of every old friend, and of the sight of those places with which every dearest remembrance is so intimately connected. These losses, however, are at the time partly relieved by the exhaustless delight of anticipating the long wished-for day of return...
Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle (1839)
___________________________
Working Title
"Fourth World"
The Site
The Australian High Commission sits in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, on a street opposite the Twin Towers. My first memory of the place was when I applied for a visa to study in Melbourne. One is admitted through two glass sliding doors and then greeted by a wide concourse area. You go upstairs where your application will be processed and if all goes well (it usually does) a sticker is put in your passport. For this reason I have always thought of the High Commission as a sort of portal to another life in another place. The very beginning of a journey with an inconceivable outcome.
Now, about four years later, I am back living and working in Kuala Lumpur. The journey is over, and I am to create a piece of work in the very place I started from! It has not altered in appearance, but I am wholly changed. The ticket of that outward journey has led me back to where it was first issued to me.
Proposed Work
The work I propose for this exhibition is a large-scale installation taking up much of the right side (from the direction walking in the entrance) of the High Commission. It will consist of near full-size representations of a suite of sails from a square-rigged sailing ship. These sails are not to be made from the usual canvas, but from heavy green netting - the type that is used in scaffolding, that you may see shrouding any number of half-built high-rises around town. The sails are hung from the ceiling and weighted down by clear little bags filled with raw concrete. They face the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that makes up one side of the space. The audience walks amongst the sails, and if they look up they will see layer upon layer of green, much as if they were upon the deck of a ship.
Just beyond the aforementioned glass wall is a narrow space about 1.5m wide that separates the interior of the High Commission from the outer wall of the building. To me, this is the most poignant of in-between spaces, caught between the outside and the inside, perfectly in limbo. I propose that its floor should be filled with sailing ships, cast in concrete from small-scale models. Like ghosts or dreams these small ships are caught within the space, within view but separated from the interior of the High Commission and from the audience.
Conceptual Scope
To my mind, a ship is like a tiny country floating on a vast expanse of ocean. It always departs from and arrives at a specific place, but in the course of the journey it belongs wholly to itself. I offer these ships not as a nostalgic recalling of the romance of an age long past, but as a way to rethink how we might define ourselves should we find ourselves afloat, away from the familiar territory of bordered lands, our laptops and luxury cars. What positions would we find, what hopes would we cling to for the unseen shore, and what would compel us to cast ourselves adrift upon an unknown and vicious sea?
Although we have a clear idea of what defines the first, second and third world (having indeed pinned these down on a map), the term 'fourth world' is still vague. Perhaps we might think of the fourth world as the condition of being afloat, of not belonging to any particular territory. Rather than a world defined by the concreteness of land, it would be a world defined by the uncertainty of the ocean. For a long time the sea has retreated from our consciousness. Yet we continue to speak of things in terms of flows and floods - the increased flow of information and the overwhelming flood of people. As it rises steadily from year to year, it would seem that the physical sea is in accordance with our theories and practices of globalization. It might not be long before the sea returns once more to the forefront of our day-to-day reality.
Yet quite apart from a physical state, 'the fourth world' could also be an internal world of thoughts and emotions. With this in mind, I have made my sails from green netting, and they can never catch any wind. Rather they serve as filters, or sieves if you like, that facilitate the flow of intangible things - ideas, dreams, humanity, languages - many of which flow back and forth through a diplomatic place like the High Commission. This work is much to do about the movement of these intangible elements, and how a great journey of the imagination may be evoked even with very real and concrete construction materials. However land-bound and enclosed one may be, movement and transformation occurs as long as the mind is free.
Labels: art
¶ 9:31 PM
