Eight — Pascale Bardos

E i g h t

In the town I was born and raised, Byron Bay, during winter when there is rarely a cloud in sight, the crisp clear sky amplifies colours that embodies one in awe. Every day for a week, during the periods of dawn and dusk, I stationed myself at the most easterly point of Australia. I positioned four cameras respectively in the directions of north, south, east and west and embarked upon a durational investigation observing the transition of light in the sky. I would press record on the cameras, sit back, observe and orientate myself to the moment, becoming attuned to the planetary cycle of the Earth. My perceptions anchored in those present moments reinforced my experiential understanding of the heliocentric cycle of the Earth revolving around the sun.

The transcendent experience and countless hours of film all distilled into eight minutes of footage from one moment at dawn, from the camera positioned towards the east while the sun set in the west. The footage shows a pivotal moment when the sky transitions into gradients of an immersive spectrum of shifting colours. It was the most captivating period I was experiencing, a delicate and poignant moment when day falls into night. The eight minutes of film fluxes into a continual loop, the rippling and transitional state of the sky flows repetitively forwards and backwards. The footage captures colour fields and fragile transitions of hues. Blue to pink, lilac to gold. The video is recognised to be the sky though becomes ambiguous as the moving image turns into a field of colour without a focal point. For one brief moment in the selected footage, three birds fly across the scene. They instil an anchoring point that allows a reorientation back to scale, time and place.

I positioned myself on top of the cape under the lighthouse. The lighthouse has two beams on opposite sides; the cyclical rotation illuminates both the land and the ocean simultaneously. The lighthouse stands at the union between the two and spreads light upon them both, calling upon wonderers to orientate themselves to the light. The waves of light from the lighthouse are captured in the work ‘Eight.’ The brushing of light activates the camera to readjust, which forms a rhythmic pulse in the film that captures the progression of time.

The camera lens is consistently adjusting to the transition of light and struggles to focus without a focal point. The technology surrenders to the transition, as it finds focus upon the clear sky. Similarly, we are consistently changing and adjusting to our environment as well as to our presupposed conditions of perception. Our position within and from the Earth comes back into focus. The cameras actions mirror our own readjustments of perception and orientation to the present, as we are consistently adapting and adjusting to our surroundings and additional collective sedimentations of knowledge.

Viewing the sky is a worldwide collective experience that is familiar and ever present in our lives. It forms an individual encounter that connects us to the collective experience of terrestrial life. I documented countless hours of skyscapes and by filming in all four directions, a 360° peripheral view of a singular moment was able to be sutured together. The expanded view, transposed into a retracted moment.

The work intends to alter the innate interaction of sunlight from an exterior encounter to an interior contemplation of being in and from the world. The work evokes a subconscious alternate perspective; as the viewer is unaware of perceiving the opposing sky, they continue to subconsciously mirror the colours that exist from the causal effect of the sun’s light. The projector becomes the source of light that projects an image of the opposing sky of the sunset onto the opposite side of the room.

‘Eight’ is a product of an investigation into origin that documents the sky as the perceptual ends of visual experience. The piece was filmed at my birthplace alongside my mother, my point of origin. The work is a spatial encounter that is activated by a projection of light into space, a casting of footage upon a surface of the wall that mirrors onto the floor. The large-scale projection is framed by the wall, creating a portal to extrinsic and intrinsic being. The encounter of light embodies multiple spatial and temporal notions that fuse together through the experience of the work: The spatial environment (gallery), one’s internal space (mind) and the space of the external world (sky). These three spaces unite as a phenomenology of becoming.

The work is an experiential encounter of light in space that mimics the elemental rhythm of the world. The viewer experiencing the work cognitively mirrors what they perceive. We the audience are mirroring the sky, mirroring the transition of light, and consequently embodying space. Selecting eight minutes of footage was an intuitive decision, further research revealed that it takes eight minutes and twenty seconds for sunlight to reach Earth. The light that illuminates our day is light from the past. ‘Eight’ mirrors this notion by capturing light from the past to illuminate the present.

“[T]hrough the brilliance of an image, the distant past resounds with echoes, and it is hard to know at what depth these echoes will reverberate and die away.” Our brain cognitively perceives and mirrors our surroundings emotionally and physically. This contemplation has brought my attention to the responsibility embedded in creating work and the inherent impacts upon the viewer as a perceptual and experiential event. The cause and effect of my actions and the potential repercussions from encounters with art is at the forefront of my practice. The gentle transitional pace and delicate colours of ‘Eight’ were expressed with the intention of stimulating a stillness and refuge, both in the physical environment and mental space. The skies field of colour, mirrored in one’s mind, reflects a clear abyss that speaks of internal and external infinities. The ebb and flow of the footage works to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which holds a soothing and calming effect through the ancestral memory of being in the womb in a rocking body of fluid. The light inhaling and exhaling evokes the observer to breathe which holds a moment to connect with the presence of space.