Sunday 14 November 2021

Sculpture & Poetry

I have written a proposal for a conference organised
by Henry Moore Institute in February, Sculpture &
Poetry
. My paper title is Rodin, Rilke and Animated
Loops
. This is exploring motion and forms in poetry, in
sculpture and in motion graphics. I am using The
Rodin Books
[1903–07] (1986) written by Rainer Maria
Rilke as my starting point. In these, Rilke describes
movement in Rodin’s art. There are some beautiful
and vivid descriptions of a piece of motion returning to
itself, returning to marble. I am taking this idea and
applying it to animated loops, boils in motion
graphics and giving examples from Recipes for Baking
Bread
. In Rilke’s writing he compares this to
ancient cities, whose walls contain all public life
(Rilke, 1986, pp. 14–15). Bakhtin’s writings have an
almost identical description and I am comparing
these two forms. I am also including Bakhtin’s ideas
of chronotopes, uses of time and space taken from
Einstein’s ideas of relativity. Bakhtin applies
these to novels. I have a brilliant piece of analysis
by Christopher Bollas in Meaning and Melancholia
(2018). This is Bollas giving descriptions on work by
Albert Camus, The Outsider (2000). This is a
vivid articulation of a street scene in Camus’ novel
and is an example of a chronotope in action. I want to
compare this street scene to street scenes in
Recipes for Baking Bread. I include these in my
films to give references to what happened after
Holodomor. People travelled to cities to find food,
only to die from starvation when they arrived.
There are descriptions in Grossman’s novels,
Everything Flows (2011) of eerie and quiet queues in
streets where hungry peasants bought bread. Many of
these people were too hungry to eat, or survive.
Jerry Berman’s letters have similar examples of street
scenes. Enormous queues and an eerie, uncanny feeling.
    This conference is a brilliant opportunity to explore themes
of my paper and present my finished works. It takes
place in February 2022.



Drawings of Books: Sculpture and Poetry, 2021. Source: Author.

Recipes for Baking Bread: Street Scenes, 2021. Source:
Author.


Photos of queues outside a Torgsin store, near
Kharkiv, early 1930s. Photograph by Alexander
Wienerberger. Source: Holodomor Museum, n.d.




Drawings of Books: Everything Flows, 2021. Source: Author.



Jerry Berman’s Letters: digitisation, 2021. Source: Author.

References:

Bakhtin, M. M. [1981] (2003) The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Translated from the Russian by M. Holquist and C. Emerson. In: Morris, P. ed. The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev and Voloshinov. Reprinted ed. London: Edward Arnold, pp. 182-187.

Bollas, C. (2018) Meaning and Melancholia. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Camus, A. (2000) The Outsider. Translated from the French by J. Laredo. Reprinted ed. London: Penguin Books.

Grossman, V. [1989] (2011) Everything
Flows
. Translated from the Russian by R. Chandler
and E. Chandler with A. Aslanyan. London: Vintage.

Holodomor Museum (n.d.) Holodomor in Kharkiv Region. Photo by Alexander Wienerberger [Online]. Kyiv: Holodomor Museum. Available from: <https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/archive/holodomor-in-kharkiv-region-photo-by-alexander-wienerberger/> [Accessed 14 November 2021].

Rilke, R. M. [1903–07] (1986) The Rodin-Book: First Part. In: Rodin and Other Prose Pieces. Translated from the German by G. C. Houston. London: Quartet Encounters, pp. 1–43.