Esa Laaksonen:
I would like to discuss your views on light which is the main issue within your work, and the sensitivities of the human body to light and colour, and also your thoughts about perception. I understand that you have spent a long time in solitude, in prison and in darkness - therefore, it seems to me that the power of force in your work lies within the experiences that you had in asylum. Is that correct?
James Turrell:
It was certainly formative in a sense that these experiences
formed the will to work with light. In terms of being an artist I can't
say that I took that experience well, because it was forced upon me - nor
did I systematically explore what it is to have that aloneness, that solitary
quality, without being forced into it. Now, with will and with free choice,
I enjoy it.
The question about light. First of all, I would like to say that there
never is no light - the same way you can go into an anechoic chamber that
takes away all sound and you find that there never really is silence because
you hear yourself. With light it is much the same - we have that contact
to the light within, a contact that we often forget about until we have
a lucid dream. Asking ourselves where the light in the lucid dream comes
from gets us near to these thoughts about the power of light. This power
has, first of all, power in its physical presence. I like to bring light
to the place that is much like that in the dream - where you feel it to
be some thing itself, not something with which you illuminate other things,
but a celebration of the thingness of light, the material presence, the
revelation of light itself. This is something that allows light live more
than the forming of it. A lot of the learning to work with light, since
it doesn't form by working with the hands as clay does, is this working
with light through thought. There is an architecture of thought, the structuring
of logic, of thinking, of the space of thought, and that is the province
of architecture as much as building these buildings that we work in and
use in a very pragmatic sense. Music structures this aswell, as do certain
things in art.
At this moment, I'm working very primitively with light, because I don't
have many instruments with which to work it, but I work it in the way that
I can, and that is mainly to bring to the conscious awake-state, the light
that inhabits these spaces that we know in the dream. So it's not a surprise
for anyone to see the light like this, but it is a mild surprise to see
it here because it seems to have this other quality, slightly other-worldly
in that we know it from another place but we do know about it. In architecture
we discuss the space between form and it being positive and being filled.
But rarely do we create this space. It's more rhetorical. So that when
you see it, it is not a surprise.
EL:
This brings us to the idea about entering a space, the entrance, airports and coming.
JT:
Submission and the idea of what it takes to enter the
space of a book. When we open a book and read it, often people pass through
the space where we are reading and we are so in the space of the book that
we don't notice people passing by and in a sense we are more in the book,
in a space generated by the author, than we are in the physical space where
we physically sit. This price of admission that was paid by submitting
and giving over to the book, is also something that is required in terms
of looking at architecture and entering a building, entering a space with
that kind of quality, as well as is in looking into a work of art as opposed
to looking atit. Looking at it is something that's very difficult. You
see this in how people react to contemporary art, because there is some
reason why they have difficulty deciding to enter it.
So that's the price of admission. That we've made the price high, maybe
a bit too high, is something art needs to think about, architecture as
well. But we've made it high because it has taken a lot to do this and
I guess that's a part of the reason. In terms of spaces, spaces before
the space, spaces before the work, you have this preloading in the way
of setting someone up for the experience to come - whether it's just with
dark adaptation, the time to let the eye open, or whether it is a loading
with a certain colour so that when they come into another colour, this
mixing of after image and colour from the image happens and enriches the
experience. There's a lot of this that does go on in making these spaces.
EL:
So you are also talking about concentrating and giving time and allowing time for perception when entering.
JT:
Yes, this entry is very important, because, first of all, in time given there is grace. This mercy asked for is actually time. Time to change your life as in asking God for mercy, it's like asking for more time to change, to alter, whatever. But in terms of an experience, that grace is to give it time so that it does not have to be an impact piece that is seen and beheld with one glance. I want something to grow on us. So that it begins to realise itself slowly, not all at once.
EL:
It is like entering an old cathedral in relative darkness and giving yourself the time to adjust to the peace and the light and the interior colours.
JT:
Your colour sensitivity will open up, your eyes open up to themselves. By giving it time there is discovery. It is sort of sublime and this is part of it for me, this something that doesn't happen at once: this revelation that isn't given all at once. It's a bit like the difference between sportive lovemaking and then actually making love with someone you love, it's quite a different situation.
EL:
At the moment you are building this huge project in Arizona in Roden Crater and I find the architecture that you are building there really special. Actually, you are not really building space but you are building instruments for light.
JT:
Generally I would say that I make these spaces to capture
and hold light. So I must use form, but I'm really involved in making architectural
space. For me the form must become secondary. It's nice to have a volcano
because that's going to be the form and that's not something I made. But
it also allows me to have many curvilinear spaces that are neutral. If
I have a rectilinear space, as we have in this room and most rooms for
the exhibition of art, and if I make an elliptical shape in those rectilinear
rooms, it's very strong because it's no longer neutral in the rectilinear
building. But our vision is not rectilinear, our vision is sort of two
spheres together that actually make an ellipsoidal shaping of the perceptual
field.
So if you create spaces that are rectilinear and still have them neutral
in this very curvilinear, vluptuous earth form of the volcano in which
all the forms are actually parabolic or elliptical. There's one circular
part, one crater that is actually within seven feet of being circular on
a radius of 800 feet, 814 feet. It is within seven feet of being a perfect
circle, which is amazing. This gives me a way to make curvilinear spaces
neutral, whereas it is not quite as appropriate in museums and spaces that
are rectilinear. The rectangle, sort of the slightly off square is much
more neutral than is a circle or an ellipse in these situations. Otherwise
it can become shaped canvases. When you come in you can see that there
is a forming of form, but what becomes very positive is this thing in between
the space, in the work that I do. At the crater I make an architecture
of space and I use these forms to capture the light, to hold it, to, in
a way, give it form, give it the space to reside. But it's clear that it's
done so that it doesn't reside on the wall. The light seems to fill the
space. I think that that's something you can feel. But it needs this architecture
of form as well to capture light. Because I don't want to take away from
the form of this volcano, making everything underground avoids actually
forming the outside of these spaces into a building. They are in fact built
but they are underground so that the outside really continues to be the
volcano. The reason that they are underground is partly for that fact,
but more for the fact that I make light powerful by isolating it, and also
that it is not very much light that I isolate. You may be looking at the
light of Venus alone and you can see your shadow, just from the light of
Venus alone, if you are dark-adapted for about an hour and a half. We see
that well!
The reason I do this is that if you take your flash into a cave or a place
that excludes all other light, it becomes quite powerful. So I need to
have these spaces that are protected from other ambient light. I'm just
taking the light from where I want it. So that's why there is this underground
architecture that in a way shares its outside form and opening with the
bunker as in bunker architecture. Where the openings are made precisely,
everything else is protected. In that way it also gives protection, it's
cool in the summer and actually somewhat warm in the winter. You can have
places that capture and hold heat by being contained at the top and will
become cold sinks by letting hot air go out and yet are shaded. This gives
me a way to have a kind of a sparkling elegance in the human inhabiting
of these spaces but it's made primarily for the habitation of light. That
is something we can walk through, even though all these sinks are completely
open. That is, there is no glass: I can make the feeling of glass or the
ending of the space quite easily, visually without having to do it with
material. Everything is open, but at the same time it is protected, that's
why it's underground.
This architecture, in terms of its form, shares similarity with the bunker
architecture, in terms of its openings, except we're not looking at fields
of fire, we are looking up to certain portions of sky and protecting all
else, and on the interior formed out in a way that it speaks of the naked
eye observatory, say at Tycho Brahe or the work of the astronomer Jai Sing
in Jaipur an Delhi. So it has that kind of design from the outside-in aspect
and it does have an architecture of form which I utilise to capture the
light and hold it, there by making a certain architecture of space.
I also pay attention to looking out from a space as in P.S.I Gallery's
'Meeting' (1980-86, Long Island City, New York) so that there is not only
accepting light in may be deeper space, but how the light is gathered as
a quality when you are in the space and out of the space. So I'm trying
to pay attention to those two qualities and in doing that in the outside
form where architecture normally has it's sense of style - I have nothing
because that's just the volcano.
EL:
Is Roden Crater your lifework?
JT:
Well, a little bit that way. But on the other hand I'll have to get that done so that I can get on with my lifework. It's a project that is a little bit too big for me to bite off and chew easily. We'll be finished a little bit before the year 2000. But we decided to restore the natural site and that will take time and then we also need to prepare some other things in terms of access and in other things of this sort. That's a good time for us to begin.
EL:
For me the lifespan of the happenings at the Roden Crater projects is enchanting.
JT:
To some degree I made a pre-made ruin. I have to confess
that I have great love for civic space that is emptied of use. Which would
be something like Monte Albán or Chitzen Itza or Delphi or Valley
of the Kings. These are things that once had use. Now these are just open
to the elements and you have to just feel what goes on there by the feelings
that the spaces give to you and you surrender to that experience. In a
way I wouldn't mind seeing Washington DC emptied of use. It would be very
bizarre. Here is this giant man sitting in the house: Abraham Lincoln,
a sort of a bizarre human being in terms of his appearance. We have made
huge reflecting pools and then little pavilions that almost turn into follies
which is very interesting to me. I'm interested in making a space that
has qualities we discover just from the space itself, not through any sort
of use other than some imagined use to them. That kind of space that you
wander in and out of and through things is a space that I like very much.
I like the quality in permanence and impermanence. There are some airfields
for World War II that the Americans used in the American desert to practice.
Now they are being taken over by sands and by sage brush and also they
are going under the ground. Ground is closing over them...
But if you fly over you can see just the ghosting of this, even though
it's completely covered with sand. Very thin at the moment, but it's only
45-50 years now. The lines of Nazca form a very beautiful plan. It's like
the earth is in an emulsion, a photographic emulsion that you are looking
at. You see some things developing, coming out early in development and
then some of these things can get covered by other things at later stages
of development. Also, there are some things that can be sort of blown away
and then they start to come out. Old civilisations that begin to be exposed.
EL:
I think somehow you are now touching the main qualities of art and architecture.
JT:
Well, I hope so. I'm just one artist. You have just a view point in any work. It can't be everything to all people. You have some parts that you work on. I'm interested those, time-sense, and that's one reason I use light. Even though light is passing through at 186 thousand miles per second, in fact there is a certain permanence to it, which is interesting.
Reprinted from ARK The Finnish Architectural Review
