For the past few weeks I’ve been at the Edinburgh
International Book Festival, listening to many writers talk
about books. Lots of ideas and lots of coffee. (You can read my
reviews of Howard Jacobson & Kirsty Bell here. And of Elif
Batuman & Sidarta Ribiero here.) This morning the city is
different, mingling its actual aspect with memories, some
recent, some going back years, but indefinable in time, all
merging together in the morning sunlight. After all the shows
in the Fringe have come and gone – the posters remain, the
overflowing bins remain, a camouflaged bus, scaffolding, an
empty warehouse – all that is left behind, material and
atmospheric, and the city recalibrates itself in the wake and
the memories of the past.
But the past is also present here, it isn’t somewhere else, it is
not in another place, so how can it be past? It is more – super-
imposition, yet it does not obscure, on the contrary it adds
brightness to what you see (or is that the sunshine?) but it
seems to be past, highlighted by the present. So it may be a
melange but not one that can be separated out like a
superimposed image, they blend into each other and create – a
new colour, a new feeling? Yes, that’s possible.
I have some time before going to the last talk at the Book
Festival so I look in at the Talbot Rice Gallery,
where a poster says there’s an exhibition of the work of Céline
Condorelli. I’ve been to this gallery many times before but not
since the covid restrictions and maybe longer. At first I’m not
sure I’m in the right place, it looks completely different, there
is so much light in the main gallery and I say this to the young
woman at the desk. Yes she says, we’ve opened up the
windows.
My memories of this gallery is that there were no windows here and now there are several, light pouring in. The ‘opened-up windows’ show the wooden frames and exposed brickwork and the view outside becomes part of the exhibition space and it shows the streets which so recently were full of people and now are almost empty and they also reflect the present and the past, as if what had been going on during the festival is now highlighted like the scaffolding and work going on around the building.
All the sense of movement that comes in through the windows is in contrast to the white walls and space of the exhibition hall, the tidy, ordered exhibits, and so much space between them, the space itself is a striking part of what is on display. And I didn’t even realise at the time, it is only now, looking at these photos, that it becomes clear that the exposed windows are the exhibit. The light and the view and the streets and the movement outside, all an ongoing video you can stand at the window and watch, as I did.
Upstairs, there is an actual video playing. There are superimposed images, past and present, the historical palimpsest of open spaces, buildings, trees. There is a voiceover too, someone is reading words that combine with the images, that reflect and enhance them.
I only catch fragments of what is said, but these fragments jump out at me,
‘the empty spaces of the Bamiyan Buddhas’ and
‘kitsch – someone’s trash is someone else’s history’
and I don’t know whose words are being read, but the words and the images, the inside and outside are all blending together and this morning is a culmination, as if highlights and soft lights, blurred background and vivid foreground have come together, two aspects of the same thing, once separated, are reconciled into one.
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