David Eckard: Anxious Murmur

In natural history museums, science centers or in any other form of collection, I’m invariably drawn to miniature reproductions. These painstakingly labored depictions of heroic engineering achievements, collective historical moments and revered natural and cultural sites present themselves silently in stasis, arrested in a curatorial amber. 

There is something about the paralyzed moment, the uncanny absence of a temporal progression and the stylistic homogenization of the crafted components that sets my teeth on edge.

Seductive, melancholic, fantastic miniatures that as Susan Stewart writes in On Longing are “a diminutive, and thereby manipulatable, version of experience, a version which is domesticated and protected from contamination.”

Finished editing a small video built from footage and audio gathered in Berlin.

On the day I visited the Holocaust Memorial by the Brandenburg Gates, a crew of men were diligently sanding off the graffiti, scuff marks and stains that had built up or had been applied to the individual components that make up the memorial’s expansive field of horizontal plinths.

I shot some footage and proceeded to walk on towards the Reichstag when a group of musicians in full regalia stepped through the gates and proceeded to parade down the avenue playing traditional tunes. It felt as though I had come upon two incidents of historical and cultural “maintenance”: a memorial being kept impervious to entropy and the markings of temporal and social collision and the spectacle and affirmation of a tradition that exists now in the realm of the performed nostalgic. 

My apartment looks out onto the main square in Pont-Aven. Every Tuesday from about 8:30 to 1:00 there is a big public market with an amazing assortment of produce, cheeses, meat, local honey, etc. I wanted to add a little visual offering to the mix so I made an eight panel drawing (quick low budget charcoal on cardboard) that filled my front and upper floor windows. I created an unfurling, high contrast linked graphic that abstractly references some of the narrative sequences and visual timbre of “Moby Dick” flavored with the ever present mariner culture (real and performed) here in the region.

Imagine Melville realized by Sid and Marty Kroft…..

Through the summer as the tourist crowds increase, I will continue to create new drawings and explore the theatricality, sequential, framing and transient potentials of this public format. A video projection screen will also show up in one of the windows to allow for night sequences. 

Here are a few rough shots I snapped right before the clouds opened up and absolutely drenched the market.

I’ll be getting better shots without the glare when it stops raining.

Left Side

Right Side

Slowly starting to add the little bits of visual detritus, clippings, found scraps, etc. to the corners and edges of the working space. 

Printed out a few photos from the travel trips to pin to the walls (I can’t just have soccer imagery from the sports page…)

of my studio…..

Here’s a little video spin

After what has been too, too long I had a decent day in the studio. Made the big “to do after the term ends” list and continued to work on a series of related drawings. There have been too many large gaps of time and it’s difficult to pick up from the last session but will continue to adjust to the new position, its demands and the reality of being here. Summer is right around the corner and I know even three or four solid studio days will re-align the psyche. 

I’m 50 pages from finishing up Moby Dick and I’m realizing it has completely infiltrated my images. 

Water, river current, ocean, tidal rhythms, dramatic weather (and mood) shifts seem to propel me along here in Pont-Aven. A few steps from my studio is a little stone structure that used to shelter women washing the laundry at the river’s edge. A fantastic place to sit, ruminate, meditate, hydrate and contemplate. Midway through my project list is a river propelled zoetrope. I want to convert the little structure into a one or two person theatre and produce a series of gestural movement to play out with the river’s pace. We have an old school arc welder at the school and will hopefully fire it up (and not the school) during the summer.

Here’s a few shots of some of the drawings. The two single images, I believe, are finished and the wall shots are pieces that will go through many more transformations (in fact have since the photos were taken). 

I was wandering around the Historical Museum in Berlin thinking about my tableau vivants and theatrical staging, arrested moments, magic tricks, artifice, etc. and came across these amazing little diorama/set/image stages. 

The head is spinning now around a print or drawing series or kit that can be deployed as a mini proscenium. Similar to the “5 US Tragedies” performance props I used in Rio but freed from all of the performative actions.

Very strange Berlin moment.

Living sculpture grabbing a quick bratwurst before returning to work.