Page 55 - Studio International - November December 1975

fixed. The linear, two-dimensional, diachronic qualities part of the frameline
of naming are converted into an overlapping, three- between the two frames.
dimensional, synchronic image. This is not seen
A comparison with Western Reversa/suggests itself : during the projection
whereas the later performance piece obliterated an image of the film.
by a process of superimposition in time, Unsigning does
so by a simultaneous dispersal in space. Indeed, the
comparison goes further, since, for Dye, the artist's The image is, in fact, a blown-up photograph of a single
signature is expressive of much the same set of values as frameline and an infinitesimal part of the two frames
the 'Western.' I wanted to do a work which was the either side of it. The film from which it was taken was shot
opposite of the meaning behind the signature, identity one afternoon on Hampstead Heath and remained
fixture and projection, and turn it inside out,' he explained. unused for over three years. Typically its use involved a
(Beyond Painting and Sculpture catalogue, 1973). There concentration on the very element —the frameline —
is a subversive irony about using so much expensive that remains inside the projector and the exclusion of
hardware to project so little in terms ot image. The eight everything else except those narrow areas of film
projectors stand there, monolithically, like a circle of mathematically necessitated by the ratio between the
conferring elders, while the 'screen', which would width and height of the wall emplacement. What
normally be equipped and ready to receive an eight-fold emerges, almost by default, is a very beautiful strip of
battery of images, hangs there in the middle, a flimsy colour reminiscent of impressionist painting. But this is
piece of cardboard, turning inconsequentially, at the an incidental element. The signification of the image
mercy of the slightest movement of the surrounding air. occurs with greatest pressure at those points where the
Dye has remarked that this work was 'the opposite of blobs of brilliant white bend or seep over the artificial, but
having your name in lights'. Yet he is aware of the necessary segmentation of reality, the frameline. For the
ambivalence inherent in the situation : after all, the true essence of cinema is that a continuous reality must first
opposite is total obscurity. be segmented into arbitrary rectangles, before its
continuity can be recreated on the screen. The vertical
Other installations designed for specific locations
line may be seen as an 'I' (ego) and as a '1' (individual),
include an installation version of Western Reversal
(Project '74, Cologne, 1974) and Moving, Stretched, as necessary to the production of art in our culture as they
Horizontal/Static, Contracted, Vertical (Richard Cork's are illusory. What this work does is to reveal the tiny,
unconsidered acts of revenge perpetrated in the
Critic's Choice exhibition, Tooth's Gallery, 1973), in
obscurity of the camera by a seemingly submissive
which a fragment of Cork's Evening Standard review of
reality upon its ruthless ravisher. Yet this is only one
the ICA 1972 show was scratched directly onto blank
film, one letter per frame, then 'processed' in projection in dimension of the work : for the still exists not in isolation,
but at the 'frameline' between two rooms, usually filled,
the two ways described in the title.
like the largely excised frames, with 'images'. Thus the
work refers back in time to a hitherto neglected aspect
The 'still pieces' are a fairly recent category in Dye's of the film process and moves out in space to embrace —
and dominate— the two empty rooms. Towards/Away
work. A growing dissatisfaction with the practical
difficulties involved in gallery installations—over-heating From served as an objective correlative for ambivalent
projectors, the constant attention required by expensive, feelings towards an art institution. Frameline represents
a similar attitude to the gallery situation, seeking out the
fragile equipment —drove the artist to find another mode
of gallery expression. He had already shown a large overlooked area, the space between, the 'entrance'/'exit'.
number of diagrams, with accompanying texts, in which There is a disproportion between means and ends similar
to the one found in Unsigning: for eight projectors — and
films, performance pieces, and installations were
explained. But he wanted to go beyond this and produce the same reticent, vestigial expression, which, by means
works which, while deriving from film and being about of the complex system of relations it sets up, achieves
film, would be autonomous in their own right. For his astonishing power.
one-man show at the Lisson Gallery in May-June 1975, Filmed water first occurred in Overlap and appears
he produced a still version of Western Reversal, again in Dye's latest work— a still version of that piece
consisting of sixteen photographs taken from the screen, prepared for this year's Paris Biennale. The work
charting the different stages of a performance of the piece consists of eight photographs, placed in a horizontal line
of that name. The arrangement of the sixteen photographs on the wall, taken at various stages of the performance
on the wall replicates the 4 x 4 structure created by the and blown up to actual performance size. Since the degree
mirror-grid on the screen. of 'overlap' between the two images varies considerably
This work and documentary material on four in performance, the 'freezes' themselves vary in size and
'installations' (photographs and texts) were shown shape from a rectangle with rounded corners measuring
downstairs in thegallery. The two ground-floor rooms, 15 x 12 in to an irregular shape measuring 5½ x 4 ft. As in
however, were devoted to a new work specially the case of the performance piece (and of Frameline),
conceived in terms of the location. At first sight, the two the photographic image of sunlight on water is itself very
rooms were empty. Then one noticed that one side of the seductive, but, again, this factor is incidental to the logic
opening between the two rooms was entirely covered by of the work's conception. Certain essential differences
a photograph (84 x 10 in). Running up the middle of exist, of course, between the two versions of this work —
the photograph was a dark, linear, spine-like area, on differences that establish the autonomy as well as the
either side of which was a mottled greenish colour with interrelation of the two. The predominant element of the
yellow highlights. At certain points pools of white performance piece lies in the extreme difficulty involved
spilled over the blank line, bending it or obliterating it. in keeping one image of the raft superimposed upon the
On the other side of the wall opening, blown up to other. Even with good timing and agile footwork on the
appropriate size, was the following text : part of the artist, the moments of near-perfect overlap are
few. In the still version, this 'dramatic' element is
necessarily absent : we are presented with eight more
FRAM ELINE or less successful overlaps. On the other hand, in this
1975 spatial translation of the temporal sequence, we are able
(from 3,600 to turn our attention to other aspects that were muted or
on a 50 ft length absent in the performance version. In particular, the
of 8 mm film) gradual increase in size and the variation in shape of the
When filming eight photographs set up an autonomous set of relations.
sunlight on water, The 'temporal' version concentrated our attention upon
the light entering the process of change itself; the 'non-temporal' version
the camera frees our attention from that process and allows us to
sometimes bends appreciate the effects of that process at eight given
or dissolves moments. It is as if the stasis represented in the raft amid
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