Xavier Garcia Bardon, a film curator from Brussels, has written a book chapter all about Guy Sherwin’s Man with Mirror.

Excitingly (for us), his essay also includes a consideration of Louise Curham and Lucas Ihlein (Teaching and Learning Cinema)’s re-enactment/extension of Sherwin’s piece, entitled(Wo)Man with Mirror, which was first performed in 2009.

Xavier’s chapter is in the following book:

Philippe DUBOIS, Frédéric MONVOISIN, Elena BISERNA (ed.), Extended Cinema. Le cinéma gagne du terrain, Campanotto Editore, Pasian di Prato, 2010. ISBN: 88-456-1171-1

With Xavier’s permission, we’ve posted a link to the pdf of his chapter here.

It’s in French. If anyone can do a translation for us, we’d be eternally grateful.

Chronology

10.35 am Lucas collects Louise from Central.
10.45 am arrive Petersham.

Discussed contribution of new iteration given Guy is still performing this work – discussed the value of ’slips’ in our iteration, and the significance of transmission of the work to a new generation, both contributions we hope we are making.

There was lengthy discussion about integrity in re-enactment, informing audiences where work knowingly departs from the form and/or intention of the original. Also a long discussion about William Raban’s Diagonal, recently shown in Canberra by our Brisbane colleagues who brought Guy out last year, Otherfilm. Noteworthy that this film was made as a single film that runs concurrently through 3 projectors, ie one film, laced to run through 3 projectors one after the other.

Reviewed Lynn’s YouTube documentation of a London performance of Guy’s along with our ‘gash’ telecine (ie very rough video tape of projected film) of Guy’s 1976 super 8 that we made in Brisbane last Aug. We checked out the timings of the three cycles and the position of the roll changes. We double checked our understanding of how the actions unfold. We studied the actions that occur around the roll changes.

12.30 pm
We loaded the camera, measured focus, set tripod, set sun/shade/dapple position on the mirror, set the framing. We selected to wear singlets as the tension in Guy’s body in performing with the mirror is noteworthy. For me, I pondered the implications of the pregnant body by June when this work is shown.

1pm ate minestrone with rocket salad from Petersham garden

Framed up Lucas so we might detect a neighbour in the background. Discussion of where Louise would be visible when the mirror side faced out.

Discussion of the role of the second person turning the camera on and off – not sure if Guy had a helper, we think we detect a second person in the 1976 footage.

We checked the duration of an S8 reel at 18FPS. We enlisted a timer to help with the choreography – a word I really understand now as the placement of action in time.

We filmed Lucas, a most exciting development. Questions about whether the sun moved too far during the 9 mins as by the end the dapple was quite subtle and his face may be darker than we’d like. The dapple of the clothes line and the mulberry leaves was very beautiful and such a sharp autumnal Sydney day.

c. 2 pm
After filming Lucas, we went up to the glazier to get my mirror cut down. We had a long chat with the glazier, who explained the difference between a glazier and a glass cutter, separate trades in the UK but rolled up here in Australia.

We then filmed me. By the third roll I found the mirror very heavy – felt like I had no real control over it, mostly desperation at the weight and lack of inspiration as to what to discover with it given the battle to hold it.

4 pm
We concluded with discussions about staging the work.
- immovable requirement seems to be clear floor space
- discussed possibility of four performance pairs – Louise, mother of Louise, Lucas, father of Lucas
- requirement to carry through commitment to construction of this performance as the work we are exhibiting.

5.18 train Petersham to Central

To view these larger visit them on Flickr, images titled TLC 03 and TLC 04.

To view these larger go to Flickr, see TLC 01 and TLC 02.

General discussion of mirrors and works using mirrors followed. Discussion covered Learning from Seedbed, a work that gave the audience a physical experience of actually being under a version of the platform.

Ideas that came up:
- Give the audience the experience of actually re-enacting the work. Film the source footage with a group of people. Present the footage on long looped S8s in the gallery or present the footage on video. have mirrors there for the audience to use to enact the work for themselves and their companions in the gallery. Give them the ability to have visual ‘foldback’ of what they do when they re-enact.
- Invite participants to work with a parent or a child to make enactments. Explore if this adds the generational reveal we observed in Guy’s Brisbane performance.
- As my mother was here getting ready to take the plane back to New Zealand, we worked with her to actually make a source footage version that I hope to try a performance with.
- After working with Val, we realise that we need to work with one pair at a time so that we can teach the work in the same way that Guy so generously passed it on.

Conversation with Valerie
Louise took the train up from Canberra with her mother Valerie this morning. On the train, discussion about re-enacting Man With a Mirror took place.

Notes from the train conversation with Valerie:
She described our project as translating a watching experience into a doing experience. She drew in the Degas exhibition she saw in Canberra on Monday. She described Degas’ process of moving from copying the reality of others to depicting his own reality but keeping a mimetic approach. She commented that our process was in a sense the reverse – we start with the evidence of the original work and we try to build up a picture of the work but we’re also looking particularities that crop up because of where, when and who we are and we’re looking to accentuate these. I’m not quite sure how this is the reverse of Degas now, but at the time, it seemed obvious.

Val and I also had a discussion about the working method Lucas and I have used with these re-enactments, particularly preparation – that in the past we’ve looked at limitations as a resource, taking the approach of working with what we have in terms of (scarce) time, money and information.  With Man With a Mirror, we have a great deal of information from Guy. The exhibition means we have some financial resources and therefore time. While we haven’t set out with the intention of doing things differently, it’s my observation that these resources mean we’re increasing our attentiveness to each step in the process which seems to have the effect of making it freer.