Anthony McCall – Solid Light (at Tate Modern)
Movements are the tension between dualities, and life feeds on it.
The exhibition starts with McCall’s film in a dark room “Landscape for Fire”, to gradually ease the eyes of the darkness inside. As I walked into the next room, my listening heightened while calibrating my vision to the blackness surrounding me. Mechanical sounds spurring out smoke and light. A sudden vision was granted by the light sculptures inside. The illuminance was blinding yet revealing. The sculptures were mostly horizontal, and some projecting downwards, intersecting with each other. The sculpture’s projections of concentrated lines and circular figures hit our bodies and faces with different shades of light at their specific angle. It is frustrating to me and yet very obvious that the photos and videos captured here cannot fully display my experience, but the emphasis on space through light and dark, and the quiet movements of the shapes were shouting at me, that this is how our perception works.
I am in a cone of light, or I am the cone of light. I cannot become entirely of light in as much as being dark. I will not be able to see, listen or move as either side is gluttonous and ambitious, will consume my ability to become. To become is a movement towards something. An ideal or utter discord.
What lightness cannot touch, darkness must radiate. Just as sound and silence, space and un-space. The smoke is the physicality of things, and the shapes are our consciousness. Perceptions are hierarchical. We see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. I acknowledged the chatter around the exhibition space, but I was too invested in my experience that the chatter disintegrated into smoke. My smokey fingers blocked the stream of light, penetrated my being, and then pulled out my shadow to the surface. Extended fingers now touching my projected self. The un-space is far from being empty but inexplicable.
I listened to my body and started moving between sculptures. My responses were gradual. Started with my intention to move (metaphorical shadow), then fingers, arms, head, torso, then movements across my body. Hundreds of thoughts chasing around in my head. (Moves I could do, moves I shouldn’t do, which angle is the best?, am I blocking anyone?, I am so weird, how should I apply listening in this context? etc.) I first judged, then acknowledged, and finally accepted those thoughts movements and let it dance into my being.
This is all that we are. The very manifestation of order and chaos. Ephemerality of flesh, blood and aching to survive.
What is being communicated with intimations of beings? What is the nature of reality through observing phenomena?