Interviews
Interview with Marc Trabsky, installation artist
‘Finding Space’ Exhibition – The Carlton Hotel Studios
Curated by Jason Lingard
Open for viewing Wednesday to Saturday, 4pm to 7pm (20 January to 6 February)
Presented by the Midsumma Visual Arts Program, ‘Finding Space’ showcases fourteen artists’ work in photography, video and installation, exploring a symbiotic dialogue between their identity, their art and the constructed world in which they reside. ‘Finding Space’ touches on the precarious intimacy between imagination and physical space. Kill Your Darlings Editor Rebecca Starford attended the opening on Tuesday 19 January at The Carlton Hotel Studios, in Melbourne. She chatted with Marc Trabsky , whose installation Dianus, co-created with Maya Gnyp, is displayed at the exhibition.
Dianus, created by Marc Trabsky and Maya Gnyp, is a confronting and cerebral piece of installation art, combining film (Deux homes nus se roulant par terre), mise en scène and music. It re-imagines queer erotica, juxtaposing the often prosaic representations of pornography. ‘We were interested in shooting films that played around with the limits of art and pornography,’ Trabsky explains. ‘We wanted, basically, to make a film that was an imitation of vintage erotica from the 1940s. And the idea is a simple one: in black and white, two guys rolling around naked.’
In Dianus, we enter a dark, dilapidated room, decorated with the furniture of a bygone era. There is an antique cupboard, a sideboard with stained wine glasses and plastic roses in a vase. There is a couch in one corner, with an old sink nearby. A black-and-white film is projected against one blank wall. On a loop, it depicts two young men, naked. They kiss and engage in intimate foreplay. Across from the couch is a television, which plays another black-and-white film. This film has the same actors in a different narrative; more playful – with conversation and smoking – it again depicts nudity and sex.
Two songs accompany the installation: Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ and The Carpenters’ ‘Rainy Days and Mondays’. Like the films, the songs are on a loop – and they lend a great sense of nostalgia and parody to the installation, and also heighten the feeling of claustrophobia. ‘We did want to create a particular aesthetic,’ Trabsky says. ‘We’re very much interested in the mise en scène in this installation. We wanted to pay a certain homage to the queer cinema of that era, and to create a theatrical scene, of sorts. We’ve used the idea of “a lost room” to influence the design. Using inanimate objects – a matchbox, a plastic flower in a vase, an ash tray – hopefully creates a kind of ambiguity between artifice and reality or authenticity. At the same time, the theme of a space that is seemingly out of time, outside of our reality, is what we’re playing with.’
Ultimately, Dianus is about liminal spaces – that space, particularly, between reality and virtuality. Trabsky and Gnyp were influenced by a George Bataille short story, in The Impossible, which dramatises the Dianus myth. Taking the Janus/Dianus figure – the god of beginning and endings – the installation is a reflection on how, by focusing on both the past and future, the present is ultimately obscured. And the repetition in the installation acts as a constant reminder of the failure to represent. ‘We’re not attempting to authenticate vintage erotic,’ Trabsky explains. ‘What we’re trying to represent is the absence of innate male beauty – and the failure to authenticate these experiences.’
What is striking in the interactions between the actors in the film, Deux homes nus se roulant par terre, is the way that it depicts presence and absence. They withhold and retract; there is aggression, frustration and disconnectedness in their performances. ‘This is what is essential to the performance,’ says Trabsky. ‘That movement between presence and absence. Cinema is the perfect medium for this representation, because it lies between these two domains in time and space.’
And what do Trabsky and Gnyp hope audiences will take away from the experience of the installation?
‘We’d like people to question their expectations of art and pornography,’ Trabsky says. ‘We’re also trying to revive a kind of practice of filming that seems to be present in filmmakers who made erotica at the beginning of the twentieth century – and their greater sense of experimentation. Today, there is less experimentation – artistically and aesthetically – in pornography. Likewise, in the contemporary Melbourne art scene, many works are largely devoid of sexuality. I guess we’re trying to queer that art scene.’
Trabsky and Gnyp have plans to expand their works in 2010. ‘There’s a whole range of projects in the erotica series, involving all sorts of people,’ Trabsky says. ‘We hope to showcase more films later in the year. And there are always more scenes to construct, countless lost rooms to create.’
Marc Trabsky and Maya Gnyp are part of the MarthaArthur collective. ‘Finding Space’ will be open until 6 February. Visit http://www.midsumma.org.au for more details.
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Kill Your Darlings, No. 8
January 2012 The Stella Prize
Kill Your Darlings is a proud supporter of The Stella Prize.
8:55 am, January 21, 2010
I went to ‘Finding Space’ last night – and it was really great. I thought ‘Dianus’ was really clever and thoughtful. And the first installation – a kind of hyperreal, pink sexual playground – was totally trippy! (in a good way).
Steph.