Return to The Lyric

Part 2: Waxing Lyrical

I’ve returned to the Cinema of my Youth on a cold wet-n-windy October night last week, it was for an evening titled ‘In Conversation with Lucy Skaer’, the 2009 Turner Prize nominated Artist, as she explores her interest in the rapport between film and sculpture; the projector and the resulting spiritual space created by it.

Skaer had originally set out to find a projector either in storage or a warehouse and make the film scenario specific to wherever it was found. Miraculously they discovered that the Lyric still had its projectors locked away in the projection room, almost in a time capsule for over 22 years, untouched by human eyes. Inspired by this, Skaer seems to have developed a cinematic film more in context to its location.

The film itself is shot not from a person’s perspective, but as if a machine itself was making the movie from all its residual images and experiences it had as a projector over its life. Lucy also explores the standard cinematic timeframe of a film, intermingled with the Lyric’s dormancy, trying to almost create a wormhole in the space-time continual, back to the projectors static years all alone in the projection room slowly gathering dust.

The evening was originally planned as an ‘In conversation’ but instead the format was three perspective audio presentations by Lucy Skaer, Linzi Stauvers and Anna Reid, all of which were introduced by the kind Gill Parks.

So armed with my trusty Olympus Digital Audio Recorder, I decided to create Podcasts from the evening’s readings. So I sat back once again in the darkness of the derelict Lyric Picture House in Armley Leeds, with the cinema’s two restored Kalee 20 projectors playing this new 35mm film in the background. So, like me, sit back and enjoy their presentations.

PODCAST 1: Gill Parks : Pavilion Programme Producer

Gill introduced the evening, she’s a former University of Leeds graduate where she was awarded a BA (Hons) in History of Art and an MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies and now works with Pavilion to research and produce the team’s programme of commissions, events and interaction.

PODCAST 2: Lucy Skaer : Artist

No intro needed for Lucy, as the above synopsis says it all.

PODCAST 3: Linzi Stauvers – Programme Producer

Linzi’s presentation was my favourite of the evening, with a BA and MA in the History of Art and a Phd from UCL, her historical narrative and literal reference to J.G Ballard’s science fiction novel Crystal World crossed with Alain Robbe-Grillet’s realism novel Jealousy was a joy to the ears.

PODCAST 4: Anna Reid – Artistic Director

Anna’s reading was from the point-of-view of what Pavilion was thinking about when they wanted to work with Lucy Skaer and its broader programme. Anna read a short text from François Laruelle’s novel The Concept of Non-Photography called A Philosophy of Creation…I’ll warn you, it’s heavy ‘Art Speak’ stuff.