| ||
| Ene-Liis Semper: Empty Space and Stage Sculpture | |
| Anders Härm | |
|
||
|
||
|
Installations should empty rooms, not fill them. Peter Brook |
|
|
||
|
Location: Tallinn Art Hall, large exhibition hall. Time: December 2002. The
artist, Ene-Liis Semper, is in the hall. The gallery lights are focused on
the curtain rods, illuminating the otherwise totally bare walls. The stage
has been arranged so that a space with a sign is recognisable. Semper takes
a large brick and places it in the bottom corner of the doorway. She then
adds a little bit of mortar with a trowel, and puts the next brick in place.
She carries on until the whole doorway is closed and the artist has thus
walled herself in.
|
|
|
||
|
One of the central problems of radical modernism - EMPTY SPACE - is walled
in for good. For Semper, at least, this problem has found its solution. The
artist has vanished into space. The entrance is closed. The habitual
trajectories of movement and spatial experience have been severed. The place
has become a non-place. Within two hours, with almost mindless persistence,
repeating the same movement again and again, placing one brick atop another,
she has proceeded from empty space to emptiness. "I do not want this to be
essentially the same - I want it to be exactly the same. The more you look
at the same thing the more the meaning vanishes and the better and emptier
you feel", says Andy Warhol. Isn't it almost zen-like, what the supermarket
hero is saying? Capitalism reaches out a jolly hand to oriental philosophy
and all blends into a friendly unity.
|
|
|
||
|
A few years ago three friends in the performance Art, in the small hall of
the Estonian Drama Theatre, attempted to solve more or less the same
problem. The room contained almost nothing, there was almost no room at all.
Only a few bamboo sticks, three friends, and the white painting (i.e. the
problem). In solving the white painting, the friends simultaneously solved
their mutual misunderstandings. The entire intrigue revolved around a
so-called aesthetic problem which led to a squabble taking place on a
personal level. The characters, at the same time, present various aesthetic
points of view: from the ordinary level to an intellectual higher plane.
Again, the problem lies in nothing else but nothingness. Ene-Liis Semper was
involved here as well, this time as a stage designer. After all, she
graduated from the Academy of Arts in 1995 as a scenographer and is active
in this field even today. She has produced set designs for 63 productions so
far, one of which, Orlando, she also directed, together with Kristel
Leesmend in 2001, at Tartu's Vanemuine Theatre.
|
|
|
||
|
Object and theatricality In his legendary essay 'Art and Objectivity', the art critic Michael Fried accused minimalism of theatricality, in that minimalism removed the meaningful tension from the picture surface and reduced it to a Piercesque triad: space, work of art, viewer. The meaning is no longer contained in the art object itself, but in the spatial-contextual relations that function outside it. The hidden, special 'something' that revealed itself only to the chosen, turned into 'nothing'. The work of art now had no meaning whatsoever; the only thing that mattered was the way the object shifted the space according to the viewer's scale and means of perception. For a confirmed modernist such as Fried this was naturally an entirely insufferable state of affairs. Besides, these examples are both 'theatrical' reinterpretations of the legacy of modernism. |
|
|
||
|
What makes Ene-Liis Semper's stage sets so intriguing are their sculptural
dimension, elegance and spatial solutions, which are typical of an
installation artist. Having one or two powerful objects on the stage makes
it possible to view these objects, under certain circumstances, as
independent works of art. Paradoxically, it is most obvious in productions
that lose out to the design, e.g. in Life is a Dream (Estonian Drama
Theatre). With little exaggeration it is possible to watch the performance
as a change of spatial relations. There is really nothing else to do but
admit, with a smile, that Fried was basically right. The stage set of the
first act of our Drama Theatre's The Real Inspector Hound can also be
regarded as a piece of art in the key of advanced minimalism. The set merely
continues the Art Nouveau design of the big theatre hall. A simple solution
of genius. Even a small gesture will do in order to turn the spatial
relations upside down, for example by pushing a box of matches from one
corner of the table to another.Semper's credo as a stage designer is that the stage must be cleared of everything excessive. After all, she clears out her design with the same scrupulous precision as an early 20th century modernist did with his picture surface, or a 1960s minimalist his object. Only the absolutely essential remains. The modernist is a 'cleansing artist' who always faces a choice of what to take and what to leave. Everybody can fill a space but it is much more difficult to clean it. |
|
|
||
|
1:2OK, let us take a turn here. Semper's stage sets can be analysed in the key of spatial installations, as 'stage sculptures'. However, they are functional installations. To ignore this would make the whole analysis absurd, sooner or later. As the artist makes clear, the stage design must sew together the holes in the performance and guarantee its unity. Almost invisibly, not stressing itself. Using Semper's work as a basis, I actually meant to sketch the shared area of art and theatre. As an art critic I am hard put to find a more adequate platform than this. At the same time very few images created by scenographers make it possible to get closer to the attitude and ideas of a production. In the analyses of Vanemuine Theatre's Roberto Zucco the Cage was a central key used by the critics to unlock the production. Such images, as creators of meaning, nevertheless remain cryptic, never revealing themselves fully. They are allusive, metonymic rather than symbolic. The bamboo sticks of 'art' only stealthily show their hint at the Buddhist treatment of the universe and emptiness. Zucco's cage is interpreted on entirely different levels. |
|
|
||
|
Neither Artist Semper nor Theatre Artist Semper are strict iconoclasts. Both
are simply fond of clean images. Both of Semper's alter egos know how to put
minimal means to maximum use in the theatre. If something supports the logic
of a performance and helps create meaningful spaces, the artist has no
scruples about employing it. The rhetoric of pure iconoclastic stage design
in fact also conveys signs. Black Box, clear lights and the best days of
Estonian 'theatre innovation', with Ricki Lake Show texts in Von Krahl
Theatre's No More Tears, are at once reinterpreted. (Yes, the postmodern
speech strategy has finally reached Estonian theatre!) On the other hand,
talking about 'empty space' immediately turns it into a concept, notion and
thing, i.e. into something that can be freely parodied.Theatre Artist Semper possesses the skills to manipulate the reception level of the audience, whereas Artist Semper has perfected her logic of imagery. It may be said, without exaggeration, that this is a strong alliance. Theatre Artist Semper has defined her position in no uncertain terms - "This is not the space of my self-expression." When space is the artist's tool, she sees herself more as an 'unskilled labourer' who is clever enough to make use of it. |
|
|
||
|
||
|
| Estonian Art 1/03 (12) | Published by the Estonian Institute 2003 | ISSN 1406-5711 (Online) | ISSN 1406-3549 (Printed version) | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 | |
|