Ionisation (2012)
Video projection to accompany Edgar Varèse’s Ionisation (1929-1931) for a performance by Thames Youth Orchestra at All Saint’s Church, Kingston Upon Thames. The video incorporated segments of chemical reactions filmed through a microscope and used found footage from Constructivist era films as masks and templates.
… but all shall be well (2011)
Video projection to accompany Thomas Adès’ ‘…but all shall be well’ (1993), for a performance by Thames Youth Orchestra at Cadogan Hall, London. Adès’ piece takes its title from Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, filtered through Eliot’s Burnt Norton; Adès calls it a ‘consolation’. I worked with Eliot’s text as well as Adès’ score when devising the projections. Images of water dominate the video: from droplets falling into a primordial mud accompanying the opening chimes, to a baptismal immersion, to a paradisaical field watered by rain. Adès’ music ‘keeps time’ in different ways – sometimes ticking metronomically; sometimes dilating time with glissandi reminiscent of the opening bars of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The projections explored this dilating dreamtime alongside Eliot’s sense of sacramental time – the way that eternity is always irrupting into time.
robert hawkins 