A. Epistemological Pavilions – Etude Series
Etudes, at least for composers, are studies or exercises intended to provide a pupil with a range of possibilities for practice while being, at the same time, a worthwhile composition. Many composers have produced etudes where they have probably concentrated on the second purpose. Chopin’s etudes where the inspirastion for this series. Each model was commenced prior to me having any clarity about what I was making, and with only a limited idea about how I would make it; I engaged in making and through this generated ideas to direct further making. Titles came during this process as I began to gain confidence about a work. Some models had their titles refined near or at the end of making. Titles were intended to be evocatively descriptive.
5 Fragments of a Venice
Probably the only unique city, Venice is one of the most known places in the world. It is frequently presented by others – filtered through their words or images – and is hence ‘known’ by many who have never visited. It is known by many tourists. It is known by its own residents and by those who commute to work there. Such knowings vary greatly. My Venice is not your Venice. (See Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’.)
Similar assertions can be made about any possible field or item of knowledge. We employ the same noun and we think we speak of the same ‘thing’. We do and we do not. Our knowledge of anything is likely to have both overlapping and unique aspects.
My Venetian knowledge prior to starting this pavilion was formed from three visits over twenty-five years, considerable reading, and through pictures and films. I did not begin this pavilion with the slightest thought of Venice, although I possess enough knowledge of it myself and in my library to have enabled me to start with an intention to undertake a ‘work on Venice’. In fact, the starting points were several: the base shape was established entirely by what could be made from some remaining wood. An asymmetrical hull shape held up on poles, which I had drawn in a wayward meeting moment, was started by buying a suitable block of Coobah and sanding it. I had also drawn some hollowed-out frames. I planned to put them together. The key to unlocking my knowledge of Venice was the realisation that I was making a hull with an asymmetry similar to a gondola. This enabled a Venetian viewing of the whole: hull as palazzo; bridge as roof; secreted interior volumes; poles signifying support, mooring and marking of channels; the extruded narrow volume of a calle; the dependence of the city on the nautical for food, trade, survival; and towers gathering to themselves the places around them for announcement on the skyline.
The hull hints at journeys. Design is a journey from originating idea(s) to a ‘completed’ object, which in turn undertakes a journey through its life. The sticks propping the hull suggest the stability of wedges and supports interceding between object and earth in defiance of gravity. In this case, by being half such a static system, they address instability: the viewer must seek answers to the absence of a fall.
After a long hiatus, a tower was added to the piece as one of the elements to be composed. While the various abstractions of the piece are given material substance, I endeavoured not to be overly literal, and to be intentionally ambiguous. The specific themes are Venetian: first the asymmetry of a gondola, then an overt and studied example of ambiguity formed from the hull shape and the window geometries of palazzi and carried on in other elements having at least two Venetian readings. In this process the forms have fairly literal antecedents – their combinations and relations try to move them beyond direct quoting. I can report that my efforts were successful to the extent that the first viewers saw the hull shape only as a boat, while the first architect to see it (Alex Selenitsch) read it as a palazzo. (This justified my efforts of measuring photos and replicating palazzo window proportions and spacing.) Does the whole suggest Venice to you? Did it suggest Venice prior to learning of the title or reading this? The use of knowledge of Venice was inherently necessary to my production of the piece. It is not necessary to its viewing and comprehension, however. The viewer’s knowledge that I consider it to be about Venice immediately shapes and constrains her viewing such that it is only by vigorous exercise of will that a viewer aware of my Venetian intentions can overcome them to see the piece entirely otherwise.
Venice is a place of poles; it is supported on poles; poles mark points of embarkation. Some poles are seen here as supports, yet in this supporting (as it is with Venice) a certain degree of gravity is defied and a sturdy amount of willpower is required to keep the whole idea afloat. The idea of construction or repair draws from the history of Venice, specifically from the Arsenale which, in the medieval world, historians claim was Europe’s largest industrial complex employing several thousand workers, building and maintaining the large Venetian fleet of ships. (Its name is apparently derived from an Arab term ‘dar sina’a’, a place for construction.) Venice is also a place of bridges, of canals, of calles, of doorways and piazzas; each of these is echoed in this pavilion, but can any small work be rich enough to even echo Venice?
Base: 265mm x 133mm. Model: 266mm x 165mm. Height: 218mm.
Initiated: June 1998. Constructed: December 1998 – November 1999.