Antony Gormley's 'Event Horizon' 2010, New York

 From March 26 to August 15 2010, Antony Gormley's Event Horizon can be seen amongst the bustling streets of Manhattan. The Madison Square Park Conservancy presents the installations on the streets and on top of buildings, much like Gormley's 2007 installation of the figures in London. The thirty-one life size iron 'blokes' gaze at passes by from above and at eye level. Their outlined shapes ask the public to look up from their everyday comings and goings on the street level and question their existence amongst the ever flowing crowd of humans that bombard the city's streets every day. Just as with Doug Aitken's Sleepwalkers, it is the flaneuristic viewpoint that is explored (although I have found no evidence of Gormley using this connection to Psychogeography), suggesting an awakened awareness of self in relation to everyday surroundings and actions. Gormley's perception of this piece has greatly intrigued me, (quotes below), with his unspoken (maybe unaware?) connection to the psychogeographical viewpoint of looking at the relation between a "visually overburdened world" and oneself.

"The whole installation is about making a connection between that which is palpable, that which is perceivable, and that which is imaginable. So on the floor, as an interruption of the flow of daily life on the street, we have four 650 kilo iron blokes that are gunna stand naked on the pavement and people will stop and say "What the ___ is that thing doing here?" And that transfer of awareness then might lead to looking around and then that's the point at which, "Oh my God, there's not just one there are more - what's happening here?"

I'm just feeling the magnificance of this extraordinary built environment. It's an awesome sight. I think Manhatten remains a living laboratory of possibility of how human beings can live together.

And then I'm very interested in what happens up there and the question is "Where are they gunna look? How are they gunna orientate themselves, in some sense, their position in this field of visible, of gazing and being gazed, and become enhanced?" 

Antony Gormley, February 25 2010, Mad. Sq. Park Conservancy 

 "The art of our time is absolutely and fundamentally different that everything that went before. It's not about the known; it's about the unknown. It's not about reinforcing all of those things that give comfort and certainty; it's about identifying the things that make us uncomfortable, uncertain. It's about, I think, trying to find a space in a very visually overburdened world in which the subject can find him or her self.

The condition of sculpture is it's still silent or mute and has no meaning, it's just a thing, it's completely useless, it's just an object in a space and it waits for all the things it doesn't have: consciousness, feeling and freedom - and that's what you've got.

Places for reflection, it's the most important experience, I mean, the most important thing - a place within life that is, in a way, removed from life, from which we can loom out but also look in. I would say that you are the subject in a field that is created by art and you, in some sense, make the picture because the picture is not given - it hasn't been done for you, it's an open work that you give form to. 

And where is the artwork?

Is the artwork in the moment of its origination?

Is it in the moment of its reception?

It's everywhere.

I would say the artwork exists most potently in the memory of the viewer or the one who has experienced it."

Antony Gormley, June 19 2009, The Art Fund UK

Scout #2

Scout #2 took place on Friday 19th February 2010.
The film below is a documentational piece showing the surrounding landscape covered in snow. The camera work by myself and Shane Davies is progressional for my work, with the synchronization of the footage being the main aim of the final edit. The actual final film that I showed to a small handful of people to be critiqued was on two monitors. This separated the footage further, with a slight echo created across the monitors' sound. The DVD players the two discs were played in had to be synchronized from the start. Luckily the M.A.P area in Cardiff School of Art and Design had multiple DVD players that are alike, and it is the same with a few of the television monitors. Clearly the amount of monitors and DVD players that are alike are limited. With the formulation of a five screen piece idea slowly transgressing to be an aim for my work at the moment, I am unsure whether all the monitors will be alike, as well as the DVD players (if they were different would they sync together successfully if the all of the discs were looped?)

Scout #2 from Lucy Thompson on Vimeo.

The awareness of the placement of the camera has been an aspect of film work that has continuously intrigued me. From watching Hollywood blockbusters to the so aptly named 'art films' that are less widely advertised, the camerawork can be a feature that many do not obviously notice, with the alternate reality that is depicted in many of these moving images sucking at our attention in a most lazy fashion. To understand the construction of a scene and it's play through for the camera is a challenge for me to pay even closer attention to all that is portrayed in the moving image. It can, sometimes, add intrigue when there is a lack of enjoyment. To view the world through a camera lens is to highlight all the everyday actions and objects that may get overlooked in their reality. The use of two cameras in Scout #2 was to create a sense of place; to follow the simple experience of a walk in this beautiful landscape through the lens of a camera and capture the history, actions of the people, and events that shape it's everyday existence.

It is here that PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY rears it's head once again and attempts to dive into my film work.

Photos of a white Brecon Beacon's landscape...

The area has many manmade reservoirs like the one seen in the distance here.
(This particular reservoir holds a particularly nasty story of a boy drowning in an undercurrent whilst swimming here.)

The top of Corn Du was covered by white cloud that continuously drifted across the mountain and highlighted the potential for the act of getting lost just as Tommy Jones once did on the hillside.

The increasing amount of dark cloud cover that appeared during the scout gave the view of the mountains a rather sinister feel, with a stronger wind whipping up around us and the icy cold filling our lungs.

With many thanks to Shane Davies for helping with this piece. Shane was brought up in Merthyr Tydfil but had never been given the chance to climb Corn Du. For him the experience was like no other, with the clean, fresh and open air clearing his mind and freeing his senses to the view of the Beacon's snowy spectacle.

(See Shane Davies' blog at shanecdavies.blogspot.com)

The depth of the snow was unlike I have ever set foot in. The white blanket that covered these hills completely altered their appearance for me, having walked this path many times before. To capture it as a moving image the experience of a snowy Brecon Beacons will forever be a reminder of how a sense of place can be altered simply by the weather.