I just loved this AV project so much. The Tate tells us,
“Gordon’s installation focuses on James Conlon, the principal conductor of the Paris Opera at the time. He leads a hundred-piece orchestra playing Bernard Herrmann’s score for the psychological thriller Vertigo1958, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Over 80 minutes, the combined length of all of the music in Vertigo, the camera never leaves Conlon. We follow his animated body, his agitated hands and his expressive face. The musicians are heard but never seen.
Herrmann’s score is an essential element of Hitchcock’s film. Endlessly circling and spiralling, the music perfectly matches the tale of duplicity and obsessive love. The original film is playing without sound on a monitor as part of the installation.” (Ladd, 2019)
I think the Artangel Youtube video has the most wonderful description, far more inventive than the Tate’s dry blurb.
“In Feature Film, Douglas Gordon arranged a divorce between sound and vision – and orchestrated an affair between what you remember and what you see.” (2016)
As a child, I was fed a diet of old movies. I loved them. And the music was always an incredibly important element – it prompted me to listen to classical music and imagine all sorts of dramatic scenarios in which I was the tragic star. I will have invented many a an imaginary SJF production playing in the rockery and tree-caves of our garden with this type of music and associated narratives in the back on my mind (or perhaps I should say the forefront). A lot of my work has aimed in some way to come to terms with this although as I write now, I do remember that child and the imaginary games with tenderness – and without the rancour I usually feel for being duped as growing up by a misogynistic society into thinking I was just a thing; a not very clever or valuable thing at that. Whatever all of that may mean or lead to, this music consequently feels a bit like the soundtrack for my own imagined construction of life, feminity and reality narrative. The title fits with this so much – as an adult I feel I had internalised these films and tried to live my life as one, then struggled when I discover it wasn’t – or else perhaps got caught up in an unhelpful script.
I am terribly interested in pulling things apart and inspecting them – and this project does just that. I lay on the floor of the gallery and watched the silent Vertigo on a small screen turning to watch the footage of the composer from time to time. And when I tried to leave the music kept pulling me back for more. It’s perfect that it should be in the huge boiler basement room and that it should be so dark. (And I loved it when it was just me in there and slightly resented the other visitors for intruding… sorry for being mean!)
https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/display/tanks/douglas-gordon
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