The Roof Holding the Walls Together at Tate Modern
Kevin Flude Performance: Marie Lund: The Roof Holding the Walls Together
Performed by Kevin Flude at Tate Modern and at the Drawing Room
Marie Lund is a Danish artist involved with the Drawing Room gallery and with the symposiums 'Best Laid Plans' http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/symposia/22180.htm.
The art piece was a performance which originated with a vision of a Museum created by a Danish architect. Marie got a transcript of an explanation of the never built building and asked Kevin Flude to read the transcript using his skills as a tour guide to bring it to life.
This is part of the text
'Today, I could imagine the museum rougher. Placed there amongst the cliffs, wedged in. And when you move in, down there through the spaces, you see the rock wall, it has been excavated with explosives, and glass has been placed in front, so maybe some water could flow down.'
Marie wanted the reading to be naturalistic, and not either over-polished or over dramatic. I therefore only read the piece a couple of times before rehearsing it with the Bishopsgate Writers. The Rehearsal suggested I needed to understand the space to really describe it, and I needed to restrict hand movements to those that fitted in with the space. So I spent some time with the text drawing my idea of what the space looked like and I marked up the text to indicate places I should emphasis and pause. I practised a couple of times.
The performance in the Auditorium at Tate Modern seemed to go quite well.
The piece will be performed again on 2nd December at the Drawing Room
Marie described the piece in the 'Best Laid Plans' publication (2010, published by The Drawing Room and curated by Cylena Simonds as follows:
'The architect, Cort Ross Dinesen, is instructed to be as concrete and specific as possible in his description of the spaces, but he keeps coming back to more abstract terms, like 'a building cutting through the landscape', 'zigzag movements like lightning', 'as if you were looking at something from above, scaled down, so you can get an overview', He doesn't remember where the stairs lead or where the toilets are placed, and the abstract nature of the drawing seems to allow him to make changes to the design while recalling and describing it.
Kevin Flude calls himself an historical, archaeological and museum lecturer and tour guide. Normally he talks about buildings and environments that have been but are no more, but this time he is asked to present the description of a building that could have been. Whilst describing the spaces he points out directions, illustrates volumes and sometimes he has to put the manuscript from which he reads under his arms to get both hands free.
The Roof Holding the Walls Together 2010
Performed by Kevin Flude
Best Laid Plans symposium, Tate Modern, 12 November 2010'
The Drawing Room, contemporary drawing, London
Comments
For me the starting point of this, was the challenge of thinking through, creating and describing unbuilt spaces. The piece is my former professor at The School of Architecture in Copenhagen describing a a project of his. He was a practicing architect, but had never had anything realised and I was interesting in how a practice and projects like that exist, and how they are are archived and narrated.