During the visit of the area in which we will create a site specific project later this year, I realised how my collection has influenced the way I view urban landscapes. My attention was drawn to the variety of the urban lighting and how it's positioning and colour heavily influences the atmosphere of the site.
The most valuable things I learned from the collection process are : how to suggest a scene instead of representing it, how to create visual narratives, how to use colour and how to create my own inspiration material.
After spending a few months exploring the night I realise that I mostly appreciate it as a location and a context or maybe even a pretext.
I think it sets a particular atmosphere in which you're more likely to witness interesting events and feel strong emotions.
Finally to tie it back to my overarching research, I would say that the urban night is full of contradictions and paradoxes which makes it a grey area.
I did an experiment in the Blackbox where I tried to suggest a nighttime narrative through light and sound. For this immersive experience I created an elongated space with black curtains. I placed a speaker at each end of the space and played a soundscape composed of field recordings and music. Three lights were hanging above the space shifting with the sound to suggest different scenes and transitions.
The feedback from this experience was very enlightening. I had a hard time to put words on the feelings that I wanted the spectator to experience. When Krassig tried it he described the sensation of getting lost and a feeling of “comfortable loneliness”. I find this term very suiting. I think the night brings out a very peculiar form of loneliness that can at times paradoxically become comfortable. This is the feeling you get when you're on a danceflore surrounded by people but still somehow by yourself, or when you're walking home late on an empty street. In this case the overwhelming emptiness comforts you in your loneliness, it enables you to enjoy your solitude.
I started this collection as a way to better understand the new environment I find myself in. When I first moved to Utrecht I was shocked by the calmness, the emptiness and the darkness of the nighttime. This presented a strong contrast to the scenery I grew up in. Paris is, as most metropolises, a restless city. After dark the street lamps blast a strong yellow light onto the parisian streets that bounces off the stone façades and the asphalt pavement creating a warm glow. This glow is so over illuminating that it makes it almost impossible to catch the glimpse of a star.
In Utrecht the night is more contrasted the punctual lights serve more as milestones, they are not meant to erase the darkness but to guide you through it.
When I first started taking night walks as I would back home I was immediately overwhelmed by the emptiness of the city which in turn generated a feeling of emptiness. During these walks the urban landscape and my mindset would bleed into each other. I was trying to figure out what was going on. Looking to get familiar with the city I was trying to identify it’s qualities and particularities.
Everything was closed except bars, restaurants and snackbars. I was immediately drawn towards the snackbars because they feel familiar to night-shops you might find in other countries but they still have a very local quality to them. They also manage to have a very unique character while somehow still looking oddly similar to each other. Their facades create windows into the small scenes that have a filmic and eerie qualities to them.
Some shop displays where also quite surprising utilising peculiar lighting to create small atmospheres to highlight their products. What makes this really surreal is the lack of pedestrians to admire them. Who are they for then?
I named the collection “At Night I Wander/Wonder”. For a long time I thought those two words where the same because of their pronunciation being so close. Although these two words are not etymologically related they have been intertwined through wordplay and metaphors. Wondering can thus be symbolised as a mental wandering. The aimlessness of the wandering is also reflected in the act of wondering.
The dérive was a practice that was developed and theorised by Guy Debord and the Situationist International. The dérive consists of moving through an urban space for different reasons then you normally would. In this dérive you have to abandon your usual relations and motives in order to feel the flows of the city and let yourself be guided by them. It’s a playful exercise through which you try to observe the city through a psychogeographical lens. According to Debord the dérive is “ a mode of experimental behaviour linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances. ” This practice has regained a lot of popularity in recent years becoming a method used by a lot of creatives in order to relate to urban spaces in more meaningful ways. The dérive has been a source of inspiration for my collecting process although my own method isn’t as radical and intentional. From my understanding the dérive was intended as a way to rediscover a city that is already familiar but as I find myself in a space that I’m still getting familiar with I allow myself to be guided by personal everyday motivations as well. It’s also important to mention that I do not consider my own dérives from a two dimensional cartographic point of view but rather as a sequence of three dimensional scenes.
One night as I was walking home I saw these flower spheres, that had been installed in the streets to celebrate easter. They reminded me of the music video for the song egobaby by Swedish artist bladee. In this video directed by Hendrik Schneider you see a man walking around on a structure surrounded by an empty grass field. The strong urban lighting creates a sharp contrast to the darkness of the night and conveys an eerie feeling. The camera then slowly zooms out to reveal that he is walking around in a circle stuck in an infinite loop. The song is about ego, reminiscence and coming to terms with one’s past as well as one’s future It’s an internal reflexion with melancholic and existential tones. The set created by London based designer Tom Schneider really helps to exacerbate those concepts.
For the first experiment I did I tried to suggest the atmosphere of a night shop through it’s most common and recognisable element : the open sign. After taking a closer look at my photographs I saw that for some reason all snack-bars and night shops have the exact same “open sign”. I then tried to recreate it using an LED light and a printout. Each of us had been asked to present something from our collection in the Kleine zaal, straight away my attention turned to the back of the theatre. I was able to suggest the window of a night shop by highlighting the backstage area and hanging the open sign above it. I also paced a speaker inside it with some ambient music to create a dreamy atmosphere. I thought it was interesting to draw the attention of the spectators to a part of the theatre that is supposed to stay hidden. It was also a good visual metaphor to show how the nighttime changes the face of the city.
It’s important for me to feed my experiments back into my collection. I don’t feel satisfied by only collecting outside images and influences, they need to be put in relation to my own work in order to make sense. This experiments help me to grasp the themes I’m exploring and will enable me to create a end work that's more meaningful.
Bas Jan Ader was a Dutch conceptual artist based in California. He mostly created performances that were documented through film and photography. In 1973 he started an artwork titled “In Search of the Miraculous”. This final work was supposed to be a triptych but unfortunately Ader died at sea while trying to cross the Atlantic Ocean on a sailboat. The last work he completed was a performance where he would walk from dusk til dawn through the city of Los Angeles with a small flashlight while being photographed by his wife Mary Sue. When describing this work Peter Schjeldahl from the New Yorker stated : “Tears, in this instance, were very nearly provided by me, and I doubt that knowledge of Ader’s impending death had much to do with it. Rather, the lonely figure in the vastness of the city, as the beautiful song looped in my memory, ambushed my heart. The work’s material shabbiness and playacting artificiality intensified the effect, roping me into complicity with the artist’s intention as efficiently as a halcyon film by Godard.”
I find this work very fascinating because in this case the artist becomes a sort of character that provokes strong feelings of empathy and melancholy only through his own positioning. If you look at Ader’s work from the perspective of a scenographer you could say that it’s all about the way he stages himself in his environment. This example was provided for me by my “buddy” Michiel Voet while we where talking about the meaning of my project. He was asking me if it’s about the night itself or me walking in the night. After further considerations I realised that I don't want to become this character but rather I want the spectator to experience what this character might feel.
A few films have greatly shaped my fascination for the nighttime as an artistic motif and a narrative context.
The film Pusher (1996) is one that first comes to my mind. The film directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and staring Kim Bodnia and Mads Mikkelsen is considered to be a milestone in Danish film history. It depicts the underbelly of Copenhaguen. This film influenced me a lot because I think it portrays the grimy, unpredictable and brutal aspects of the night in a very compelling way. The cinematography is very realistic and visually rich. The soundtrack mostly consisting of electronic music really solidifies the electrifying narrative.
In Wong Kar-Wai’s filmography from the 90’s and early 2000’s the nighttime is a key element. It even becomes the main setting of films like Chungking Express (1994) and Fallen Angels (1995).
At the chore of Wong Kar-Wai’s films is the idea of chance. The night creates an environment that strengthens change. People are more likely to step out of their societal roles and encounter strangers. This notion of chance can in a sense be tied back to the dérive, at night your might be more likely to let yourself go to the fluxes of the city. The unique style of visual storytelling employed in these films has probably influenced me the most as a scenographer. The scripts where set aside to let the actors improvise most of the dialogue and the narratives mostly relied on the sets and Christopher Doyle’s excellent cinematography. Lighting and colour serve to create visual metaphors that transcribe the characters emotions and mind states.
Christianne F (1981) is also a good example to bring up. The film directed by Uli Edel, shows how the nighttime is a place where adolescents go to find themselves, seeking new thrills at the verge of adulthood. But in the quest for understanding and independence some get lost victims of indulgence and drugs.
