“I am from Leonia” announces the voice, at the
same moment at which (mirroring what is being said) white text appears across
the screen, running from left to right, drawing my eyes to traverse as first an
‘I’ then an ‘a’ then a ‘m’ delineates the sentence that is also appearing as a
phrase in my mind at the same time “I am from Leonia”. The combined effect of
audio arising, alongside typographic appearance, places this utterance within a
mental space which queries its origins. It seems to ask me ‘is the voice a
product of the text? Or is the text a record of a voice?’ This binary dynamic
is established at the beginning of Alec Shepley’s video ‘I am Leonia’ and is central to the work’s structure. The text disappears
and the voice continues, allowing my question to reverberate for me about the
origins of the voice. The screen depicts the inside of a modernist ruin, St
Peters Seminary in Cardross, Scotland to be precise, clearly identifiable
through its cast and molded concrete pierced by the outside light and foliage.
The horizon demarks and splits the screen in half. Entering from the right a
sweeping brush first, and then next a figure move along this indeterminate line
and circle around to double back, all the while slowly accruing and moving dust
and detritus to a point located approximately center stage. It occurs to me
that this path taken by the lone figure with a sweeping brush is opposite to
the direction at which the text appeared and announced the beginning of the
video. As a filmic device entering from the right and moving to the left, acts
as a disjuncture that arrests my comfortable viewing.
As an artwork ‘I am from Leonia’ is filled with futility. There seems little
tangible attempt to actually cleanse the space in any demonstrable sense. This
feeling is enhanced when in one sequence the figure’s attention is centered
upon sweeping along a shadow cast by the ruin’s distinctive vaulted
ceilings. What could be filled with more
purposeful purposelessness than following a contour whose only certainty is
that it will have shifted as soon as one has completed the activity of
following along its path? This unassailable quality is further testified to when
the figure diligently sweeps along the edge of what would have been a balcony
seemingly oblivious to the genuine detritus, which constitutes the floor below.
Neither is the sweeping piecemeal in the way that it might be conducted if one
was passing time within monotonous employment.
The sweeping is carried through with diligence and attentiveness to the
job at hand that seems at odds with the apparent situation at hand. The
intersections between the opposite forces that is apparent within ‘Leonia’ activates a potential for
meaning to be created by a viewer through a continuous process of purpose
forming which is initiated and then refuted, and discarded.
Watching Leonia
I cannot help but think of American artist Douglas Huebler’s famous assertion
from 1968 when he states, “The world is full of objects more or less
interesting; I do not wish to add any more”. The protagonist within the video
is intent on moving and remodeling matter rather than making a new construction
or order. Shepley’s video presents itself as a tension. What is the nature of
this sweeping? What is its purpose? The action is carried out and performed
with a sensitivity removed from simple cleaning (what indeed could be cleaned?).
The figure seems to be part archeologist unsure of the status of what is being
dislodged, moved and uncovered. There is equal reverie being given to dust and
dirt as there is to surface. I think about cleaning and the points at which
cleaning occurs; after a party, after a meal, before and after visitors. All
moments similar to these are epiphanies within our lives when compared next to
the act of removing and discarding after the event. I wonder if cleaning is
ever the event, or is it resigned to be the melancholy moment after the fact.
Cleaning, sweeping in this instance, is the quintessential point to reminisce
and a point not to be in the present. Is
there virtue in seeing all things, and all activities, outside of a hierarchy
and as being equal? In a likewise manner artworks exude and pronounce
themselves as events and pre-eminence is given to the arrival at this state via
the popularity of the phrase ‘installation’ within our lexicon of contemporary
art practice. Leonia, in its residual dwelling on what has long passed and is
out of place, makes me wonder how little contemporary art thinks of de-installing, the act of removing an
artwork from a situation or event. Perhaps de-installing lies too far beyond
the commodity address?
Concentrating upon the site of this modern ruin
I am struck by how indeterminate it seems. Is this the fate of modernist
buildings of this nature that fall into emptiness and disrepair? Unsure of their
own status, the building’s vice is to exist in perpetuity as both forgotten
relic, and abandoned beginning. Alec Shepley’s ‘Leonia’ testifies to this curious status and in turn one can watch
the video thinking that the building is new or under construction, the sweeper
preparing the ground for further work, and yet at the same time it is apparent
that this is a wreck and very much a former glory. The consistency and
sensitivity of the sweeper, as he attests to his strange occupation, occludes
singular readings and provides meaning in multiple positions.
‘I am
from Leonia…’ enters my mind again and I look again at the text where the
body of the narrative is taken. Italo Calvino’s last section of Chapter 7 from Invisible Cities does not begin with the
authorial phrase ‘I am from Leonia’ but the remainder of the dialogue is
congruent with the 1974 original. Invisible
Cities is famously a book narrating different facets of one city, Venice.
Leonia is a city obsessed with newness and replenishment. Shepley’s ‘Leonia’ is a meditation on matter out of
place. The perfomative ‘I’ introduces a speaker, a listener, and a place, and
the work’s structure allows me to place myself in a variety of roles. “I am from Leonia” I say to myself as I
consider the weight of objects introduced to the world, in comparison to the
lightness of thoughts that lie at their origin.
Dean
Hughes
December
2014
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