Advent in Art 2011

This year, the Advent presentations were on a mixture of music and video works. The fourth live performance was unfortunately not recorded so we can't archive it here. However, we do have the other three presentations.

1. Karen Plimmer, [not available yet]

2. The Road to Bethlehem, by Nicola McMeikan, with Julie McMeikan

View the video here and read the talk here

3. Tahrir, by Andrew Rockell

View the video here, a live video of the talk here, and read the talk here

The Road to Bethlehem, by Nicola McMeikan, with Julie McMeikan

This is called the Road to Bethlehem and I’ll play it twice, each time with a different soundtrack and speak about it in between. The first soundtrack is “Saramaya” by Habib Koite and Bamada from Mali. I chose it because when I first heard it recently it made me happy and feel like dancing.

Slideshow is played.

If I had to call this something I’d call it a visual narrative.

When I first had the idea for some photographs it involved me being in some of them, so I asked my sister Julie to take those ones I couldn’t take myself, and that ended up being quite a few of them. For some reason it seemed more important to me to be “in the scene” than to be the photographer. Julie showed great patience over the course of three afternoons at her place, coming when called to take photos and handing back the camera to check they were what I wanted. Julie has given me great encouragement along the way as well as being an integral part of the process.

When asked if I would like to contribute something to the art in advent I said yes to make myself rise to the challenge, and I almost immediately had the idea of images from the story coming out from a suitcase. So that was something of an instinctive response to the nativity story. When I went into Luke to have a bit more of a read I was somewhat drawn by Mary’s “yes” to the angel and her “Let what you have said be done to me,”, but I think I was more taken by the idea of growing expectation relating to the birth and the emotional journey towards this event.

I found myself approaching the nativity story in its mythic sense, as poetry almost. And that perhaps explains the simple mythic images of the journey that came to me – a cloak to wear, an angel that appears like a guide, a path to tread, water to drink, a fire for warmth, a stone to rest on, some kind of shelter or tent, perhaps the basics of an arduous journey in ancient times. These were going to be a series of about six images, but I’ve ended up making a bit more of a narrative of it by stringing together more footsteps, making it much more directly representing Mary’s journey on the road to Bethlehem, and then adding quite a lot that happens in Bethlehem itself. But as the images arose for me they were both very concrete - things I could make, and touch and see - and I feel they were also communicating things that I could find within the story. Here I can find a path. Here I can find water. Here I find fire. Here I find stone. Here I find a shelter and an inner room of light and so on.

The use of a spectrum of colours seemed to be important to me at first. It all starts off quite colourfully but as it turned out it soon refined down to quite a narrow range of colours. I wasn’t going to use any black, but black crept in as the journey got harder and then there was quite a lot of white. Even the colours of the tent, which were much richer in real life, are muted in the final product and I quite like the way that things simplified down. Maybe here it can represent going from the bright innocence of girlhood with its colourful cloak to womanhood and experience.

It was about halfway through the project that I realised how the form that I chose related to the subject matter of the nativity. They intersected at the point of my wonder as a child.

My wonder as a child- singing in church while my mother played the piano at Christmas for the Sunday School. “Children, go where I send you. I’m gonna send you. ….” And so on until I got to sing my heart out on the words “born, born , born in Bethlehem” and there were so many verses I could do it again and again, filled with pure joy.

And also there was my wonder as a child of about eight when a group of visiting performers arrived to perform a play in my classroom in Tokoroa– someone put up a ladder and covered it with fabric and it was a mountain. I don’t even remember the story but this act of transformation filled me with delight and left an indelible impression on me. I think I suddenly saw with my imagination in a special way and that was a wonderful gift those performers gave me.

I use these fabrics sometimes in drama in my work with children with special needs – for example, recently I’ve used them to help enact the story of how Tangaroa gives Paua his colours. They also formed part of the heavenly gates that are opened when Morning Star visits Evening Star in a Native American legend. So I guess they were materials I had on hand. But now I recall their historical link to my childhood wonder at what the imagination can do, how it can transform things.

I can also link this form to more recent wonder, that found in noticing colours and light, in leaves, in clouds. One day earlier this year I was in a classroom where the light was streaming onto some of these fabrics and it was like I was looking at a burning pile of glory. After that I’d sometimes make a feature installation of a swatch of colours strewn over the back of my desk so I could rest my eyes on them. And I went through a phase of turning to people in the office with my hands full of certain combinations and saying, “look”, like I was offering them something quite amazing.

And the dancing - that was all added later and probably reflects my recent joy in dancing around my lounge. The angel was there in the sequence at the beginning, static, almost like a signpost pointing the way, and that was going to be that, but then the angel came back and wanted to dance and rather took over, hogging about half the shots. This was the part of the project that was the most fun and least effort – about four minutes of dancing and taking photos and Julie and I were both really pleased with the results.

In 2000 I was in London and went to a mythodrama workshop at the Globe, in which we were invited to take on roles and enact sequences in Hamlet, applying these things to our own lives. I subsequently leant about storymaking and role method, forms of dramatherapy, in which people choose and embody roles in stories, to express aspects of themselves and gain insight. Any person or object in a story can be explored in this way.

In this case, I’m not saying that I was deliberately doing any mythodrama or dramatherapy here but, if I look back on it now and see the different characters and images of the story as different parts of myself or roles to explore, at a certain point the angel takes over, or I should say, I wanted to be a dancing angel … in this case I think the angel is joy - my own joy. Other shots involved still poses, rather than paused moments in some action, but through the dancing, you could say that this was the role that had the greatest energy for me. I’m not saying that I am a particularly joyful person, just that, when I was invited to create something for advent, something arose that is significantly about joy. This concept fits with the idea of wanting to be in the whole thing myself, rather than photographing someone else, it was about what I wanted to make and to embody.

I learnt last week that the elements of water, fire, stone and air have certain meanings in western tradition; water is the emotions, fire –the imagination, stone is earth or groundedness, air is mind --- air could be, perhaps fancifully, referenced here indirectly by the angel or the light.

These could be seen as the elements of Mary’s experience – the emotions generated by her pregnancy, her imaginings about what might happen / who her son might be, her physical experience of journey and birth - and her thoughts (we are told that when the shepherds tell Mary what the angels said, “she treasured all these things and pondered them in her heart”).

But more, these can be seen as the four elements of our journey to the birth of the sacred in our lives – or life in all its fullness. Or for me, a journey to having all parts of myself – my emotions, my imagination, my senses and my mind engaged in life in this moment.

The doorway, the tent-like opening was nearly the last in – I was wanting some idea of shelter and, as it stands in the sequence, it became a bit more like a portal, with the white backlit fabrics now becoming a kind of inner room.

The last photo to go in was the baby. This one was a fluke. I was photographing a pile of discarded fabrics just for fun, because there was a lovely nut-like shape and the light was falling so beautifully on the green, when Julie looked over my shoulder and said that it looked like an embryo. I thought it might as well go in. We decided it also looked like a baby under a mosquito net. I really like the softness of it, just the suggestion of a baby.

I’m going to play the slideshow again and I’d like to play “O Come all Ye Faithful”. This was my favourite carol as a child, and we would sing it around the piano as my mother played. This will be from Amici Forever and we’ll just keep the song playing to the end. I invite you to come to Bethlehem, resting if you wish at any stop along the way.

Tahrir, by Andrew Rockell

You may be thinking the title of this piece is ‘WTF?’ Technology has not been kind to us today. We’re somewhat minus vision, clarity, colour, definition . . . 

The actual title of the piece is Tahrir. Tahrir is an Arab word meaning ‘liberation’ and is a term arising from the political upheavals in the Middle East over the last year.

The longer title, and I will regret saying it, is Christmas in Orc-Land. That’s Orc, O-R-C, as in Lord of the Rings. Christmas in Orc-Land or William Blake’s Holidays Down-Under. I’ll explain as I go along, the references to ‘Orc,’ to William Blake, and to the great Down-Under.

So for those who missed seeing anything on the screen - which is very likely - it was a series of candles going off in a wok filled with sand. The series of candles eventually form a series of shapes, so the shapes metamorphose. Eventually they arc into a question mark. Then, from a question mark, into a koru [1]. Then from a koru into something vaguely physiological. Then into a snake’s head; then a snake with a forked tongue flicking in and out. Back to a koru; question mark, etc. Variations on those basic shapes. 

Ok. So. I shall go at it like a bull at a gate. This is the non-linear but high-speed version. 

I was thinking about the Magnificat, having no idea that Christina [Partridge, curator for Advent in Art #3] would be using it in the service. Some years ago I was working for a Christian channel on SKY TV, which was a very, very weird experience and a weird thing for me to be doing. And I was struck, in fact possibly even overwhelmed, by the Republican content of the programming. As I was coming to the end of my Buddhist phase at the time, I thought, ‘Hm, Gospels. I might look at them myself, now.” And when it got to the really right-wing programming at Christmas I decided I would read the Gospel of Luke. And I was shocked to discover what seemed to be basically a Marxist document, and the Magnificat in particular, Mary’s song, being a kind of a Communist chant about overthrowing the powerful and sending ‘the rich empty, away. And all that kind of thing. So I was really impressed by the kind of revolutionary dimension of the Magnificat. And then suddenly curious about why I don’t hear much about that in churches where you [do] hear lovely things about very sanitised Marys having very sanitised births. Completely leaving out all the body-horror and violence involved in such things. And completely leaving out the second half of the Magnificat - the overthrow of the powerful, etc. So I was interested in the idea[s] of Magnificat and revolution. 

To return to the image: the series of flames, I was thinking of trying to get the idea of  the old, very old, form of communication of bonfires on mountain-tops. Like in Lord of the Rings . . . One goes off and this one goes off and the message is picked up and relayed. And for the particular message being relayed, I was thinking of the unfolding of the Biblical revelation. This is the first ‘Blake-ish’ bit. The idea that there are phases of communication through the unfolding of the Bible. So - the ‘Creation’ bit; the Exodus bit - which is a ‘Re-Creation’; formalising of the new freedom in a Law; the Law internalised in the Wisdom section; back out into a community in a ‘prophecy’ section, etcetera, etcetera. And the idea that, in this way of reading the Bible, called ‘typology,’ each successive phase of revelation transforms the one before it.

And in transforming it, it’s kind of - questioning it, saying ‘That’s not the whole thing, is it? There’s a different way of reading this. We don’t have to be stuck with this.’ So in the same way that, in the 21st Century . . .  20th Century, 21st Century where many of us like to ‘dis’ fundamentalism as an old, literal way of reading, the Bible, in Blake’s way of looking at it, is a series of leavings-behind of literalisms as the Bible is, as revelation is understood in a successively different, expanded sorts of ways. And as each illumination, each new piece of consciousness or ‘illumination’ -  a little candle goes up, forming a question mark questioning the previous things. And forms a question mark. Implicit in the idea of the question mark is “This is unfinished.” Or is it? I don’t know . . .

And with revolutions the idea that each revolution questions, by its very nature, the status quo. Questions everything that has been before it. And is subject to questioning, itself. Like every revolution is: Is this it? Is this going to be it? Is this the final phase of revolution in how we read the Bible? Is this the final phase of revolution in transforming society? Is any revolution ever enough? Does any revolution ever get to being anything more than a freshened up version of the old thing? The question is turned back on itself, as well. And so, applied to the Magnificat itself. Is This It? Like the question from [the Gospel of] John. John the Baptist’s disciples say ‘Are you the one we’re waiting for? Are you? We may have been here before. Do we keep waiting?’ And the line from Psalm 6 about “How long?” How long do we have to stay in this state of anticipation?

The next Blake-ish bit in his ‘holiday down-under,’ is the idea of ‘Orc’ - O-R-C. We know that name from Lord of the Rings. Which is part of a fight, I think, Tolkien was having [retrospectively] with Blake. In the same way that Tolkien’s good mate C.S. Lewis was having a fight with Blake. Blake wrote the poem The Marriage of Heaven and Hell; C.S. Lewis didn’t like it and wrote The Great Divorce. Blake invented this character called Orc [2], which is a revolutionary figure, which is about . . . It was his way of trying to give a person-shape, a mythical person-shape to the French and America Revolutions he was living through. And Orc was this kind of fusion of Christ and Prometheus and Oedipus. Mostly Christ and Prometheus - the idea that the Divine could be on your side and change the status quo. But the idea of a revolution is that it’s really threatening. It’s really threatening to everything you know and everything you think and how you think about it. It seems that Tolkien was somewhat threatened by this and turned his bad guys into ‘Orcs.’ And the sad thing is that the Orcs are the figures with all the energy and the innovation and propensity for industry in Lord of the Rings. And the good guys are just the ‘forces of order,’ bringing back ‘order.’ So, I was always disappointed with Lord of the Rings on that front. I would have made the Orcs the good guys . . . 

But what Blake is doing with that idea of the ‘Orc’ is that revolution, or newness, is intrinsically threatening. And he’s also picking up on a Jewish mystical idea that the Messiah is a serpent . . . Which is a radically offensive sort of thing to be thinking, at first blush. But in Biblical Hebrew, the letters of the alphabet are also numbers. So you do your maths with your letters. So each word is also a set of numbers. And it turns out, that the same numerical value of the word ‘Messiah,’ in Hebrew is also the same value for the word ‘serpent.’ So the Messiah ‘is’ a ‘serpent.’ In my brief phase of Satanism in the early nineteen-nineties I thought - “YES! That’s really cool! Thrilling, in fact . . . ” But I think Blake’s doing something other than irresponsible antagonism. It’s the idea that even a Christ is going to be threatening to the status quo. As of course, Christ is, when Herod mobilises forces to go and annihilate children. In the same way that Pharaoh mobilised forces to annihilate children. So hence, the snake, emerging out of the question mark. 

On its way to becoming a snake . . . a koru. ‘It’s just like - New Zillun?’ It’s traditional at Cityside to mention [New Zealand artist Colin] McCahon, so I thought I’d - sneak that in . . . ‘Can Christianity happen in New Zealand?’ And then . . . so, what’s a piece of art without a phallic symbol? . . . So this is like, you know, when I was growing up and we were subject to endless health videos at school about ‘I Am Joe’s Urinary Tract,’ or  Joe’s seminary vess - semin- yes! ‘Seminary’ vessels! Yes! ‘Seminary vessels’ Hah! . . . As was said in a British comedy programme once where somebody said “If you think that’s a phallic symbol - you have my sympathies . . . ”

So there’s the head of the snake and - here he is: his forked tongue. Happily, the forked tongue is a flame. So the forked tongue . . . [interruption] is a tongue of flame which means this is the point at which the snake is turning into a dragon. And a dragon is the traditional symbol of the status quo! In fairy tales, the handsome prince comes along and ‘slays the dragon.’ The dragon is kind of, by association, the land, the environment, as things have been. The prince becomes the new king, replaces the old king, marries the daughter, etc. But the dragon is ‘Things-As-They-Are,’ and in all their oppressive weight. 

At this point, where the serpent is at its most vigorous - shooting out its forked tongue - it’s also [by way of the flame] at the tipping point of becoming the status quo. Which is, you know, historically what Christianity did. It started as a revolutionary religion that questioned - everything. And was a profoundly threatening thing to the Roman Empire, and then ended up becoming the Empire. And part of that ‘becoming Empire’ was the squashing of desire. Squashing desire, per se. The desire for anything different. In the squashing of desire goes - political impulses, and sexual impulses. And Christianity has a really good ‘rep’ as being the religion most down on sexuality. Another good reason for including Joe’s . . . anatomy. 

The snake imagery is also explicit in the Bible with Moses lifting up the serpent on a pole. The bronze serpent in the wilderness to heal the masses. And Jesus is explicitly picking up on that item in the Gospels, himself as ‘serpent.’

I was trying to figure out a way of getting a cross flashing in there, during the serpent coil bit but it was all a bit too [esoteric at that point].

The viewer position, looking at this sequence, which is kind of the stretch through time of Biblical revelation. It’s looking at kind of the whole of history as a spatial item. History’s a  ‘linear’ thing and space is a ‘static’ thing. So we’ve got the ‘static’ view of a linear item [process]. We’re kind of looking at the world, as ‘history,’ from somewhere out in space. So I’m voting: We’re on the Star of Bethlehem - looking down! Have you ever seen a piece of art do that before?! . . . 

And also the idea of looking down on earth, doing that in a black space. It’s kind of a womb sort of thing. So I was trying to get as much ‘organic’ stuff happening in the video as possible. There’s that pulsing thing, like a respiratory rhythm, or a pulsing of the blood. Like the Blake line: “There is a moment in each day that Satan cannot find.” However you read the idea of ‘Satan,’ - whether as ‘boogey man’ outside or a destructive impulse inside, the idea that - there is a moment of illumination, of inspiration that negativity can’t overcome. And the rest of the phrase is “less than the puls[ation] of an artery.” I was trying to get that inspiration thing with the pulse. And the gap between the pulses . . . 

And the idea that I was always fascinated with in Blake’s pictures of . . . He does metamorphosis in images, that plants are always turning into flames, and flames into serpents, and so on. Oh. I’ve done it. Just figured it out. I’ve done that! . . . There you go. Good . . . 

So - all of that in the context of Christmas. Will anything change? Does the Nativity happen? Does the Nativity continue to happen? Is it just a memory of something that’s occurred a very long time ago? Does it have any real  . . . liveliness to it, in 2011? 

And particularly, towards the end of 2011, which has been a year of ‘Magnificats.’ Beginning with the Arab Spring and the revolutionary movement across the Near East and North Africa. And, more recently, with the, I believe I’m supposed to say ‘hash-tag O-W-S.’ The ‘Occupy’ movement challenging power. Does that amount to anything? Will it amount to anything? Is that a ‘Magnificat’? 

[In sum:] First, creating space for the idea of revolution and the Gospel as ‘revolutionary.’ Then the question of ‘does it have application further on in time?’ With the koru stuff: Does it have application in New Zealand? Can we localise it? And with the tracer lights at the end I was just having fun with the editing thinking - ‘Franklin Road! Coo-ool!’ So we’ve got a very local element.[3]

And finally - with all those candles . . . It’s a ‘birthday cake.’ Yeah . . . 

The end. Thanks.

Notes:

[1] Koru: New Zealand fern, distinctive for its inwardly spiralling contour and structure.

[2] Orc: William Blake appears to derive the word ‘Orc’ from various sources, including Latin for ‘hell’ or ‘underworld’; Greek, orkhis, for testicle; and a Latin anagram for ‘cor’ i.e. ‘heart.’ With these elements, Blake’s Orc is the world of desire as everything suppressed and seen by conventional wisdom as ‘hellish’ as a result.

[3] Franklin Road: A street in Ponsonby, Auckland, NZ, famous for its collective commitment to flamboyant Christmas light decorations, usually involving intricate patterns woven out of tracer lights.