WIND HARP

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Located on the left of the picture, the wind harp’s metal strings are retained by a rigid constraint. The constraint, or bridge, abuts an expanse of stained, pale grey concrete. The set of strings comprises a nuclear family of two parallel parents and an offspring (at a slight remove). While the parental strings can be seen emerging in unison out of the far side of the bridge, the offspring’s exit takes place beyond the image’s border. This uncertainty regarding the constraint’s conveying of the offspring is compounded by the constraint, or bridge, appearing as an aperture or rent in the image into which the offspring - like a beam of light entering an eye or a lens - disappears. A shadow ladder with distended rungs stretches from the base of the bridge, or rent, down into the expanse of concrete. The rungs on this ladder, as well as supplying evidence of the offspring’s exit from the bridge, suggests the number of strings on the harp extends beyond the three chosen for inclusion in the image. Unlike their distribution on the wind harp, the strings on the ladder are uniform and evenly spaced. Inverting the offspring’s entrance into the aperture, or rent, the side rails of the ladder radiate through the surface of the concrete, outwards and downwards. As the offspring’s appearing to enter the constraint enhances the illusion of there being an aperture, or rent, in the image, so the ladder’s descent through the concrete gives to the blemishes and stains on its surface the illusion of permeability. As a by-product of the interaction between the wind harp and the sunlight of its site-specific location, the shadow ladder is an extrapolation of the covert processes of selection and reclassification that are the work’s foundations. Midway up the ladder a bipedal strain is poised between the wind harp and the counterpoint created by the excavation of these foundations. Resembling a pair of comic cartoon legs, this anatomical parody will, in the second image, take the form of a flattened whirlwind enmeshed in the shadow ladder’s reinvigorated rungs. In the third and final image, the shadow ladder will have disappeared from view. Unlike the whirlwind stain, the bipedal stain is contingent upon the shadow ladder for its mobility. In its load-bearing capacity, the shadow ladder gives to the expanse of stained concrete, out of which the bipedal stain has been selected and reclassified, qualities that neither the expanse of concrete, the shadow ladder, nor the bipedal stain possess. In terms of the relationship between the shadow ladder and the bipedal stain, there is a sense of continuity and compatibility, a co-dependence that refutes the discord that will, regardless of it’s occupying the shadow ladder or not, characterise the relationship between the whirlwind and the wind harp. The expanse of concrete is the focus for a variety of interconnected polarities: shadow of railings / shadow of wind harp, shadow of wind harp / shadow ladder, shadow ladder / bipedal stain, bipedal stain / expanse of stained concrete, expanse of stained concrete / shadow of railings. The relationships between these interconnected polarities define the movement of the bipedal stain between the railings as wind harp and the expanse of stained concrete as the foundations excavated by the interaction between the wind harp and the sunlight of its site-specific location (as represented by the shadow ladder’s extrapolation of unseen or covert processes of selection and reclassification). Like its bipedal precursor, the flattened whirlwind occupies a position of uncertainty regarding its movements prior, or in the run up, to the images being taken. Mirroring the bipedal stain’s position regarding its ascent or descent of the shadow ladder, the flattened whirlwind’s position regarding its having passed through or being about to pass through the wind harp may or may not have something to do with its flattened state or its appearing first enmeshed in and then free from the shadow ladder.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I get to the footbridge a part of me wants to turn back. I have to push myself up onto the steps. I have to force myself over the traffic and down the other side. I know he’ll be there because I’ve seen him, hanging around. He’s a regular fixture. I wonder will he recognise me, will he remember. When I arrive, he’s sitting up on the railings, drinking from a can of beer. He looks a little thinner. A little more ragged around the eyes but otherwise he’s as I remember him. If I’d thought about it I might have imagined him a little thinner, a little more ragged round the eyes, but I didn’t. We exchange pleasantries. We talk about nothing in particular. I can feel the expectation in his voice, like my being there is going to lead to something. I can see it in his eyes, his sense that my being there will lead to something. For my part, I feel only a sense of revulsion. As he speaks, I watch the shadow of the can sweeping back and forth across my feet. When he stops speaking, I stop watching the shadow of the can and look at him again and realise that I haven’t been listening to him. He gets down off the railings, descending the rungs until he’s standing next to me. He says he was wondering when he’d see me again. When I try to answer, it feels as if there’s a hand over my mouth preventing me from speaking. I can feel the warm, clammy skin against my lips. When I try to move, it feels as if an iron bar is piercing my skin. I can feel the cold metal rod pushing into my flesh. When I can no longer feel a hand over my mouth and the metal rod is no longer piercing my flesh, I tell him that we need to iron things out. He asks me in a harsh metallic rasp what the story is. I tell him that we need to straighten things out. He’s standing in front of me when I say this, blocking my way. I push him back with the palm of my hand. His eyes glaze over and I can see he’s no longer paying attention. He smiles because he thinks that he has me where he wants me. To show me that he has me where he wants me he tilts his head back and drinks from the can. His eyes reach for the clouds and I am shielded for a while from their dull, watery depths. It’s when he has his eyes in the clouds that I push him again. Harder this time, in the chest with both hands. He stumbles backwards and falls against the railings. He loses his footing and the shadows of the rungs sweep over his torso as his head hits the concrete. No longer excited by my presence, he lies on the ground like something swallowed. The can has fallen out of his hand and is rasping over the stains, yodelling an arc through the pockmarks and blemishes. A tremor of exhilaration passes over my body as the warm, frothy stream washes into his splatters of blood. He’s moving in slow motion now, drowning in sunlight, reaching out for the rungs. When he gets to his feet he looks like he wants to kill me. Although he doesn’t say it, I can see it in his eyes. I push him to the ground again and kick him in the head until he stops moving. Then I walk away over the beer and the blood without saying a word. When I am halfway across the footbridge I look back. As the bowed metal beam lifts me over the traffic I turn and look back to see if he’s still there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Artists Robert Bingham and Ronan Benson discuss the text accompanying Benjamin Robinson’s Wind harp with whirlwind stain

 

ROBERT BINGHAM: Wind harp with whirlwind stain offers us a view downwards, as if we are the one who is found sitting up on the railings, drinking from a can of beer.

RONAN BENSON: The story concerns a reunion of some sort. Some form of abusive restraint is recalled, culminating in an act of violence in which we are kicked in the head.

RB: The uncertainty at the story’s core is stated explicitly when we ask the narrator, after we get down off the railings, what the story is.

RB: When we ask this, we are at the same time physically blocking the narrator’s way. Like the bipedal stain’s convoluted anatomical incongruity, the story is made up of a series of cavities and clefts: the narrator’s unexplained sense of revulsion; the unspecified expectation that we’re going to get something - the repayment of an old debt, perhaps, or the resumption of a relationship, sexual or otherwise, which may or may not have been consensual or abusive in nature; the thwarting of that unspecified expectation, culminating in our getting kicked in the head. Before getting kicked in the head, when we try to extricate ourselves from the stains and blemishes, we’re described as reaching out for the rungs, drowning in the same sunlight that created the shadow ladder in the first place.

RB: In the story, the rungs of the ladder are in the form of a fallen can, a tremor of exhilaration, etcetera, culminating in our receiving an unspecified number of kicks in the head. As we progress thought the story we become, like the whirlwind stain, enmeshed in these rungs.

RB: Prior to the tremor of exhilaration, the desire in our eyes is interpreted as a desire for the narrator’s demise. Shielded from the dull, watery depths of this desire the narrator seizes the opportunity to push us to the ground. We lose our footing and our head hits the concrete. Blood splatters over the stains and blemishes. We drop our can. Beer spills into the splatters of blood and the narrator feels a tremor of exhilaration. We get to our feet but are pushed back down again. This is the prelude to our getting our kicks. Like the bipedal stain, we try to ascend the shadow ladder to the wind harp, but are thrown through the contingencies of the situation back into the story’s cavities and clefts.

RB: The cavities and clefts give the story an illusion of depth as the residue of stains and blemishes gives the concrete an illusion of permeability. This allows us to walk in the bipedal stain’s footsteps, to descend into the covert processes of selection and reclassification that are the work’s foundations. The overlapping of this, with our meeting up with the narrator, leads to us getting an unspecified number of kicks in the head.

RB: The events leading up to our getting our kicks entail the shadow ladder passing over our body, and the beer and blood mixing on the concrete to produce the whirlwind stain, which on closer inspection turns out to be one of the limbs of the bipedal stain. At the end of the story the narrator, who may or may not be a woman, glances back from the footbridge. Having given us our kicks, the narrator feels compelled to look back from the footbridge’s bowed metal beam.

RB: Our emergence from the cavities and clefts is foreshadowed by the narrator, who may or may not be a woman, not listening to us and our not paying attention. These dialectical vesicles are in contrast to the lyrical image of the can yodelling an arc across the concrete and disgorging its contents into the freshly spilt splatters of blood. The sound of the can rasping over the concrete echoes our asking the narrator in a harsh metallic rasp, what the story is.

RB: The evaporated deposits which make up the whirlwind stain were created by the can yodelling its warm, frothy stream into the freshly spilt splatter of blood. Looking back for the footbridge, the narrator’s bird’s eye view supplants our initial position on the railings. The cleft between these two vantages, as between the warm, frothy stream and the cold metal rods, and the wind harp’s upper string and the darkness it enters, mirrors the gradual transformation of the deposits, of which both the bipedal and the whirlwind stains are comprised, from a state of effusive liquidity to a state of constricted desiccation.

RB: Like the string being swallowed by the rent in the constraint, evidence for the narrator, who may or may not be our daughter, diluting and weakening sufficiently the processes of selection and reclassification, which are the work’s foundations, for the transitional object to be exited in its totality is supplied only in the form of the disappearance in the third image of the primary transitional object, the shadow ladder. The position of the whirlwind stain, which is comprised of one of the bipedal stain’s limbs, remains unaltered. We get our kicks in the interval between the appearance and the disappearance of the shadow ladder, that is to say between the sun’s coming out and going in.

RB: We are left pondering the kicks taken as the narrator, who may or may not be our offspring, is left pondering those that were given. Whether or not our potential offspring sees this is unclear. What is clear is that at the time of the backward glance, after the can has spilled its contents over the concrete, after our potential offspring has had a tremor of exhilaration, and after we’ve had our kicks in the head, the shadow ladder has, in the absence of sunlight, either been drawn up into the wind harp or down into the dull, watery depths of the evaporating deposits.

RB: In the final image, the whirlwind stain extends downwards into a well of empty blemishes. The kicks have been drawn down from the wind harp, as a bucket is drawn down into a well upon a string.

RB: The kicks are released into the bucket in a warm, frothy stream.

RB: They yodel the stream’s delivery, giving birth to the deposits of which the whirlwind stain and the bipedal stain are comprised.

RB: We have placed the narrator on the footbridge at the time of the retrospection.

RB: We have implicated ourselves in the tremor of exhilaration.

RB: We have inculcated the whirlwind stain into the dilemma of the bipedal stain.

RB: We have extrapolated the dilemma of the bipedal stain into the silence of the wind harp.

RB: We have straightened out the narrator.

RB: We have ironed out the rent in the constraint.

RB: We have transcended temporarily the transcendent.