IV. Immolation Triptych
2009
‘I wanted to express the impossibility of living in a world which is divided, torn apart.’
– Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time
Kreider + O’Leary, Immolation Triptych (2009): Concept drawing, station 2.
+ Part of the Gorchakov’s Wish series of works.
Our work with Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (1983) is ongoing. Each iteration of the project Gorchakov’s Wish is offering us some insight into the film itself as well as Tarkovksy’s theory and practice of the film image. Meanwhile, it is helping us to understand our own practice as artist collaborators. We have been engaging with performance, film, writing, architecture, drawing and, in doing so, introducing aspects of our particular experience and expertise into the works and into relation with one another. For this next iteration, generated specifically for our invitation to The Drawing Field at Camberwell College of Art on 21st April, we have devised a ‘drawing performance’ that incorporates many of these different aspects of our practice into a single event-space.
In making this piece, we looked beyond the penultimate scene of Nostalghia – our focus for the past three projects – in order to situate this scene within its wider filmic context; specifically, the scene just before and after that of Gorchakov carrying the lit candle across Santa Catarina pool. In the scene just before this, the character Domenico makes an impassioned speech in a public square at Capitoline Hill in Rome, ending with his self-immolation. In the scene just after – after Gorchakov’s fall, that is – we see the poet sitting in a field in his Russian homeland while a shot of a ruin in San Galgano is superimposed onto the scene. Snow falls. A voice laments.
Here are the three scenes together:
+ Scene 1 at Capitoline Hill (scene 1).
+ Scene 2 at Santa Catarina Pool (scene 2).
+ Scene 3 at San Galgano (scene 3).
Three ‘stations’ relating to the three scenes were situated around the space at The Drawing Field, with a number of props at each. Props include:
- station 1: chair, plumb line, fan, paper sheets
- station 2: bowl of water, charcoal pencil, text
- station 3: convex mirror, fake fur stole, blue india ink, calligraphy brush
A series of scripted actions were performed at and between the stations, leaving behind a trace that would become the drawing.
Kreider + O’Leary, Immolation Triptych (2009): Drawing performance, station 1.
Kreider + O’Leary, Immolation Triptych (2009): Drawing performance, station 2.
Kreider + O’Leary, Immolation Triptych (2009): Drawing performance, station 3.
The actions were performed by K. and documented by J. using a number of different means (photography, video, sound recording). Meanwhile, we invited students participating in the event to document the performance by drawing on a long, rolling scroll of paper.
Kreider + O’Leary (2009): Workshop at The Drawing Field, Camberwell College of Art.
Interestingly, we do not have documentation of this station and the actions performed therein – an ellipticality suggesting that more work needs to be done here. Indeed, we believe that Immolation Triptych somehow lays the foundation for what will become, ultimately, the final iteration of Gorchakov’s Wish, bringing all of the different strands of the project together in the form of an artists’ film and accompanying body of writing.
