THE SYMBOL OF THE MASK: A Parallel World With An Invisible Face

I. MASK: THE THEATRICAL FACE IN LIFE

Masquerade!
Paper faces on parade
Hide your face and the world will never find you
Masquerade!
Every face is a different shade
Look around! There’s another mask behind
Faces! Take your turn, take a ride
True is false, who is who…
But who can name the face,
You can fool any friend around who never knows you
Run and hide
But your face will still pursue you…

This song is from The Phantom of the Opera, the story of a genius who is obsessed with his destroyed face rather than the intense beauty of his music. But the mask he has fashioned, and the identity of the Opera Ghost he has formed, while covering his physical deformity, cannot obscure the deeper ugliness contained in his psyche. [1]

The Masquerade is where people come to play their games, among them ‘The Fool,’ in which one can deceive a friend as to one’s identity. And life is so, with not only the paper faces we wear on parade, but also the real face we hide. In The Phantom of the Opera people attend the masquerade for many purposes. The Opera Ghost and Roaul, the Vitcome de Chagny both come for the heroine, Christine Daaé; the managers of the opera house as well as Madame Giry come for the Opera Ghost, Carlota comes for her play… Everyone has different plan as every face has a different shade. As we wear our masks, we believe that we can hide ourselves, but our face still pursues us. It’s true, whether this face is real or unreal, is available or invisible. We cannot escape who we are, where we come from, our personal life, our identity. We cannot hide for our entire life. The truth eventually emerges; secrets will be over.

The Pope of Fools! The mask-type of the Fool in Europe ‘constitutes the ambitious and paradoxical synthesis of these oppositions’. While against ‘the moral fickleness of his fellow villagers, the Bufon of the Val di Fassa proclaims the paradox that has fascinated generations of writers, thinkers and masqueraders: “if you think I am a fool/you have got to be a bigger fool than me”.’ Attractive and repulsive, witty and ugly, elegant and clumsy, the Fool swings back and forth between the extremes represented in other masks: the impossibility of existing at once as one thing and its opposite without going mad. (196, The Other Within, Mask – The Art of Expression by John Mack, 1994)

It’s rain. But not water. The masks fly in the air, as of human faces. The whole village never knew how to smile. People hurry to pick up and wear the masks. The masks become their faces…

A Vietnamese/Chinese folk tale, Hồ Nguyệt Cô Hóa Cáo (Hồ Nguyệt Cô Became a Fox) recounts how a girl, wanting to be beautiful, chooses to wear a gorgeous fox mask. Her lover does not recognize her and is confused as to what caused him to fall in love with her, the new fox’s face or her old beautiful mind? As for the girl, once she changed her face, her mind no longer is the same. She became a different person…

I saw this play several times as a youth. The performers wore dozens of varieties of make up. Their theatrical faces were dazzling with fantastic colors, lines and props that signalled their emotions and behaviours. Among the colors utilized were pinkish-white (for male roles signifying upright character and literary accomplishment), red (for male roles signifying proficiency in both literary and military endeavours) and blank white (for deceitful characters).
As Sorell quoted: ‘The longer you look at a good mask the more charged with life it becomes. A common actor cannot use a really good mask. He cannot make himself one with it. A great actor makes it live.’ (The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan by Ezra Pound and Ernest Fenollosa, 1917)

I was always transfixed by the lead female role in this drama. In such performances, female characters normally do not wear such make up. But in this one, the girl paints the Fox Mask on her real face, and thus we see that the fox lives under a human face and the girl lives under a fox mask. With every change of her emotion the muscles of her face change, her body movements are those of a fox, filled with passion, lust and rebellion… [2]

The performance must be experienced to be truly felt and understood, but in brief description: The stage is bare. By her entrance upon the stage, the actress creates a certain time and place. This is a dramatic art form in which the actress uses technical mastery to emote the action and the character’s state of mind. Speaking plays a vital role because the Vietnamese language has six tones. As a result, when lines are recited, certain rhythmic and melodic patterns create the singing affection (The Art of Vietnamese Theatre by Nguyễn Lộc and Võ Văn Tường, 1994). The actress utilizes stylized and exaggerated body movements to complement the lines being recited. She is human? She is a fox? She is a fox that wants to be human or a human that wants to be an animal? She is confused, she cannot be herself. She does not know who is she, really…

This impressive drama has followed me throughout my life, and I have conducted much research on Vietnamese theatrical mask makeup in performances of Viet Nam’s traditional Hát Bội Theatre Art. I have always wanted to create a project with this Face’s performance.

Indeed, the mask is not only the other face of art, but also the other face of human life. The world is getting worse. Everyone is living beneath their masks, which serve as their faces for business, relationships, politics, drama, etc. I travel the world and meet many different people. I would like to see deeply inside their masks to their real faces, behind their makeup to discern their real thoughts. What are you thinking? What you do see—or fail to see? What is real/unreal?

I once asked my friend to volunteer for face painting. I divided her face into two parts: right side for Vietnamese style makeup and left for Japanese style. I used Fiesta and Carnival face and body paint. First, a white base was applied to the entire face. The left side received traditional Japanese colours and style: small red lips, signifying beauty. The right side received gold, dark blue, and pink, based on the ocean elements in Vietnamese myth. I took photographs of her in many poses: disarranged short hair, smiling, eyes closed, thinking, dancing… It was fascinating to find that while others thought she was fantastic, she did not. Indeed, after only thirty minutes with the paint, her demeanor had completely changed. She did not ponder this; she only thought that she was ugly, that her face was so round and fat, and she was unhappy.

‘The mask contains the magic of illusion without which man is unable to live.’ (Walter Sorrell) Look at my model. Beneath the paint, beyond her face, a mask was created with a new gorgeous illusion. She knows she is a nice but not a beautiful girl. The makeup gave her beautiful features but she realized that people were appreciating not her, but her new makeup.

Trịnh Thị Minh Hà wrote: ‘Thus, in a film where both Asian middle-class and working class women are featured, a female viewer remarks: “All the women in the film are middle class. Can you talk about this?” The female director: “Oh! How do you see all the characters as middle class?” The viewer: “Aren’t they?! …the way they dress!” ’ (271, The All-Owning Spectatorship by Trịnh Thị Minh Hà, 1991)

The way they dress! How ironic! People judge you by your clothes, your jewellery, your car… The characters in the film, no matter what their class, are perceived by viewers based not on their personalities or behaviours but by their appearance. ‘The complexity of this problem often goes unnoticed, as the class bias many of us project onto others is often masked by the apparent righteousness of these “correct attitudes” popularized in relation to race and poverty.’ (Trịnh Thị Minh Hà)

I pondered as to what would result there would be if the Cinderella fairytale occurred today. Would these two people from different classes, who met while wearing masks, be happily married? Eventually the truth would emerge; would it be an invisible barrier? Would they be connected or separated simultaneously?

‘I can tell by the way he will look lost and puzzled suddenly, all the expression dying away from his dear face as though swept clean by an unseen hand and in its place, a mask will form, an sculptured thing, formal and cold, beautiful still but lifeless…’ (5/chap.2 – Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, novel, 2003)

This is what the second wife of Maxim de Winter feels after many unexpected incidents with her new husband, a wealthy widower. After marrying and beginning a new life in Manderley with him, she becomes obsessed with his first wife, Rebecca. Born a poor, lower class girl, she comes to believe Rebecca was everything she is not: a perfect woman, an icon of womanhood. She eventually understands this is false, but must first learn the truth Rebecca’s life. Rebecca did not drown in a yachting accident, as everyone believes; she was killed by Mr. de Winter, who from the days of his honeymoon loathed his wife. [3]

On the way to discovering the truth, Mrs de Winter, the pale, ghostly and timid narrator was lead by her husband‘s story that ‘ostensibly attempts to bury Rebecca, in fact resurrects her and render her unforgettable, whereas she fades from our view; it is she who is the dying woman in this novel.’ (Introduction to Rebecca by Sally Beauman, London 2002)

Beauman’s perspective is accurate. There is the final twist to Rebecca and it is a covert one. Maxim de Winter kills not one wife, but two. He murders the first with a gun, and the second with slower, more insidious methods. The second Mrs de Winter’s fate, for humouring his whims and obeying his every behest, her recompense is not money, but ‘love’ - and the cost is her identity. Then, after all the incidents, the couple’s life was formed with masks. They just could not escape from Rebecca’s dead shadow.

What if you have lost your identity? You have lost everything. Marc Augé’s ‘parallel world’ and his definition of ‘places’ interest me—wherever ‘a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity’ (79, Places And Non-Places). The modern world sometimes drives one crazy to the point where you’re not sure of your identity. Hollywood has produced many films about the modern world, where with just a click you can change your name and face to be a different person. Your identity is your face. What if your face can be covered by another face? A faded identity. An invisible person in a mask. Bob Dylan, once reading a newspaper account of himself that was totally fictitious, remarked, ‘I’m glad I’m not me!’ (Documentary film Don’t Look Back, directed by D.A. Pennebaker, 1965) Interestingly, in his live performances a decade later, Dylan took to wearing a large hat and covering his face with white makeup. He wore this mask in order to force his audience to not see him as the legend of Bob Dylan but to concentrate on the songs he was singing—which he viewed, rightly, as more important than the legend. We are always attempting to control ourselves. We end up in the mask to either cover a truth that frightens or shames us, or to force the truth to be revealed.

We are in our own masks. Look at Alexandre Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask. It told the mystery of a man in the Bastille prison encased in a metal mask, ‘the most theatrical suggestion that in a sequestered house in Burgundy, there had been brought up a male child, born eight hours after Louis XIV, who was not merely his brother but his twin.’ Playwrights capitalized on this highly theatrical fancy as did, in a minor way, constitutional revolutionaries; ‘the inhumanity of Louis XIV towards his brother clearly made him and his Bourbon successors unfit to sit on the throne which must need revert, legitimately, to Philip Égalité, the Mask’s true descendant… Moreover, the sadistic idea of enclosing a prisoner within a claustrophobic iron mask starts a frisson of horror. It is probably this rather than the innumerable efforts to establish his true identity that explain the very memorable, grisly glamour which had made the Mask a star of stage and screen and the hero of many speculative novels.’ (Introduction to The Man In The Iron Mask by David Coward, 1991)

The Mask, along with D’Artagnan and the Three Musketeers, had turned to be the mythical forces at work in Dumas’ novel. [4] Why did he choose The Mask as a theme? Why did Dumas love this man who has to wear the iron mask? Usually a mask covers badness, ugliness, evil, but in this case the reverse was true: the Mask was worn to hide truth. A lie was presented to the world.

I once asked a friend to be my first model of the human face. I made a small sculpture in plaster for her face and another in crystal résin. I set up a small performance in the Bay Art Gallery, Herne Bay, with the plaster face. There is a desk lamp, a book and an empty female face lies there, her head positioned for comfort.

I return home late.
I take off my day face.
I read The Man in the Iron Mask of Alexander Dumas
I become mine,
At night...

One night, after you have had a hard working day, you return home. Taking off luxurious clothes, removing make-up, having a shower, what do you feel then? Do you feel relaxed? Do you feel that all the dust has been removed? Do you feel that all the lies, incompetence and irritations from your colleagues and customers have flown out the window?

You spend your evening with family. You read The Man in the Iron Mask before going to sleep. What if people around you have had their personalities and identities stolen? Do they then survive in a living death? You question yourself, ‘Am I living?’ In the 1998 film of The Man in the Iron Mask, Philippe begs King Louis XIV for his freedom. He prefers death to a return to the Bastille in the mask. But Louis refuses: ‘Wear it until you die in it!’ It’s a tragedy. Then you will realize how wonderful you can be yourself! How much happiness there is when you step in the front door of your house after a day outside and hear your daughter’s laughter? You will smile…

An empty face contains many masks behind it. In Eastern societies people can be just as expressive as in the West, but in times of extreme emotion—anger, sadness, and disappointment—their faces become expressionless. A mask? To some, yes; to others and to themselves, of course, a sign that they are trying to control themselves. By all means, the face is there; it is just not so obvious.

I created other versions of the human face, made by crystal résin with light and projector. The light went through the crystal resin and beamed onto the face. Indeed, I feel the face is not there. The real face made by résin now is an object between the light and the screen. What people can see is its shadow, not its reality. It becomes an invisible object, an invisible face. It exists but you cannot see it. You feel it. When you communicate with someone, whether they have their masks or not, you might feel there is a barrier between both. It’s the time that your life-mask turns to be an invisible face.


II. THE INVISIBLE FACE CONTAINS THE ENTIRE INVISIBLE WORLD


What do we seek, behind and inside? The immortal face? The empty face? While people are hiding their truth under their invisible face, is the world worsening?

I created a small collection of invisible faces with Plexiglas paper and rubber dots. This experiment arose from my travels through England and Western Europe. I met many people with different characters and learned so many new and interesting things. Everyone I spoke with, every day I spent doing this, every place I visited, allowed me to absorb perspectives and values. I look beyond everything I could see, deeply inside people’s minds, behind their appearances to seek an invisible world, a world of which everyone knows its existence but are unable to touch its reality.

What if people were naked? Without clothes, without makeup, without possessions? Will those viewing them perceive them accurately or inaccurately? Italian artist Vanessa Beecroft has displayed a succession of scantily clad or naked woman. [5] All the women are posed in a similar way, resembling mannequins or models. Whatever they are, they are united. They are human. No one can recognize this is a famous model; that is a well-known movie star. ‘They show up before the public like living pictures, not performing; not moving; the figures only take up a position’. Beat Streuli’s Portrait (2002) and Billboard Sydney (1998) [6] are similar examples, larger than life portraits of passers by with their actual surroundings, large billboards in the crowded cities. Who stops and locates themselves in these works? (Installation Art in the New Millennium by Nicola de Oliviera, Nicola Oxley and Michael Petry, 2003)

The Washington Post carried a story on April 8, 2007: ‘Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour?’ Writer Gene Weingarten set out to discover if the well-known violinist Joshua Bell and his Stradivarius could stop busy commuters in their tracks. Playing for a day on the metro, he earned around $150—the price for one good seat at Boston's stately Symphony Hall. ‘Even at this accelerated pace, though, the fiddler's movements remain fluid and graceful; he seems so apart from his audiences - unseen, unheard, otherworldly - that you find yourself thinking that he's not really there, a ghost.’ What irony! How can be a great musician play great music but no one hears? Was he really any good? The claims from the Washington, D.C were ‘employers who tolerate their workers being even a few minutes late’ and ‘ what would happen to non-famous employees if they were late to work because they were listening to a street musician’. It means nothing. There is only one thing you can see: ‘It's an old epistemological debate, older, actually’. What is beauty? What is good? What is real or unreal? Is it ‘a measurable fact (Gottfried Leibniz), or merely an opinion (David Hume), or is it a little of each, colored by the immediate state of mind of the observer (Immanuel Kant)?’ Is the musician the one who is real and his audiences are the ghosts? What sort of communication occurs between them? [7] In The Theatre of Installation, 2000, by two Brazilian theatre directors, Adriano and Fernando Guimarães, the figures’ faces are placed on one side of glass boxes supported by neon lights. Which are faces? Which are their shadows? Theatrically, people receive the directors’ visual trick. In life, people receive their people’s tricks. The world is full of confusion. [8]

When Teresita Fernádez created The Bamboo Cinema, 2001, she wanted visitors to walk between its poles and experience a flickering effect like the opening and closing of a camera shutter. The further viewers moved into the work, the greater became the effect of distortion of the surrounding landscape. [9] In The Black Lift, 1998, British artist Louise Sudell used magic tricks and entrapment to control which ‘exists in the relationship between the artist and the viewer’, which also presents the connection of two contradicting sides of spectators’ action. [10] (Installation Art in the New Millennium by Nicola de Oliviera, Nicola Oxley and Michael Petry, 2003)

In the darkness, talking with yourself, you will discover what you are hiding. The young narrator of While the Bells Ring At Once by Tiếng Kiều Đồng Vọng [11] discovers her life: a poor single mother; a wealthy but unknown father; a twin sister who had died when she was born, visits her dreams and leads her to find the way of truth. As long as she can spend, as far as she can go, she is confused between the truth and lie. She does not know for sure how much she could know about the truth. Why she must pass this way? The truth is a piece of a falling star; an invisible light from the universe is not actually what she finds. She is seeking a line, a connection between humanity and itself. This could be what helps her survive; the connection keeps her alive.

From what I have found, we are living in parallels, an invisible world exists beside the world in which we are living. They are twins; reflections as you find in the mirror. Wearing an invisible face as the mask every day, it seems we have a twin’s life. One is for your own inside; the other is for the world outside. The reflection is a connection of the parallel world with the mirror as a barrier helps you find out where the gap exists. The invisible mask is a connection of human faces which you must transcend if you want to reach others’ true thoughts.

The thing you cannot see: [12] Once you enter a tunnel, you only have one way to proceed. You must feel what is in the darkness. What are the atmospheric conditions you must pass through? (Olafur Eliasson, The Things You Cannot See, 2001) You must defeat yourself, escape your own fear to find your way. It’s the time when you reach into your own mind, seeking behind yourself, seeing exactly who you are. It is the time in which you are looking at yourself in the mirror, across your image, looking beyond your ‘face’. Gazing at your reflection in a pool, a mirror, a water face, a glass, etc… you are questioning yourself and the life you are living. You might weep, might be afraid, but that is the only moment that you can live as your own. You might become aware of your beauty at the same moment you touch your ugliness. (Olaf Nicolai, Portrait of the Artist as a Weeping Narcissus, 2000) [13] (Installation Art in the New Millennium by Nicola de Oliviera, Nicola Oxley and Michael Petry, 2003)

The invisible conception shows ideas of a thing that we do not notice but we know exists, we could not touch it but we felt its reflection. The reflection could be anything which presents its connection of both sides. The side we could not see, perhaps in the final analysis, is ‘a doctored replica that not only highlights the shortcomings of the real, but in addition, it inflicts its own consistence on itself.’ (Sabine Melchior-Bonnet).

Melchior-Bonnet also wrote, ‘The world represented in the mirror is curiously neutral in that its image depicts only the appearance, a dream existing only as a pale and colourless reality that is uncertain of its existence’ (264, The Empty Mirror of the Twentieth Century, The Mirror – A History by Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, 2001)

The female uses the mirror as a repository of beauty. Venus is born in the water, her first mirror. Vietnamese girls love to look at themselves in the water’s face: the pool, the well or the river. When spring comes, Vietnamese girls gather together in the communal house ‘đình làng’ [14] where there is always a pure, deep well for watching themselves to admire their beauty. A Vietnamese folk song:

‘If I can marry you
I will buy the Bát Tràng bricks
I will build a pure semicircular lake
For you to clean your feet and wash your face’ [15]

‘There has been no woman that sees herself ugly in the mirror’ (Cesar Oudin). And all the men know it. In this song, to have love from this girl, the young man agrees to buy the most expensive and beautiful bricks to build a lake in which she can admire herself. He knows this will make his beloved happy; this is all he needs.

I built a bamboo bridge of the traditional southern Vietnamese design, with poles slender as sunbeams, lashed together by rope and bamboo, the classic ‘monkey bridge’ that crosses Viet Nam’s inland waterways. By ones and twos, holding the rope handrails, travelers cross the bamboo bridge, cầu tre, to pass from shore to shore. This represents the connection between two shores, two sides; the reflection of Vietnamese girls to the water face – the rivers. My structure is small, made by wood sticks and lashed by glue and silk yarn.

I created a photo series of this symbol with the support of light and projector. I used the blue beams which come from projector’s eye to shine on the bridge and throw its reflection and its shadow on the walls. The photos were amazing with dark background and the structure appeared as the moonbeams in a full moon night. Powerful symbol! Romantic thoughts! And what people saw in their minds when they viewed the photos was not the real sculpture of the Vietnamese bamboo bridge but its reflection by light and shadows.

A short film of ten minutes presented the connection of light with the darkness of background. It led the audiences' eyes to walk in the tiny bamboo bridge, through the darkness of the environment. They walk, step by step, and do not know what is waiting for them at the end of night life. A fire...A light...Or nothing... Endless... Hopeless... Is it the real life around them…or not?

In 1998 – 1999, Chris Burden created a model of a bridge. The great view is while standing back, the large-scale model appeared to be the same size as the real one which could be seen through a panoramic window. [16] Viewers are trapped with the illusion of reality/unreality in the installation art. ‘The French Theorist, Gilles Deleuze, maintains the need to reconcile these two positions: the real and the copy. He suggests that each real thing exists in the different formats, including that of the simulacrum. In her book on Deleuze, the writer Claire Colebrook claims that “each unique work of art … is a simulation.” On the basis of this statement, it might be argued the virtual in the precondition of the real, the real, argues Deleuze, in an image first, before fulfilling its promise of becoming. “The idea of “’ copy’” presupposes some original model and Western thought has been dominated by the idea of the copy”. The temporary installation has given way to a permanent monument which exhibits a “paradoxical dysfunctionality”. The paradox resides in the fact that the installation is actually an anti-monument, it is inaccessible and difficult to view’. (42 - 43, Installation Art in the New Millennium by Nicola de Oliviera, Nicola Oxley and Michael Petry, 2003)

This brings to mind the archaeologists that excavate houses from ancient Rome. Why do they do it? Because we learn so much from the past. These houses were built so well they’ve lasted 2000 years buried in earth and volcanic ash. And in the societies that built them the people were inventing art, music, literature, government and language. They showed how wonderful the past was, where we have moved so far and fast. But look at what we are doing today with our world. No one in the future will learn anything from our society of today, because our buildings are made to last twenty years, not two thousand—and then are quickly disposed of. The same with our culture—it is shallow, immediate, and immediately forgotten. Nothing will remain of ‘today.’

The world has changed. We are always being told that our society is advancing; I think it’s declining. Just look what the twentieth and early twenty-first century civilizations alone have done: created two world wars and several other conflicts and repressive political ideologies that have caused the deaths of at least 500 million people. Spread pollution around the world that has practically destroyed our arable land, drinkable water and breathable air. Chopped down most of the Amazon rainforest…for money. Spread AIDS around the globe. Added five billion people to the existing world population of one billion in just 70 years, whilst simultaneously reducing the amount of arable land in the world. Warmed the globe so we are in imminent danger of destroying all life. Invented deadly forms of energy that we cannot control and invented powerful weapons that can kill hundreds of thousands in an instant. Created societies and laws which assert that the individual and the perverse should received preferential treatment over the mass and the normal. In efforts to eliminate racism have passed racist laws that give advantages and benefits to people based solely on their race (and/or gender, ethnicity, sexual preference, etc.) rather than on their intelligence and ability. We believe our world is wonderful with all of its wizardry technology, but we do not look at the invisible part which is destroying and damaging our lives. The much lauded computer and its channel, the internet, have done nothing to eliminate war, cure disease or reduce pollution. Civilized? Progressing? We’re regressing, and far less civilized than we’ve been in the last 10,000 years. The human race is doomed. Isn’t that sick and disheartening?

I have also been exploring the very poignant collection of photographs brought with me from Viet Nam, of Vietnamese dwellings in poverty stricken areas of Ho Chi Minh City. The first collection was made in October 2005, the second was made in April 2007 by a friend. In just eighteen months these areas have changed drastically. Where once the poor of HCMC had miserable dwellings amidst a neighborhood of community support, they now are faced with alienating low income housing that is new yet far more ugly than the hovels they are replacing. The reconstruction of the infrastructures is massive, slow and extremely destructive; the old neighborhoods have vanished—along with the vibrant little societies that existed amongst them. The famous Y Bridge connecting three districts, built during the French War, is already one-third gone. It is being rebuilt but it is doubtful if it will ever be the same again. These images of the slums were not sublime and beautiful, but they live as they are with the whole spirit of life-activities: the noisy riverboat markets, the darkness of small alleys, the cardboard houses, a great contrast to the new hi-tech districts of the city. I began a project last year to depict the slums in their entirety: the beauty that many cannot see, the ugliness in the supposed ‘new life’, the smells and feelings, via the markets, via the dark river, via the darkness of the apartment steps, the foods, the laundry hanging on the lines, etc. My Slum Series shows the contradiction of the modern face. The modernity of our life. Rich/poor society. Inside/outside our homes. How do people really act when they stay at home? How do they really behave when they go out, show their face in society?


III. THE BARRIER OF OUR LIFE


Creating a picture from our world, in 1995 Barbara Bloom presented a major installation with oriental masks of stone–coloured plaster and a wooden bridge. The floating world is about people who do not know where they should go. There is no destination for their entire life. [17] In installation art, the artist ‘is “trying to figure out what the setting is… and what actions might still be taken.” She implies that the proscenium arch has been removed and that the division between actors and audience is no longer clear. The removal of the frame that separates stage from the auditorium brings together the spheres of making and viewing. The ‘theatricality’ of the work, once seen as a weakness because of the reliance on entertaining the audience, has become a virtue. Rochelle Steiner goes so far as to stage that “theatricality paradoxically outlined the conditions that would come to define installation art”.’ (18, Introduction, Installation Art in the New Millennium by Nicola de Oliviera, Nicola Oxley and Michael Petry, 2003)

Theatrically, the communication between actors/actresses and their audiences is the performance, especially their faces. On stage, the actor must present very effective and interesting acts to reach the audiences’ attention. They lead the audience’s lives with the characters, feel their emotions and get influences from them. It means at the same time, the actor and their audience sharing the same world, combined from the real to the theatre. It is where the visualization of human’s face is the beginning of the mask. Early man’s desire for transformation, for losing his/her identity of face and shape, emerged from themselves seemingly contradictory need for self-repulsion as well as for total possession of themselves. In order to make the charm work for life, they felt they had to conceal their identity, to shake off their corporeal existence. Making this self-effacing act more effective, primitive man put on an artificial face and admitted with it another spirit. ‘The masked person becoming the impersonated spirit of the mask truly believed himself to be in possession of the mask’s demonic powers’. (7 – 8, The Mystery of the Other Face, The Other Face: The Mask In The Arts by Walter Sorell, 1973) Stages or lives, mask is the barrier that you must be across to close with the others. This barrier, whether it is available or invisible, is making people unable to communicate with each other. This is a wall between and against us to prevent creation of a true relationship of humanity; it separates our thoughts. Once we have it, we will not let it go and it automatically becomes us someday.

My ‘bridge’ idea is the way in how ‘it presents the truth’. In real life, the bridge connects people’s lands, from shore to shore. This is a connection, a sort of communication of many objects. The bridge is like the mask in reality, where people must across its way step by step, layer by layer to reach what they want to come, what they want to see, what they would like to discover.

The ‘bridge’ as of the Vietnamese Bamboo Bridge, slender materials but strong structure, small shapes but huge functions. It contains hundreds of steps crisscrossing the country’s inland waterways as of many layers you must pass through from your mind to the other. It is the power of communication, of reflection and connection which could not exist.

This is going to ultimately be a major installation with the powerful symbol of the mask, of the invisible world which the bridge contains in its meaning. No doubt in our lives, we cannot live without bridges. The world is 70% water. The world is floating. How can we stay together in peace without their support? How can we be close together without understanding people on the other side?

The British Face Documentary produced by Illuminations 2006 depicts National Portrait Gallery houses portraits of historically important and famous Britons, selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter. [18] The collection includes photographs and caricatures as well as paintings, drawings and sculpture. One of the portraits just is a collection of a famous living person’s DNA. He said the symbol of his DNA can suffice to identify him. [19]

Twentieth century movements in art and music were characterized by extreme simplicity of form and rejection of emotional content. In the form of punk rock music in 1976-78, the proscenium arch had to be removed between singers (‘actors’) and audience because ‘entertainment’ and its form was no longer valid; the audience felt totally alienated from the music in recent years so the punks came from and remained part of their audience. The punks retained the extreme simplicity of form whilst reviving emotional content. It was all about emotion. In the visual arts, Minimalism originated in New York City in the 1950s as a form of abstract art and became a major trend in the 1960s and '70s. No doubt that ‘Minimalism is therapeutic and at the same time educational.’ The Minimalists believed that a work of art should be entirely self-referential; personal elements were stripped away to reveal the objective, purely visual elements. That is, a person is supposed to move from a state of chaos to inner equilibrium and focused attention. He should be more inside himself. The minimalism in installation art ‘required the participation of the viewer in a space that was theatrical.’ (1178, Art in Theory 1900 - 2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas by Charles Harrison, Paul Wood)

If I choose the way for presenting the symbol of the mask in life in my installation as a minimalist, there arises the need to make models as a way of rehearsing alternative strategies. With these series of interesting photographs about ecological subjects, I must consider how, and if, I intend to use the theme in my final presentation. Dealing with the suitable materials for the bridge and other parts of my installation is also a concern. The progress in these areas will occupy the remaining five months of my course of studies.

.............................................................. date 25th May 2007


Notes:

[1] The Phantom of the Opera (Le Fantôme de l’Opéra in French) is a French novel by Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialization in Le Gaulois from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910. It is believed to have been inspired by George du Maurier's Trilby. It was translated into English in 1911. The story is about a man named Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, an eccentric, physically deformed genius who terrorizes the Opera Garnier in Paris, France. He builds his home beneath it and takes the love of his life, a beautiful soprano, under his wing.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Phantom_of_the_Opera (May 1st 2007)

[2] Kim Thanh in ‘Hồ Nguyệt Cô Hóa Cáo’ (photo included)

[3] Working as a lady’s companion, the young narrator learns her place. Her future looks bleak until, on a trip to the South of France, she meets Max de Winter, a fiftyish handsome widower twice her age, an owner of a legendary house – whose sudden proposal of marriage takes her by surprise. She accepts, but whisked from glamorous Monte Carlo to the ominous and brooding Manderley, this young woman became obsessed with Rebecca, his dead wife and found Max a changed man. The memory of Rebecca is forever kept alive by the forbidding housekeeper, Mrs Danvers. Rebecca is the haunting story of a young girl consumed by love and the struggle to find her identity. (Introduction to Rebecca from Sally Beauman, London 2002)

[4] The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later (Le Vicomte de Bragelonne ou Dix ans plus tard) is a novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. It is the third and last of the d'Artagnan Romances following The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After. It appeared first in serial form between 1847 and 1850. In the English translations the 268 chapters of this large volume are usually subdivided into three, but sometimes four or even five individual books. In three-volume English editions, the three volumes are entitled ‘The Vicomte de Bragelonne’, ‘Louise de la Vallière’ and ‘The Man in the Iron Mask.’ Each of these volumes is roughly the length of the original The Three Musketeers. In four-volume editions, the names of the volumes are kept, except that ‘Louise de la Vallière’ and ‘The Man in the Iron Mask’ are pushed down from second and third to third and fourth, with ‘Ten Years Later’ becoming the second volume. There are usually no volume-specific names in five-volume editions.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vicomte_de_Bragelonne (May 1st 2007)

Introduction and notes to The Man In The Iron Mask from David Coward, 1991: ‘There were reports that peasants had sighted the prisoner when Saint – Mars transferred him in 1687 from Exiles to Saint - Marguerite and thence to the Bastille in 1698: he was tall and short, young and old, robust and frail, and had hair that was black or quite possibly white. Some swore that they had seen a silver plate bearing a message at the prisoner’s window, or claimed to have examined the very tweezers which he used to pluck his beard beneath the mask which was fitted with the hinged chin-piece to allow the wearer to eat of finest food, which he did off gold plates. The mask made of cloth, seems to have turned into a mask of vair – the same fur of which Cinderella’s slipper was made before it was turned into verre (glass) by printer’s error – and thence became horrifying fer (iron). The mask itself was discovered as often as found a decapitated body, or simply a stone. It was said that the tomb had been connected by a dark tunnel to the Bastille itself.’

[5] Vanessa Beecroft, VB46.026.ali, 2001 (Installation Art in the New Millennium). All the women are made-up and dressed in a similar way, resembling shop-front mannequins or models in fashion shoots. Standing before the public like living pictures, these set-ups are not performance; the figures do not move, they only take up a position. Neither the models, nor the public show any emotion and no comment are made. Derived from media images of commoditized beauty, these ensembles suspend human communication, emasculating the charm of the erotic interplay.

[6] Beat Streuli – Portrait, 2002 and Billboard Sydney, 1998 / Streuli’s work is concerned with erasing history and difference, changing images into a flat Universalism. The work deliberately uses the language and techniques of advertising. Duraclear images are usually placed in main urban shopping area or on building concourses. The works consists of the larger-than-life portraits of anonymous passers-by who are depicted in a stage of deep introspection and juxtaposed with their actual surroundings. (Installation Art etc.)

[7] Pearls Before Breakfast
Can one of the nation's great musicians cut through the fog of a D.C. rush hour? Let's find out. - By Gene Weingarten - Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page W10

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html
(May 1st 2007)

[8] Adriano Guimarães and Fernando Guimarães, The theatre of Installation, 2000. This work by the Brazilian theatre directors Adriano and Fernando Guimarães dealt with presentation strategies of the stage and the gallery. Their interactive elements of their staging add an immersive dimension to their work (Installation Art etc.)

[9] Teresita Fernádez, Bamboo Cinema, 2001. The American artist Teresita Fernádez creates her work from acid green poles arranged in a maze of concentric circles. The artist was concerned with the cinematic view arrived at by the movement and placement of the audience. (Installation Art etc.)

[10] Louise Sudell, Assensor Nergo (Black lift), 1998. The British artist Louise Sudell often uses magic tricks and entrapment in her installation. In this work, she was influenced by the famous escapologist, Harry Houdini. When the spectators inside the lift, pressed a button to open the door, instead they became trapped inside. At the same time, a video link was activated so that viewers outside could see the panic on the faces of the people inside. Sudell is well aware of the potential for control which exists in the relationship between the artist and the viewer. (Installation Art etc.)

[11] Tiếng Kiều Đồng Vọng, a Vietnamese novel written by Đoàn Minh Phượng, a Vietnamese writer, published by Literary Publishing House, Vietnam, 2007
* Quoted by the author:
Dường như trên nóc bên thềm
Tiếng kiều đồng vọng bóng xiêm mơ màng
Nguyễn Du (1766 – 1820)

…Who gain the world and lose their soul.
They don't know. They can't see. Are you one of them?
…
And the time will come when you see we're all water,
Life flows on within you and without you.
George Harrison (1943 – 2001)

[12] Olafur Eliasson, The Things You Cannot See, 2001. This Danish artist is primarily interest in a simulation of natural phenomena as art, while at the same time revealing the technique used to recreate it. His ultimate aim is to question our perception of reality. The entrance to the exhibition was turn into a cardboard tunnel. When visitors walked through it, an optical illusion occurred which made it appear to rotate on its own axis. A machine produced a fog spiral in a side space that contorted and changed shape as the visitors progressed down the tunnel. The fog was expelled into the courtyard where, according to atmospheric conditions, it became more, or less, visible. (Installation Art etc.)

[13] Olaf Nicolai, Portrait of the Artist as a Weeping Narcissus, 2000. (Installation Art etc.)
The German Artist Olaf Nicolai’s sculpture depicts himself gazing at his reflection in a pool, in the manner of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray. Frozen in time, Nicolai’s likeness sheds a tear.

[14] The Vietnamese traditional village "làng” typically contains: a village gate, "lũy tre" (bamboo hedges), "đình làng" (communal house) where "thành hòang" (tutelary god) is worshiped, "đồng lúa" (rice field), "chùa" (pagoda) and houses of all families in the village.

[15]
Ước gì ta lấy được nàng
Để ta mua gạch Bát Tràng về xây
Xây dọc rồi lại xây ngang
Xây hồ bán nguyệt cho nàng rửa chân

Vietnamese Ceramic Craft has a long history dating back almost ten thousand years to the end of the Hòa Bình culture and the beginning of the Bắc Sơn culture. During 1010 – 1592, Viet Nam produced ceramic wares which were rich in form and varied in glaze not only to satisfy domestic demand but also to supply the export market. Bát Tràng was one of the most famous ceramic villages established. It developed during this period and production has continued until the present day. Nowadays antique Bát Tràng wares are collected by a number of museums overseas, having discovered in archaeological excavations at sites in Southeast Asian countries.

[16] Chris Burden, Mexican Bridge, 1998 – 99. The American artist Chris Burden created a room of Meccano-like-bridges, among them a model of an 19th century bridge, designed but never built, for a gorge in Mexico and another which replicated the 1928 Tyne Bridge in Newcastle for the first round of shows at BALTIC. (Installation Art etc.)

[17] Barbara Bloom, Pictures from the Floating World, 1995
Hundreds of male and female oriental masks of stone – coloured plaster were arranged in pairs on the red floor painted the colour of Chinese lacquer. A vitrine was placed in the middle of a carved wooden bridge spanning the whole space. Six magnifying lenses were mounted into the glass top of the vitrine and positioned over six grains of rice which each bore a miniature erotic Japanese image. The imagination focused on the theme of scale, composed as it was of elements both extremely large and small. The beauty of the forbidden, censored erotic Japanese Shunga prints contrasted with the large field of masks on the floor. (Installation Art etc.)

[18] The National Portrait Gallery is an art gallery primarily opened to the public in 1856, London. It houses portraits of historically important and famous British people, selected on the basis of the significance of the sitter. The collection includes photographs and caricatures as well as paintings, drawings and sculpture. Not all of the portraits are exceptional artistically, although there are self-portraits by William Hogarth, Sir Joshua Reynolds and other British artists of note. Some, such as the group portrait of the participants in the Somerset House Conference of 1604, are important historical documents in their own right. Often the curiosity value is greater than the artistic worth of a work, as in the case of the anamorphic portrait of Edward VI by William Scrots, Patrick Branwell Brontë's painting of his sisters Charlotte, Emily and Anne, or a sculpture of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in medieval costume. Portraits of living figures were allowed from 1969.

In addition to its permanent galleries of historical portraits, the National Portrait Gallery exhibits a rapidly changing collection of contemporary work, stages exhibitions of portrait art by individual artists and hosts the annual BP Portrait Prize competition. - Illumination 2006

[19] The British Face is produced in association with London’s Portrait Gallery and Five. In two films of Five, Fiona Shaw goes on a journey to explore pictures of people in history and today. Portraits are one of great subject of British Art. Why did monarchs like Richard II and Elizabeth I have their portraits made? Why, in an age drenched in digital photos, do artists continue to create portraits? And can works like Marc Quin’s portrait of eminent geneticist Sir John Sulston, created using a strand of the sitter’s DNA, re-invent portraits for the twenty-first century? – Illumination 2006