Cuerpo y paisaje
On 17 September 1979, Andrei Tarkovsky returned to Russia after filming a documentary called Voyage in Time (Tempo di viaggio). Shortly after his return, on 5 October, his mother, Maria Ivanovna, passed away. The filmmaker was also fully aware that his return would be short-lived and soon his native land would be inaccessible to him as his work abroad must continue. In a general sense, we could say that the experience of aura -because in both cases [Italy and Russia] these are eminently auratic images in the Benjaminian sense- in these polaroids balances between an approach to the (Freudian) uncanny in the former and a discourse on the "unique apparition of a distance" or the impending absence present in the Russian photos, which are largely a work of loss, a work of absence (as paradoxical as that might seem). Spaces –let’s say- where absence works. (1).
Andrei Tarkovsky, Russian film director, took about 340 pictures between 1979 and 1984 using a Polaroid camera given to him by his Italian friend and screenwriter Tonino Guerra. The photographs were taken in both Italy and Russia. (2) A book published in Spain “Fidelidad a una obsesión. La obra fotográfica de Andrei Tarkovsk” (3) shows 80 of the 340 polaroids, 38 taken in Russia and 42 in Italy.
My intention with these photographs is to try to comprehend the filmmaker through his photographic images and to identify traits of his cinematographic imagery through his vision of his family and domestic life. To somehow observe how he relates to the world around him and how this translates to his artistic expression. I refer only to 10 photographs taken by Tarkovsky in his native Russia, portraits and landscapes where, in the words of José Manuel Mouriño and Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego above, absence works. (4)
Divided into two groups, my selection consists of 10 Russian Polaroid photographs. The first group includes 5 landscape photos taken in Mjasnoe (5) which, if I am not mistaken, is located in the Myasnikovsky District of Rostov Oblast, northwest of the Sea of Azov, about thirty kilometres inland. It is a flat and largely agricultural land, not far from the Ukrainian border. The images include a small boat moored to a simple wooden pier, a German shepherd, some rough wooden fences, an electric pole and a traditional Russian country house or dacha.
In all the prints, the image appears slightly blurred or under-exposed, often with some of the main elements photographed contre-jour. The atmosphere is heavy as if Mother Earth had sighed deeply over it. Nature appears to have come to life but is struggling to survive and remain there. The dog, often present in Tarkovsky’s photographs and in some films, seems to detect this stifling atmosphere with its highly-tuned animal senses. The vaporous swamp water is reminiscent of degenerative states, of decay, while at the same time evoking its vitality. The fog permeates the image, invading it, while the landscape retreats.
The second group includes 5 family portraits taken in Moscow in early August 1980 and on 2 May 1981.(6) They include photos of his closest relatives: his wife Larissa Tarkovkaja, their son Andrej A. Tarkovkij, Larissa's mother Anna Egorkina, and Tarkovsky himself looking at the camera in a gesture of affection with Larissa. As well as the people in the photos, there are also flowers, especially roses, potted plants, fruit, ornate pottery, dresses or wall-paper with floral patterns or the odd piece of old furniture.
Though merely incidental or contingent, these objects come to occupy a central position in the reading I propose. They all allude directly or indirectly to nature in such a way that the photographs taken in Moscow remind us of Mjasnoe, the foggy landscapes around the Azov coast. The patterns, ceramic dishes with floral motifs, plants, fruits and roses of various shades seem to belong to the landscape, just as the landscape evokes human traits and actions. In short, the Tarkovskys have become the landscape while the landscape has been humanised. (7)
City and Landscape
An elongated balcony. Can a building of such colossal dimensions be defined thus? Perhaps so, in the case of the residence hall designed by Eduard Bru at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in Cerdanyola del Vallès. Having already undertaken several constructions for UAB, Eduard Bru won the bid to design the new student residence in 2004. It is no surprise that Bru has repeatedly been commissioned to work in this area as his designs often emerge following complex negotiations with the fluctuating, often abrupt, topography of this Vallès Occidental region in Catalonia.
Again, for the residence, the topography was decisive in the design of the project, which rests on the slope of a small elongated facing-west promontory. The existing constructions include another residence with two extended arms forming a closed V shape, and a C-shaped hotel, open to the south, at the eastern edge of the hill. Both the residence and hotel were constructed from large precast concrete slabs, the former in shades of pale pink and the later in grey.
The long pale pink residence and its culmination -the hotel- left little room for new constructions, as between them they occupy the top relatively-flat part of the hill. Thus, the site for the new residence is anchored on the eastern side, facing the hotel, extending down the southern side towards a valley of thick humid vegetation. Gradually descending, the conifers give way to a thick and impassable vegetation through which flows a small stream. In total, a sharp drop of about 30 or 40 meters. The entire hillside is bathed in sunlight and the views are magnificent: the back of Barcelona, Collserola Park, silhouetted by Tibidabo, the Telecommunication Tower and other characteristic features forming the backdrop to the hustle and bustle of Barcelona city.
Eduard Bru opted for an urban facade for the residence. Following the lines of the grey C-shaped hotel, the architect responded with another C in the opposite direction, doubling the public space of the plaza, closing the southern part. Nonetheless, with the height of the new residence, the hotel is still head over it and can continue to enjoy the scenery of the Collserola hills.
Having established its point of departure, the building sprawls crab-like down the slope, forming a crescent open to the south. From the level of the new square, the building descends 7 floors. Eduard Bru decided to construct his building using precast concrete slabs like those used in the existing residence hall and hotel. The typology selected for the 243 apartments is simple, a corridor with apartments on both sides. Another example of the revival of typologies. Like the Gaüses construction, there is little ambition towards typological innovation.
Nonetheless, the apartments do differ depending on how they relate to the surrounding landscape. The colour of the curtains and the coloured part of the building mimes that of the external surroundings. In the more urban section, facing the square, the apartments are white. In the part facing the existing pale pink student residence, the new apartments are of the same tone. And in the southern facade, looking towards the forest and landscape of Collserola, green invades the apartments. The typology however remains unchanged.
The contortions imposed on the building to adapt to the topography and its crescent shape lead to the creation of unique places. The inflections respond in an organic fashion to its contact with the garden. Stairs, ramps, terraces and balconies appear as excrescences of a streamlined body, as specific points that belie the rigidity of the typology and allow a pleasant and humane contact with the garden.
Thus we encounter two worlds, the more urban on the upper part in contact with two other buildings, and the southern side looking towards the landscape. At the level of the square, Eduard Bru perforates the building creating an extended balcony that connects the two landscapes. Within this new frame, nature is constructed and becomes the landscape. The balcony connects the two worlds, anchoring this great construction in place forevermore.
Like the house in Gaüses, the university residence remains locked in the tension between its physical presence and its gradual assimilation into the landscape. To a certain degree, the residence also loses its physicality in the public square as it becomes a frame to view the landscape through its immense balcony. This unique structure of thick inclining wood-panelled pillars mirrors the tree trunks of the forest lying behind it, while the actual forest is converted into a “landscape painting” framed by the balcony.
Nature and Landscape
The eye is not only not innocent, it is fully historical, contingent and culturally specific. (8)
In 2001, the Australian artist, Rosemary Laing (9) took a series of photographs titled Groundspeed. A large part of her work explores the notion of landscape, and in a general sense, her work deals with the colonial condition of the Australian continent. Exploring the landscape, as constructed cultural imagery, allows Laing to produce plastic formulations in the realm of post-colonial thinking. Furthermore, she generally steers clear of digital manipulation producing an auratic richness in her images by virtue of their uniqueness, their temporal singularity and their spatial specificity.
The Groundspeed series is a beautiful example of her work, particularly the two sub-groups called Groundspeed (Red Piazza) and Groundspeed (Rose Petal), shot in 2001 in the Morton National Park, New South Wales, Australia. Laing and her assistants first covered the forest floor with rolls of carpet underlay. Then, they joined the rolls and cut out spaces for the trees and shrubs. This underlay served to minimise the impact of the top layer on the natural soil. Next they laid a floral carpet over the entire space, with Red Piazza and Rose Petal being the names of the carpet patterns.
In the photographs, the joints between the rolls of carpet are scarcely visible, in an effort to make them disappear in the photograph, giving the appearance of a larger continuous surface. In the final stage of completion of the work, Laing and her team scattered leaves randomly on the carpet to appear as if they were swirling in wind.
Contemplating the photographs also appears to involve various phases. The first glimpse is somewhat disconcerting as only an image of a forest is viewed. Then, almost instantly, the viewer is left perplexed and realises that something is amiss. A second more inquisitive glance unveils the serial repetition of the floral pattern on the forest floor. Then, there is no option but to recognise and acknowledge its artificial nature: the forest floor has been carpeted! This discovery drags the photographic image into urban landscapes of hotel lobbies, museums or other institutional buildings.
Australian aboriginal culture was nomadic. Through this nomadic movement across the territory, the landscape was sung in what are known as songlines or “Footprints of the Ancestors” to the Aboriginals. The songlines constructed the landscape, gaining its full mythological dimension. In the Groundspeed series, the image of the forest invokes hotel lobbies or institutional buildings, destroying the Aboriginal mythology and drawing Laing into a post-colonial discourse.
In the photographs in the Groundspeed series what appears like one thing turns out to be something else. Thus, if the eye is not innocent, as explains Abigail Solomon-Godeau in the quote introducing this section, (10) then “it is fully historical, contingent and specific”.
One may, if so inclined, when contemplating these Groundspeed photographs, observe oneself and ones relationship with the landscape. The images reveal, like Dorian Grey’s picture, that which we perhaps do not wish to see. Looming over Laing’s photographs is the unremitting interference between human activity and nature. Having appropriated for photography the cultural framework of the traditional pictorial practice of landscape painting, Laing explores the post-colonial condition in the Australian context.
Reasonable Resemblances
This text seeks to explore how different enclosed compartments function as identical statements, upon final reading, as somewhat desperate attempts to find our place in the world. These are examples of a struggle to establish order, while at the same time unmasking the relinquishments: creative works where dissolution and life instincts are combined in temporary pacts, in a state of unresolved tension, at least for some time.
Francesca Woodman diffuses the female body in space so that they become one. Anna and Eugeni Bach dematerialise the physical presence of the small house in Gaüses by establishing a complex interplay of shadows and virtual lines. The Tarkovsky family in Moscow displays the imagery of the Russian countryside to remember it forever. Eduard Bru erected a long balcony connecting two different worlds and transforming the forest into a framed painting. Finally, Laing translates the image of the forest to the colonial imagery. In all, these artistic expressions involve a series of complex assimilations in which mimesis plays an essential role.
The body and how it relates to places, the empathy needed to be in the world, or the transformation of nature to landscape are all painful, difficult, emotional and affective assimilations. Living, in effect.
English translation.- Angela Frawley.
NOTES.-
(1) José Manuel Mouriño and Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego commenting on the Polaroids taken by Andrei Tarkovsky in Italy and Russia between 1979 and 1984. In an article “Formas dibujadas de la ausencia” [Drawings of absence] from the book Fidelidad a una obsesión. La obra fotográfica de Andrei Tarkovski, [Allegience to an obsession. The photographic work of Andrei Tarkovsky] Larva collection, Fundación Luis Seoane, Maia Ediciones, Madrid, 2009, p. 26.
(2) Mjasnoe and Moscow when in Russia; and Otricoli, Bagno Vignoni, Pienza, Civitavecchia, Monterano, Anagni, San Gregorio, Taormina and Cittá Ducale when in Italy, the country to which Tarkovsky exiled after filming Nostalgia in 1983. The photographs include images of his wife Larissa Tarkovkaja, their son Andrej A. Tarkovskij, Larissa’s mother Anna Egorkina, Tonino Guerra and the actor Anatoli Solonitsyn as well as many landscape shots.
(3) José Manuel Mouriño and Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego (Ed.), Fidelidad a una obsesión. La obra fotográfica de Andrei Tarkovski, colección Larva, Fundación Luis Seoane, Maia Ediciones, Madrid, 2009. The texts in the book are from a series of conferences held in Casa das Campás (Vice-Chancellor Office of the Pontevedra Campus, University of Vigo) and in Centro Gallego Arte de la Imagen (CGAI) during the months of May and June 2008 under the title Andrei Tarkovski, fidelidad a una obsesión [Allegiance to an obsession].
(4) Seenote 1 (FIRST PART).
(5) The first group include photographs 01, 02, 04, 06 and 07 from Mouriño and Ruiz de Samaniego’s book.
(6) The second group consists of photographs 22, 35, 36, 37 and 38 from the book by Mouriño and Ruiz de Samaniego.
(7) On his relationship with his actors, Tarkovsky affirmed that “A film actor must exist for the camera with authenticity, with immediacy, in the state defined by the dramatic circumstances for each of the sequences in the film. His/her main function is to live exact situations, determined by the uniqueness and unrepeatability of that precise moment, and not the connection with the rest of his/her life, which is for the Director to worry about”. For mimesis, it is precisely these exact, unique and unrepeatable situations that are essential. The “here and now” as with Tarkovsky’s actors.
Statements by Andrei Tarkovski compiled in publication on his life and work by Rafael Llano called Andréi Tarkovski. Vida y obra, Filmoteca de la Generalitat Valenciana, Colección Documentos, nº 11, Valencia, 2003, p. 545. Quoted in article by María Peña, “La pausa cinematográfica. Sobre la dirección de actores en el cine de Andrei Tarkovski”, in book by José Manuel Mouriño and Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego (Ed.), Fidelidad a una obsesión. La obra fotográfica de Andrei Tarkovski, colección Larva, Fundación Luis Seoane, Maia Ediciones, Madrid, 2009, p. 108.
(8) Abigail Solomon-Godeau, in “The Unquiet Landscapes of Rosemary Laing”, on eponymous catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition “The Unquiet Landscapes of Rosemary Laing” in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, between 23 March and 5 June 2005, curated by Vivienne Webb, p. 40.
(9) Rosemary Laing, an Australian artist, born in Brisbane in 1959 and currently lives and works in Sydney.
(10) See note 7.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.-
Image 1-5.- Andrei Tarkovski, Mjasnoe, September 26th, 1981. (2) September 1980. (3) September 26th 1981 (4) October 2nd 1981 (5) September 26 1980.
Image 6-10.- Andrei Tarkovski, (6) Moscow, August 3rd 1980. (7) Larissa Tarkovkaja. Moscú, August 4th, 1980. (8) Andrei Tarkovskij y Larissa Tarkovkaja. Moscow, August 3rd 1980. (9) Andrei Tarkovskij and Larissa Tarkovkaja. Moscow, August 3rd 1980. (10) Anna Egorkina, mother of Larissa, Moscow, May 2nd, 1981.
From the book José Manuel Mouriño y Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego (Ed.), Fidelidad a una obsesión. La obra fotográfica de Andrei Tarkovski, colección Larva, Fundación Luis Seoane, Maia Ediciones, Madrid, 2009.
Image 11-15.- Eduard Bru (Bru-Lacomba-Setoain), (11) site Residencia Universitaria en Cerdanyola del Vallès, Barcelona. (12) Floor plans. (13-14) Photographs (Jordi Bernadó) (15) Photograph (Enric Llorach)
Images by Eduard Bru (Bru-Lacomba-Setoain)
Image 16-19.- Rosemary Laing, Groundspeed (Red Piazza) (16) #3 2001. (17)#5 2001. (18)#16 2001. (19) #15 2001.
From the book Abigail Solomon-Godeau, en The Unquiet Landscapes of Rosemary Laing, catalog of the exhibition held in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sidney, from March 23th to June 5th 2005, curator by Vivienne Webb.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.-
José Manuel Mouriño y Alberto Ruiz de Samaniego (Ed.), Fidelidad a una obsesión. La obra fotográfica de Andrei Tarkovski, colección Larva, Fundación Luis Seoane, Maia Ediciones, Madrid, 2009.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau, The Unquiet Landscapes of Rosemary Laing, on eponymous catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition “The Unquiet Landscapes of Rosemary Laing” in the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, between 23 March and 5 June 2005, curated by Vivienne Webb.
