Gary Hill

Archi risonanti/Resounding Arches

Archi risonanti/Resounding Arches consisted of a number of visual and sound installations exhibited at the Colosseum and the Temple of Venus in Rome between 14 April and 31 July 2005. On 11 June 2005 [link] a performance installation with the same title took place at the Colosseum at night time. It lasted for about one hour.

The installations were formed by a number of images, barely visible in the sunlight, in dialogue with evocative sound. The images, marking sudden epiphanies, were projected at different time intervals on 6 separate arches, 3 for each of the tiers of the Colosseum. Seemingly appearing out of nothing, they had a fugitive, dreamlike quality.

They were not invasive – not immersive – not really there. They represented nude human hybrids, digitally modified, each carrying a ‘meta-mythological instrument’ (http://www.viaggimagazine.it/articoli/001117, viewed 03/05/05) which, at the occurrence of its own sound, folded upon itself like a Möbious ring ‘incessantly looking for new typologies’: the instruments resounded 'through their own process of metamorphosis as if their presence had been declared through the very elongation of the human bodies’ (ibid.).

The viewer encountered the sound, produced by a horn, in passing the resounding arches. The viewer was also able to listen to the relationship between sounds which built up to an uncanny cacophony. The horn, used for annunciation, prepared the audience for the possibility of a message.

The piece explored being in site through techne. Presence was excavated and re-presented through techne across time and space. Marking out the sequences and structures of the building, Resounding Arches translated form into sound, past into present, myth into image. Through this process of remediation meaning however was continuously diaplaced. The message was never produced. Technology could not act as a a medium.

The performance took place almost entirely in the arena. The idea, Gary Hill claims, was to ‘generate simultaneously a visceral modern relationship between history and future as if they germinated and flowed from the same place’ (http://www.viaggimagazine.it/articoli/001117, viewed 03/05/05). The audience, suspended on the second tier, was working not from a cinematrographic or VR context of immersion but rather from one of observation. Always an outsider, the viewer could only but observe the spectacle. Without this act of spectating, no presence could be achieved. Prae-sens: before I am.

Charles Stein, who collaborated with Hill on the piece, points out that the structure of the Colosseum is like that of the brain (see performance programme). What we see is a trick of the mind. Or is it?

The piece is marked by a series of dialectical tensions:

• palindromes - at the beginning and the end - are able to generate a fluidity in time and space, ‘you don’t know whether you are coming or going’, here there is no difference in time between tic and toc (see Frank Kermode's The Sense of an Ending);
• The Carriage of Persephone/ Proserpina: driven along the corpus calosum, the centre of the arena, in a carriage with triangular wheels by men wearing grey suits - the goddess of the underworld, wife of Hades and daughter of Zeus, condemned to a living death in between the world and the underworld;
• Primarily Speaking: ‘a vast universe of possible voices vibrate in the darkness of the skull just beyond the threshold of consciousness.’
• Persephone: ‘DEATH OR LIFE; FIXED IDENTITY OR OPEN POSSIBILITY, HORROR OR RELASE.’ (ibid.)

Performance map:

• Palindrome. The first, increasingly loud, sound is that of the clapping of hands. The performance ends. Something else, to which we are witnesses, begins.
• The clapping turns into the sound of dripping water – a dark sound from the Colosseum’s underworld - the world of the dead.
• A song is heard. All we see is a flashing light – a candle searching, life starting, an attempt towards genesis.
• Bird flight is heard and seen across a number of projections in the arena. The bird is in flight but there is no direction. The bird might be attempting to fly – but is hindered in its plight. Is the bird trapped? There is a tremendous desperation in this fragile and yet incessant attempt to escape capture.
• A small fluorescent airplane attempts to fly out of the Colosseum. Unsuccessfully. There is nothing but discourse.
• A carriage with triangular wheels pushed by six men wearing pale grey suits (business men?) is carrying Persephone across the arena. Painfully. Where does the journey lead to? Why such a fate? Is our past really our future?
• Projections of bodies standing on books. We come from our past. We elevate ourselves through our past. But we are not statues: we are apparitions - ephemeral presence.
• Floods of blood projected across the Colosseum. Drums beating frantically. Hearts pounding. Thunders. This is the time of massacre. This spectacle is horrific. This is the Colosseum.
• Sheep. The lamb of God. Sacrifice.
• Palindrome. NANDAPADARAPAMANAGAPRA X ARPAGANAMAPARADAPADNA - a letter is dropped, first at the beginning and then at the end, time and again until we are left with the letter x only. When literature is undone, life - the chromosome x - is what is left. Is this the sacrifice awaiting for us?
• Vowels are sung. Language transforms itself. From one word to another. From one world to another.
• Cacophony.
• Another unsuccessful attempt to a flight. Whipping. ‘Stay!’ ‘Stay away!’ - is this the time of our rape? or is it the long awaited punishment? Is this the beginning or the end?
• Dialogue is no longer an option.
• Voices preparing for battle. Again.
• Final song 'why father why?' - Persephone, her dress covered in filthy oil, walks around the second tier. She is now with us, in the world, but still unfree. She looks small. Fragile. The spectacle has broken.
• Silent glider airplanes fall from the sky, while a real airplane makes its way towards Fiumicino airport. The audience collect the fallen airplanes (angels?) as souvenirs.
• There is no end..... just as there never has been a beginning....

a Diary describing the process of the piece was produced by Charles Stein

this piece is also discussed by Michael Shanks in his archaeolog [link]