Filming House/Lights

by Alex Hetherington, 11 Apr 2008

Laura and I performed House/Lights in action at Forth Valley; it was a wild time and such fun, we mimed the whole thing alongside the screens with all the action and prompts. I had my Comme des Garçons bulge and red tie; favorite part the gun shot sequence when Faust threatens to kill the dog and boy and me trying to do a handstand which failed miserably. Laura is a brilliant performer and I am so glad she worked with me on this. I edit the footage today.

We discussed memory and fake memory syndrome: presenting the psychosis but not the original experience (which has not happened and never existed, it’s faking a fiction). Of not having the memory of a woman. Slotting memory into a time line of failed attempts at recapturing or describing, using House/Lights as an assemblage of difficult memories and synchronizing it to this place and the experiences here. I keep thinking about things that alter memory: drugs, alcohol, trauma, disease, stress, mental health, age; also thinking about forgetting, memory triggers, souvenirs, archives, computer RAM, and how this work is like playing a game with the computer to keep up with it, its perfect memory set against our failing, debilitating, deteriorating memory. I hope on the day of the performance the computer wins. The soundtrack needs dog barking and this connects it to Janie’s dog portraits, then there’s the devil, meddle with the devil. In my case the devil might just be ‘copyright’. There’s the boy and dog in the performance, except in my installation it’s a young girl. I like when the Devil explains to Faust that he can make [Faust] “an old man a young man” . The young girl’s image taken from Mike Kelley looks like it’s a premonition of aging, although clearly the make-up is there to present her as a Goth. So then there’s The Park. Green and lush, it will look splendid in spring and summer and it’s House/Lights again, with the “carpet and the chair and the wild woods everywhere.” The young girl in the show is Margerite Ida and Helena Annabel, newly brought into the world to deceive Faust. (“Paging Dr Faustus, Dr Faustus”) I look at the woods and think about things that go on after dark. You know. Men. And drugs and booze. And late night action.

House/Lights is also such a woman’s piece and it reflects something Janie said about the group being all women. Well they live longer. So it’s about longevity. And not electricity. (The Young Frankenstein connection for anyone who has seen the original House/Lights, which I don’t use in the re-enactment).
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We looked again at glamour; Janie brought in images of Edward and Mrs Simpson taken from a personal collection from one of the group. The images were taken in Bermuda(?). I also found this amazing image of a black woman strolling down the streets looking ever so fine and dandy. How beautiful. I will use this photograph in my Wooster Group Fanzine: Black Model Agency.

Also Gi is now on and I went to Jim Lambie’s show; it was ok. The mirror and eye suspension was great and the chair collection was remarkable, but it was all a bit, well, flat. But it was good to see. It looked like all of Glasgow was there to see the boy off. Actually it was dangerously busy, so Andrea and I left for wine at the CCA. Which was empty. So that was good.