Craneway Event

The CSAV – Artists Research Laboratory celebrates its 20th edition with an exhibition of the most important living British artists, Tacita Dean, at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti, in Como.

Although she also makes drawings, photographs and sound installations, Tacita Dean is best known for her films, which often use fixed frames and ambient sound, and therefore have a slow and contemplative pace.

She has portrayed artists at end of their lives and rare optical phenomena, like the “green ray” visible at sunset, yet her real subject matter is the passing of time and the touching beauty of what time erases. This is one of the reasons why the artist remains faithful to photochemical film, a medium where – as opposed to digital – the image is imprinted directly and irreversibly into the support, which, when projected, also gets exposed to the ravages of time.

Tacita Dean, <i>Craneway Event</i>, 2009. Film still. Courtesy the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris — Tacita Dean, *Craneway Event*, 2009. Film still. Courtesy the artist, Frith Street Gallery, London and Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris

Dean has dedicated two of her works to Merce Cunningham (1919–2009), one of the most important dancers and choreographers of the 20th century. The first is a series of six short films from 2008, where the choreographer performs to John Cage's famous 4'33” in three movements. The second work – presented here for the first time in Italy – is Craneway Event, finished in the year Cunningham died. In the film – Dean's longest and one of her masterpieces – Cunningham, by now in a wheelchair, rehearses over three days with his company in a former factory overlooking San Francisco Bay. They are practising for an “event”, which is how Cunningham named dance projects made for non-theatrical spaces, created by combining sequences from his past work.

“When Merce died on July 26th this year, I had just begun editing Craneway Event. It immediately left me with an absence, which I filled initially by watching recordings of Merce dancing in his youth or chatting in interviews. When I returned to the film, I realised that I was in the unique position of still being able to work with him and to create something new, not only about him, but also with him. Although I lost the pleasure of imagining him watching the film, I gained a different sort of Muse. Merce's joy in the process was steadfastly there and his enthusiasm seemed to have a directional force. I began to feel that Merce had set up the components that make up the film – the building, the dancers, the light, the ships and the birds, because he knew they would not fail him in absentia.

We filmed in what was once the craneway pavilion in a former Ford assembly plant in Richmond, California. Albert Kahn designed the factory with continuous glass to maximise the use of daylight so the shifts in themovement of the sun transformed the interior hourly. Merce loved thebuilding with its views acrossthe water to the Bay Bridge and San Francisco. Working boats and tankers passed in and out of the dockbehind, while pelicans swooped past mimicking the dance's motion. A pigeon wandered the space. Merce directed and positioned the dancers, going from stage to stage, tuning their movements. Watching him construct the event over three stages stretched out in that enormous space was like watching an abstract painter balance a painting, detail was everything. As I edited the film, I heard him laughing and singing to himself, and taking such pleasure in it all, asking me in his particularly resonant speaking voice, “Did you get that boat?” “Did you film that bird?” “Did you see the light behind the dancer?”

Editing someone is intimate: you study them closely, sync to the rustle of their clothing or the movement of their lips, and watch them over and over again, hour upon hour. I spent this close time with Merce and got to know him and understood more about his process and his pictorial treatment of dance. He found his direction early and never equivocated, yet he continued to find newness even from within his own originality and was never complacent, and nor did he tire. He remained fresh, open and elastic to its possibilities, and had rare natural grace and immeasurable charm.

I was shocked to learn that Merce had died; he always appeared the trooper, in fine form and good spirit, hiding his frailty well. His death is a rupture; the end of something irretrievable – a last contact with the American avant-garde, and the generation who stretched back to touch Dada and Surrealism, and who found their form through process, experimentation and risk, and in the mutual respect they enjoyed in the relationships they made. Merce asked me to work with him on Craneway Event. It was, and is, an immense privilege and responsibility, which would have been daunting, were it not for the fact that he was such good company in the cutting room, and that I felt trusted by him.”

(Excerpt from “Film Works with Merce Cunningham” in AAVV, Tacita Dean, Seven Books Grey, Steidl, Göttingen, 2011)

From July 10 until September 28, 2014
Preview on July 9, h 19.30
Tacita Dean
Craneway Event
Spazio Culturale Antonio Ratti
Largo Spallino 1, Como

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Craneway Event

The CSAV – Artists Research Laboratory celebrates its 20th edition with an exhibition of the most important living British artists, Tacita Dean, at the Fondazione Antonio Ratti, in Como.

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