A Dark Glass for an Underpass

Unfolding Dan Graham’s Two Way Mirror And Hedge Labyrinth, 1989 and the exterior glass curtain wall and interior marble wall from Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion, 1929.

Extract from an unrealized project proposal

Simon Pope & Sarah Cullen

August 2010

Proposal

We are responding to this brief, having recognized that our work coincides closely with one of  its themes, Ways with(in). Our recent work has investigated how ‘landscape’ can be understood in relation to intersubjectivity, building upon the legacy of so-called ‘relational’ art practice in order to also engage with the terrains on which we meet, walk, talk and ‘be’ together.

For this proposal, ours is a simple proposition: to ‘unfold’ two existing structures -  Mies’s Barcelona Pavilion and Dan Graham’s Two-way mirror with labyrinth - placing their glass and metal-framed components in the context of the devices have contributed to the development of the conventions which have brought ‘the land’ under control and reduced or simplified it. 

Further to this (omit) ,  we also propose to redistribute the trees and shrubs that ordinarily accompany them, throwing emphasis on the natural environment beyond the boundary or frame of the original works.

Rationale

The relationships of  ‘landscape’ to intersubjectivity is of particular interest to us, having been the focus of our practices evolved both individually and through working together. We are  interested in how contemporary art practice, whose concern is with modes of ‘being together’, can open-up new ways of understanding the idea of ‘landscape’, (and vice versa.) Our recent work has focused on interactions with rural and wilderness landscapes through work such as the participatory performance, Mountains & Lacunae (2009-10). Works such as these often involve a joint-imagining or describing, coming from looking at a scene together. From this, we have become interested in the devices that have been used historically to frame a ‘view’, or to reduce what is seen to something that can be readily described through drawing or painting. The use of the Claude Glass, for example is a particular interest. Within this proposal we would like to consider how this device, so crucial to the development and dispersion of the practice of producing Picturesque and ‘ideal landscapes’, (in the fashion of Claude Lorraine) might find its echoes in contemporary culture. Equally, Claude’s ‘dark glass’ also has equivalence with the ‘scrying mirror’ used by Dr. John Dee to channel voices of angels so as to divine the future.

We want to know how these closely-related but distinct devices might find form in contemporary East London, how they might coexist , especially when a search for an ‘ideal landscape’ is troubled by all that was once excluded from the landscape conventions of the Picturesque , such as current and immediate forms of sociality, of chatter and conjecture, or pressing and troubling economic imperatives.

We are fascinated by the ways in which these devices fit within a particular  lineage of public art, lWndscaping and architecture which includes Mies and Graham among its protagonists.  

We will be taking advantage of their self seeding areas to plant trees/shrubbery which exist in the Barcelona Pavilion and along side the sheets of glass in Dan Graham’s work.  These trees/shrubs will be reflected in the panes of dark glass from varying view points/angles. 

Response to the objectives