A fold axis, “is the closest approximation to a straight line that when moved parallel to itself, generates the form of the fold.”
Donath and Parker, 1964
At the end of February we went to the Fruitmarket Gallery to watch – Beginning a line is beginning a building: a live archive of transition. A collaborative project by artist and poet Rhona Warwick Paterson and dancer and choreographer Eve Mutso that responded to the period of the Fruitmarket’s redevelopment and reopening in word, movement and sound.
Three films; After Orta, Cunei Form and Lean To, were screened under Jyll Bradley’s Pardes installation. Each film was set in a different phase of the building’s redevelopment – before, during and after construction (and coincidentally the pandemic).
The midway work – Cunei Form – most caught our imagination. Sitting in the now finished space under the Pardes beams, watching the screen show the marks, gashes and tears of the building’s fabric while words and movement took us back in time 4000 years to the beginnings of poetry and the first author – a priestess called Enheduanna. Paterson afterwards discussed how cunei form’s impressed marks were to be read under a raking light so the shadows cast formed part of the script.
Lines and Folds – Artists’ book made in response to visit.
Spring sunshine casting shadows to be read.
