Browse by author
Lookup NU author(s): Henry Coombes
Film Link: https://vimeo.com/90623199 I am the Architect, This is not Happening, This is unacceptable is a Film work by Henry Coombes, commissioned by House for An Art Lover (HAL), Bellahouston Park in association with Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. Realised as part of a Research and Production Residency at HAL, the work is a direct response to research generated by the rich social and historical contexts of the Park, exploring and playing with ideas of fraught relationships, hierarchies and rules. The work is rendered through diverse mediums, including paintings, which act as both a means of research, as well as animated ‘landscapes’ for the Film, with the aim of realising a kind of ‘moving painting’, where the content employs visual and narrative to create tense interplays in time, where ‘re-invented worlds’ are staged ‘within real situations’.Synopsis.An elderly retired Modernist Architect called Clive, In his attic Clive builds a model of a modernist Utopian City. He builds the model from designs and drawings stored on his newly purchased ‘I Pad’. Modern technology lets him down, the ‘I Pad’ crashes; with anger and frustration the traditionally trained Clive stamps on the modern device. The I ‘Pad’ malfunctions creating a vortex of energy, sucking Clive into the ‘I Pad’s’ hard drive, during which he looses his shoe. Inside the ‘I Pad’ Clive finds himself inside the modernist city he has designed called. In this parallel universe a community lives lead by architect Modernist Marcella. Modernist Marcella, a lady in her 70ʼs wears a classic suit, and a hat like a sculpture. The community get there information through a large pipe called the internet that pumps gravy into the fountain lake. Modernist Marcella catches the gravy in her modernist tea set, she reads the gravy stains on the bottom of her cup. From these reading workers make inventions and modern day gadgets from the materials and technology of the 1930ʼs. Men with round heads wearing suits make a huge ‘I Pad’ the size of a double bed out of mahogany and glass. The I Pad is powered by steam and crank shafts used for misguided cultural rituals. Modernist Marcella sees that Clive is missing a shoe, she is convinced that this sign proves without doubt that Clive is a virus. The community of the city believe that they are under threat from Clive and the virus, it could destroy the aesthetics and design. The very fabric of the society is at risk, presence of Clive threatens the empire from within, and the virus is believed to destroy the aesthetics and design. Modernist Marcella paints a smile onto Clive face to appease the virus, Clive’s false teeth fall out dislodged by the sweep of her paint brush. The community have never seen false teeth before see this has a miracle. She orders a series of rituals to rid Clive of the virus with the help of The Rat Man. The Rat Man is a man dressed as a rat who is brought out to fix the unifiable. The Rat dances euphorically, he becomes possessed with energy biting into the fabric of his surroundings, then biting into Clive. The Rat, violently disrupt the control and order of the world, causing a revolution through expression and destruction. Paint pours from the wounds and flows with force over the modernist city destroying it. Clive becomes a victim of his tyrannical plan to create a modernist utopia where individual expression is repressed in order to adhere to the his rules
Artist(s): Coombes H
Publication type: Artefact
Publication status: Submitted
Year: 2014
Description: Film
Venue: Carriage Works. Sydney
Location: Sydney, Australia
Type of Work: Film
Short Title: I am The architect
Alternate Title: I am The Architect, This is Not Happening It is Not Acceptable
Notes: Exhibitions. 2017 Telescope Gallery, Beijing, China. Exhibiting wit Sun Xun. 2015 Changjiang International Photography and Video Biennale. Audience Award. Silver Award. City Gallery Wellington. Wellington, Aotearoa, New Zealand. 2014 Sydney Biennale. Sydney Australia.
URL: https://vimeo.com/90623199
