2000 MURPHY Sculpture + video installaton DUBLIN CASTLE
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Stills from video-installation Murphy Work in Progress
VIDEO IMAGES - SEQUENCES
1) Celia in different actions: to walk in the suburbs to play with a kite in a park walking on stairs opening a door reading Murphy (the novel) on a bench to crash mountains of bottles 2) new buildings in Inchicore 3) a rocking chair rocking empty with a male figure from the back with Celia from the front 4) the sculpture of Murphy 5) the telephone ringing 6) the tap leaking 7) kids (travellers) playing and singing 8) the crow on a fence 9) the chess board SOUND TRACK 1) Sunday Morning - Velvet underground 2) Text of Murphy, by S.Beckett 3) The Murder Mystery - Velvet Underground 4) Bottles crashing 5) heart beating 6) talking about the novel and the author |
MURPHY My work on Murphy is a very personal experience belongs to the research I followed since when I discovered and studied Beckett twenty years ago, giving also few years later a thesis to the College of art in Rome focused on the Samuel Beckett work. This installation is dedicated to someone who, long time ago, argued with me about Samuel Beckett, choosing, instead of Beckett's concepts, his characters personalities as life style. (a litterary matter...). Like the character (also autobiographic), this man died young carelessly. He died as many young fellows die in the western societies: lingering on. The new Ireland, with its Celtic Tiger (and its Beer/Bear cubs?), knows a lot about these young characters, who rock up and down tiding themselves up on their armed chairs. They wait naked for the world to run around. Defused to the promises of a fast development, are totally tied-up in their real bounds which are not often so “progressive” as their countries projections. Selected and rejected in their same western world they are Beckettian losers. The song I’ve chosen is a tribute to Handy Warhol’s Velvet Underground group, symbol at their time, but also later, in the west, of the “Lingering on” generations and of their Pop Art, art of the left-overs. The location in Dublin Castle, in front of the main entrance, (on a corner), is my personal homage to the town: With the same feeling of a cat, when he brings you the corpse of a lizard that he chased and killed, and he delivers it over your bed. He would say: “That’s my best present for you”. Murphy belongs to Ireland and the first motivation of my moving in Ireland was to achieve it here. NOTE: A more then ten years old idea, of a number of sculptures on “tied-up beings” Murphy is the only self-tided up character of the bound beings materials: Wood, Metal, old TV (Videotape, electric cable, socket). Murphy is a wood sculpture representing the first Beckettian character who gives the title to the first Beckett novel. He is an eccentric one who uses to spend his time self tide-up on a rocking chair, naked. When he finally falls down, he can only wait for his girlfriend, the ex-prostitute Celia, to bring him up. In my image he comes out from the corner of a wall, fallen down on the back of his chair (in the novel he falls in the opposite direction, face on the floor). The floor and the two side walls are metal panels in copper. On his head are located two headphones going to an old TV on the floor
Elisabetta - McBett - Jacomini From the sound track Sunday Morning (Reed, Cale) Sunday morning, praise the dawning It's just a restless feeling by my side Early dawning, Sunday morning It's just the wasted years so close behind Watch out, the world's behind you There's always someone around you who will call It's nothing at all Sunday morning and I'm falling I've got a feeling I don't want to know Early dawning, Sunday morning It's all the streets you crossed, not so long ago Watch out, the world's behind you There's always someone around you who will call It's nothing at all Watch out, the world's behind you There's always someone around you who will call It's nothing at all Sunday morning Sunday morning Sunday morning (again endless) |
