In a Realm of Others
is a multimedia installation of drawing, video
and slide projections. The centrepiece of the installation is a long passageway connected to a
series of three circular chambers made from translucent glassine paper. Enveloping
the structure is a continuous green curtain of glassine, covered with
hand-painted treetops. At one end is a narrow opening leading to a passage
whose curtain walls gently billow around you as you advance. At the end of the
passage are the inner chambers – round curtain walls of white glassine rising
to the ceiling. These walls are animated by graphic images of twisted and
disfigured ghouls and demons – horrible, nightmarish figures surrounding and
hovering threateningly above images of vulnerable and frightened children.
Located
in the innermost structure of the installation is a video monitor showing a
succession of children attempting to make scary faces and threatening noises. The
video of children exploring their ideas of monsters is paralleled by a second
video, outside the glassine structure, of adults recounting their personal
ghost stories. The children in the video puff themselves up to become what they
imagine to be frightening and monstrous. They’re cute in their play acting, and
it seems they needed little prompting to mug and growl for the camera.
Being
inside the enveloping structure of In a
Realm of Others is
an extraordinary experience. The walls transmit a diffused coloured light, and
they move as you move, like a sympathetic living organism. The ink drawings of
monsters are unsettling and disturbing – ghostlike, when seen through a second
layer of the translucent glassine. Passing out of the inner sanctum you notice
overhead a violet-mirrored image of tree tops – a sort of moving Rorschach blot
– projected on a hanging disk. It is dizzying, disorientating and exciting – an
intriguing and complex punctuation to a remarkable journey. I feel sad that it
is over, sad to be leaving this space.
*
* *
“If
I die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take.” How strange it is to
remember these words today, words I at one time recited before every bedtime. Sleeping
alone in the dark would seem to be frightening enough for any child without
introducing the idea of sudden death. The prayer, I now realize, was a parent’s
small plea for mercy, pitched from the tiny voice of a child. Walking through
the installation I
find myself thinking about childhood nighttime fears, bedtime stories and
prayers. Here between these satiny sheets I am reminded of the painful
anxieties and candied dreams of my childhood.
Fear
of abandonment, I think, may be one of the most profound traumas of childhood. Looking
back, I know that it was a critical aspect of my childhood psychological
development. It is easy to see how this anxiety at an early age can have
profound effect on the development of character. Most people can remember the
childhood anxiety of being temporarily separated from a parent in a crowed
place, or being the last child to be picked up at school. For a child, the
possibility of abandonment is a reality of every waking moment – living in a
world that is largely mysterious, and dependent on adults for every need,
monsters and demons have the potential to lurk in every closet and under every
bed. Abandonment, loneliness and isolation, of course, are only places where
fear begins. It is the imagination of what happens next, which is the stuff of
dreams, nightmares, fairy tales and art.
Some
parents tell their children fairy tales before bedtime. Stories such as the
Grimms’ fairy tales “Hansel and Gretel” and “Little Red Riding Hood” or the
Taiwanese fairy tale “Tiger Grand Aunt,” explore childhood night fears. Passage
through a dark, malevolent forest is a common metaphor in these fables. Adults
in these fables are ambiguous figures – alternatively protectors and predators,
nurturing parents and savage beasts. Wolves and tigers impersonate grandmothers
and grand aunts. Mothers, and surrogate mothers in particular, play important
roles, as symbols of the anxiety of separation and abandonment. Fundamental to
the stories is the young protagonist’s success at tricking the demon; killing
it and managing to successfully escape its clutches. The endings are always
more or less happy.
The
fairy tales that were told to me as a child, or the prayers I recited at
bedtime did little to either stimulate or allay my fears of the night. A bigger
factor in my falling asleep was more likely the comfort provided by a seam of
light filtering through a bedroom door left slightly ajar. That light was my
link to the world of the living – to the gentle clink and clatter of dishes
being washed, to muted adult voices and to the resonant hum of the television
still on in the living room.
*
* *
I’m
on the outside now, standing in the soft green glow of the glassine. Scanning
the monumental image of treetops, I can almost feel them swaying and groaning
in the wind. Here outside, this luminous paper giant feels strange and
threatening. I turn around and go back, to feel again the thrill of moving
through the maternal folds of the passageway, of the walls of light that flow
magically around me. I am drawn again to the hearth-like inner sanctum, which,
in changing from green to white, this time seems hotter and angrier.
In A Realm of Others
seems to be an inversion. Instead of the passage
leading you into darkness, like the process of falling asleep, or walking into
a dense forest, going from the outside to the innermost sanctum, you pass into light. But it is not a
metaphorical enlightenment to which we are drawn, rather it is as if travelling
to the molten core of the earth, to the white-hot source of passion, and
anxiety, to the reptilian brain of this strange creature. These kids and their
monster faces and noises only teach us that we are born of fear, and that at
the centre of our personality is insecurity and doubt and the trauma of
separation. And as we turn to leave that bright white place and distance
ourselves from the primal scream, as we talk to our therapists and begin to
take control of our inner child, it is not a light we step into, rather a soft
and gentle darkness.
Gordon
Hatt, 2005
