There’s some new work we’ve been developing. The first is about seating within film and general notions of framing. It came about by our focus on certain elements of cinema going unnoticed. Previously we did this through general props and now we’re being slightly more specific in our research. It was triggered by re-watching Knocked Up and thinking about the scene where Pete and Ben take mushrooms and are confused by the number of chairs in the hotel room.
Pete: There are five different types of chairs in this hotel room.
Ben: Holy fuck. What are they all doing in here?
Pete: These are five different types of chairs.
Ben: Get them out of here, man. This is too many chairs for one room.
Pete: There’s a guy that works for this hotel. His whole job is to find chairs. Look at this one. Look at it! It’s gold and red, and it’s kind of shiny, shiny thread. Unbelievable. It is beautiful and it feels amazing.
Ben: The tall one’s gawking at me and the short one’s being very droll!
For us, this became about film as a whole! Whether it’s the sword throne in game of thrones or the barber’s chair in Sweeny Todd, it’s a piece of production design and that attention to detail has all gone into the building of the world that we’re viewing. The type of chair a character chooses says a lot about them and their environment, an example that comes to mind is The Dude in The Big Lebowski who has a reclining chair which perfectly captures his sensibilities.
We then went on to consider the different ways chairs are used, the most common of which was an extension of the world; this is how we see them every day, as part of the environment. Even if they’re from the same type of film, we take one look at them and we can tell if the world is bright and clean like the red chairs in 2001 space odyssey or the brown, slightly more run down ones in Solaris. They also communicate monetary status like in Raising Arizona where there’s also a great scene where they’re discussing chairs and Nathan Arizona Sr. shouts down the phone, “800 leaf tables and no chairs. You can't sell leaf tables and no chairs. Chairs you got a dinette set, no chairs you got dick!” It’s similar to all production design where the right chair gives us an entire world to imagine beyond the frame. The next category is a chair as an extension of the character. An example that fits here is in The Great Dictator where Garbitsch advises Hynkel that “applied psychology” will help him intimidate Napaloni into ceding the right to invade Osterlich to Tomainia. This amounts to always being seated in chairs higher than the Bacterian dictator, including one whose legs have been sawed in half. In another scene, when the two are in barber’s chairs, Hynkel keeps elevating his own until it reaches the ceiling.
This idea of chair reflecting a characters psychology also goes for Mugatu in Zoolander and Mr. Incredible’s boss in The Incredibles. In animations like Next Door, characters are actually drawn to look similar to their chair, this is also the case in Up. The final way chairs are used within film is as an extension of a situation. In The Godfather Part II there’s a scene where Fredo Corleone is almost trapped by his chair, it appears that he’s trying to get up but is disallowed by his chair. The chair is obviously not the only piece of a set that does this but because they’re so common, it makes it an applicable object.
After thinking about all this, we’re considering how chairs, and seating in general, might be related to how a story is framed. It brought us to the bench in Forest Gump and how it functions as a storytelling tool. At the beginning of the film, he’s sitting on the bench and picks up a feather which triggers memories of his earlier life and then the viewer is thrown into the start of the story.
He begins with describing his difficulties living in Alabama. Throughout the narration of his prior life we are consistently seeing another character called Jenny Curran, who Forest is in love with. We are then introduced to the events of the film, Jenny leaving, Forest running and the fact that he’s waiting on the bench for Jenny. While he tells his story, other people on the bench listen, some care, some do not. Gump tells the events of his life to everyone who will listen. Each person has their own opinion about his story. The audience listens in to what the narrator, Forrest Gump, is talking about to the other person. It is a very easy manner to follow the film. There really is no relationship between the spectator and the movie besides the fact that people are listening to his story as if the spectators were waiting for the bus with him. The way the narration effects that relationship, in that the narrator addresses ideas and topics making it seem that Gump is not only talking to the person on the bench, but he is talking to the audience as well. Forrest Gump addresses his topics mixing narratives up using both formalistic and realistic styles very smoothly. For us, this all relates to the bench; the way that the bench is placed makes it appear as an actual bus stop. Buses run in front of the bench, people walk in front and behind it, and life goes on, but the bench is the centre of that scene. In making the object in front of everything with action in the back of it, like the bench as centre of attention. We’re thinking about for our next film, or work that requires seating, to rebuild the bench from Forest Gump to bring in these themes.
Some other works we’re in the process of making include a lecture about where we utilise the methods of foley artists. Our thinking is that while one is walking around giving a talk or lecture, they could be walking through the various items associated with producing sounds for films. There would be a tray system which ideally spanned the entire stage and each tray would have a different material in it and would have a microphone attached to each section of the tray. This could include anything from the swishing of clothing and footsteps to squeaky doors and breaking glass. We’re not necessarily utilising these effects to the same ends as a Hollywood film-maker but we’re employing those unnoticed tools which enhance how a story is received by an audience. The lecture itself would then be about something along those same lines or something that it in some way connected but we still need to give it a bit of consideration.
The next is a work for an exhibition in the windows gallery at CSM. In light of the 2010 austerity measures, funding for arts institutions has been heavily reduced, and as a result the arts are being pushed into the welcoming arms of the private sector, whose interest in contemporary art threatens to remove culture from the commons and re-establish it as an arena for the elite to advertise their philanthropy and brand image to the world. The space for resistance against these forces is shrinking fast as a result of widespread capitulation to the real and imagined desires of private finance, leading to an art world that is ideologically and demographically homogenous. The work we’re producing for the window mimics the outward facing image that contemporary art investment and funding bodies present. Applied to the inside of glass, the work takes the form of an acknowledgement list for a fictional funding company, complete with a logo and list of important benefactors. The fictional company will be called ‘The Prevailing Wind Fund’ and the important benefactors will be a list of the people who have made significant contributions to the critique of the effects on the arts of institutional norms introduced by the private sector. Namely Paul Di Maggio and Walter Powell who developed the concept of Institutional Isomorphism in 1983; a state of inter-institutional influence in which emerging institutions mimic the formal procedures of larger institutions in order to legitimise themselves. A process that pedals current hegemonic attitudes, mutes radical change, stifles diversity and is harmful to the progression of the arts.
