E. Bagatelles
As a small child, I was familiar with at least some of the piano bagatelles by Beethoven from my mother’s playing. I had no knowledge until very much later of other composers who wrote pieces of the same general name. The term has been used in music for centuries to denote a ‘trifle’ – a slight and insignificant piece with a certain innocence. The title should not always be considered guileless.
Around 2009 I discovered the bagatelles of Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov. Two years later, I decided to make twelve much smaller and simpler models than I had formerly; my friend and collaborator the late Andrea Mina – maker of very small powerful models – was gravely ill, and I felt a need to reduce the size of my models even if I could not approach his. My exploratory makings finally commenced in April 2012. In each model, the effort would be to deal with a constrained array of ideas. What evolved were two sets, each of six models. Set one explores means of shaping Six Places for Considered Reading, while set two gives form to Six Places for Moments of Optimism. Most places in the first set are stable and calm with an obvious reader’s seat. Optimism is required in the places of the second set, as they are variously unstable, dangerous, threatening, or flighty; a visitor requires optimism to remain, sometimes even to enter.
What follows is an account of the ideas and concerns in each of them, and something of their generation and construction.
To begin, a dozen bases were cut from a piece of wood rescued from a timber yard off-cut bin. All my saw cuts (both horizontal and vertical) were at small angles. No base is the same as any other. Predominantly, they are within three millimetres of being 75mm by 70mm, but there are two about 64mm on one side, and one is only 59mm. The heights diverge only a millimetre from 50mm. There was overlap in the construction of models within set 1, but little with the set 2 models. Throughout, they were considered as two divisions of the one whole set and informed one another. My intention was to make these smaller models simpler than their predecessors. In fact, many of them appear simpler, or at least easier, to construct than was the case.
Set 1: Six Places for Considered Reading
19 A Place for Considered Reading 1
There is a timber deck with steps descending to a pool. A simple hipped metal roof with randomly drilled holes in its surfaces and a shiny black demeanour offers dappled shade to a reader in a well-used reclining sun lounge on this deck. In the centre of the pool a rock rises from the still water. The roof is supported by a wall constructed of channel sections. Reading here should be untroubled. The means of walking onto the deck is not apparent; the focus is on being there.
This was simply explored with a card mock-up of both the roof and the deck. The roof is aluminium sheet through which I drilled holes about a millimetre in diameter. Their frequency diminishes toward the ridge. The rear wall is constructed from brass channel sections glued to the aluminium sheet which is bent at 90 degrees under the deck for fixing. The ‘pool’ is a shiny metal part from the interior of a hard disk. The rest is made from assorted timbers, the ‘rock’ being a modified offcut from a prior model.
Base: 77mm x 73mm. Model: 85mm x 78mm. Height: 107mm.
Initiated: April 2012. Constructed: 21 July 2012 – 2 October 2012.