It's closing time for Gardens in the West
Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would
simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.1
The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin2 follows the protagonist’s attempts to
correct his mistakes when given a chance to relive his past. He
discovers that human choices tend to be mechanical, and to change
the outcome of one’s actions is extremely difficult. Are we doomed to
repeat the same mistakes over and over? In the final chapter the
shocking realization of the nature of existence, and its consequences,
alludes to Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence, and is the
platform for It’s closing time for gardens of the west.
It’s closing time for gardens of the west presents a blueprint to a
possible future world... We are taken out of the everyday and enter
into a disruptive phenomenological space, that offers a reflection on
the long term effects of human behavior in relation to a global
environment with dwindling natural resources.
Our installation is ironic and evasive, reflecting on the underlying
dualities and ambivalences that influence decisions and actions. It
has both associative utopian and dystopia references, and presents
conflicting notions of continuity and rupture, stability, collapse,
suspension, preservation, transience, time and materiality.
We have a working relationship that shares a curiosity in archetypes
that have an aspirational historical context and precedent; and are par-
ticularly interested in the currency of the tower, the wing and the knot.
To Matthew Wells tall towers are built with an idealism and a
symbolic value; an aspect of the sublime. 3 Historically the tower,
minaret and spire have stretched buildings skyward. The contempo-
rary version, a seemingly weightless skyscraper, can simultaneously
invoke contrary senses of timelessness, awe and progress. But
skyscrapers are greedy. Supported on massive foundations; they are
resource heavy monoliths that use vast amounts of steel, concrete
and glass, with a high end utilities upkeep that suck resources dry.
The wing is an irresistible motif, it propels us into the future, whatever
that future might be. Rapture? Apocalypse? the wing plunges us
headlong somewhere, and time, progress, history are forces that we
cannot halt or perhaps even adequately represent.
Think of an intractable problem. Imagine ways to disentangle this impos-
sible knot. To ‘cut the Gordian knot’ means discovering a bold solution to
a complicated problem. What if the knot remains steadfastly intact....?
This century has a peculiar resonance, akin to a discordant music score.
Notions of pure form that embody the fundamental characteristics of a
thing; or a collectively-inherited unconscious idea or pattern of thought
just don’t hold water as structures are built to fall apart, borders are
increasingly ambiguous and nature is pushed to the point of dissolution,
and at its extreme, destruction. We ask: is human endeavour engineered
to fail? Consider a skewed tower, an odd, almost mutant wing form, an
inexplicable sliver of pure white light, an unwieldy knot, strange tubes
that spew unidentified but darkly uncomfortable things—as we reflect
on our implicated relationship with an increasingly frail environment.
1. Friedrich Nietzche, The Wanderer and his Shadow, 1880, p323
2. P. D. Ouspensky, The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, 1915
3. Matthew Wells, Skyscrapers: structure and design, 2005
It's closing time for Gardens in the West
Never yield to remorse, but at once tell yourself: remorse would
simply mean adding to the first act of stupidity a second.1
The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin2 follows the protagonist’s attempts to
correct his mistakes when given a chance to relive his past. He
discovers that human choices tend to be mechanical, and to change
the outcome of one’s actions is extremely difficult. Are we doomed to
repeat the same mistakes over and over? In the final chapter the
shocking realization of the nature of existence, and its consequences,
alludes to Nietzsche’s theory of eternal recurrence, and is the
platform for It’s closing time for gardens of the west.
It’s closing time for gardens of the west presents a blueprint to a
possible future world... We are taken out of the everyday and enter
into a disruptive phenomenological space, that offers a reflection on
the long term effects of human behavior in relation to a global
environment with dwindling natural resources.
Our installation is ironic and evasive, reflecting on the underlying
dualities and ambivalences that influence decisions and actions. It
has both associative utopian and dystopia references, and presents
conflicting notions of continuity and rupture, stability, collapse,
suspension, preservation, transience, time and materiality.
We have a working relationship that shares a curiosity in archetypes
that have an aspirational historical context and precedent; and are par-
ticularly interested in the currency of the tower, the wing and the knot.
To Matthew Wells tall towers are built with an idealism and a
symbolic value; an aspect of the sublime. 3 Historically the tower,
minaret and spire have stretched buildings skyward. The contempo-
rary version, a seemingly weightless skyscraper, can simultaneously
invoke contrary senses of timelessness, awe and progress. But
skyscrapers are greedy. Supported on massive foundations; they are
resource heavy monoliths that use vast amounts of steel, concrete
and glass, with a high end utilities upkeep that suck resources dry.
The wing is an irresistible motif, it propels us into the future, whatever
that future might be. Rapture? Apocalypse? the wing plunges us
headlong somewhere, and time, progress, history are forces that we
cannot halt or perhaps even adequately represent.
Think of an intractable problem. Imagine ways to disentangle this impos-
sible knot. To ‘cut the Gordian knot’ means discovering a bold solution to
a complicated problem. What if the knot remains steadfastly intact....?
This century has a peculiar resonance, akin to a discordant music score.
Notions of pure form that embody the fundamental characteristics of a
thing; or a collectively-inherited unconscious idea or pattern of thought
just don’t hold water as structures are built to fall apart, borders are
increasingly ambiguous and nature is pushed to the point of dissolution,
and at its extreme, destruction. We ask: is human endeavour engineered
to fail? Consider a skewed tower, an odd, almost mutant wing form, an
inexplicable sliver of pure white light, an unwieldy knot, strange tubes
that spew unidentified but darkly uncomfortable things—as we reflect
on our implicated relationship with an increasingly frail environment.
1. Friedrich Nietzche, The Wanderer and his Shadow, 1880, p323
2. P. D. Ouspensky, The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin, 1915
3. Matthew Wells, Skyscrapers: structure and design, 2005