Open by Matthew Stanners

Something a little different for you with this Pedestal entry. Matthew Stanners, a Manchester based projection artist will be exhibiting his installation, Open later this month please read on and pop down to see it.

Open is the product of research experimenting with notions of light and motion and the forms of projection and sculpture as a means of expressing and projecting fragments of experience from our daily lives. Open has a unique interface that allows these fragments to be relived by others and breathe life again in a new space.

The sculpture itself is the focal point of the work. Not only does it disperse light around the space, but it also reflects the space and the audience that are being immersed in the light as well. The sculpture is an active artifice of the installation, taking the action of giving light as its own, whilst all the while reflecting the audience at the centre of everything. The work illustrates a desire to share experience through a phenomenological understanding of one another using Open as an interface to communicate and so re-experience moments in a controlled and shared space.

Open deals with film in its projected form by placing more emphasis on the light that is cast than the imagery itself. By placing the sculpture at the heart of the visual experience the audience’s attention is drawn away from the visual content and towards the manner in which it interacts with the sculpture. While traditional cinema is essentially escapist, Open is both a figuratively and literally reflective experience in that the audience is necessarily at the heart of it. The experience itself is a spectacle that draws audience, sculpture and space into one uniformed entity. Whilst Open creates an aesthetically intriguing and beautiful spectacle, it also emphasis a key fact that film still has many more avenues to be explored and so therefore experienced. Click here to see a short video preview of the installation.

This installation will be accessible to the public during the BlankExpression exhibition between the 27th of January and the 14th of February. If your interested in seeing please check the link and head down to BlankSpace.

If you have any further questions regarding this project, Matthew can be contacted on:

m.d.stanners@gmail.com

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

“Even if you were destined to live three thousand years, or ten times that long, nevertheless remember that no one loses any life other than the one he lives, or lives any life other than the one he loses. It follows that the longest and the shortest lives are brought to the same state. The present moment is equal for all; so what is passing is equal also; the loss therefore turns out to be the merest fragment of time. No one can lose either the past or the future- how can anyone be deprived of what he does not possess?”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 2.14

I struggle to walk and eat at the same time and yet Marcus Aurelius was not only a Roman Emperor but a remarkable philosopher as well. I came across Meditations some years ago now and it is yet to find its way into my bookshelf, instead it is kept in my beside drawer, the traditional place for your holy book of choice.

Consisting of twelve notebooks it written to keep the powerful Emperor’s feet on the ground (if only Nero had had the impetus to write down his thoughts and feelings), it provides a fascinating insight into a mind ruling The Roman Empire whilst thinking through the complexities of the human condition.

The Notebooks reveal a man of great humility and read more like the wise words of a Grandparent than a tomb of jargon heavy metaphysics. With a strong Epicurean influence it stresses the importance of attaining a happy, tranquil life through a freedom from fear.

In the commodified world of modern capitalism we can become disorientated by the proliferation of meaninglessness, ‘an air-conditioned nightmare, anodyne and unadventurous, a world devoid of real sensuality’[1]. Meditations reawakens the senses, its very existence demonstrating how much can be achieved and its content is a supersonic catalyst for thought.

This collection of notebooks has had an enduring effect on my understanding and experience of our dauntingly finite world; I would like to take this opportunity to put Meditations on a pedestal.

C.Godet Thomas

www.charliegodetthomas.com

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[1] Andy Merrifield, ‘Aesthete of Subversion’ in Guy Debord (London 2005), p. 95