Diana Baker Smith
Falling Towards Another (A Score for the Void)
2024
Wall Painting and Live Performance
Dancers: Emma Fishwick, Isabella Stone
Choreography: Diana Baker Smith, Sofie Burgoyne
Textile consultation: Leah Giblin
Design assistance: Zoe Gojnich and Kate Polkingorne
Clothing: Kowtow
Falling Towards Another (A Score for the Void) is the second Judy Wheeler Commission, PICA’s annual series of site-specific works that respond to the history and site of PICA. For this new commission, Baker Smith presents a graphic score and live performance in response to PICA’s first-floor mezzanine level, otherwise known as the ‘void’.
Painted across the walls of the mezzanine, Baker Smith’s score draws on PICA’s archive of architectural plans and photographs of the building, particularly from the time of its 1991 transformation from a technical college into its present-day role as a contemporary art space. The score’s shapes indicate the original location of different architectural features. Ellipses (represented by three dots) signify where doorways and windows once were, straight lines stand for architraves and handrails, while elliptical broken lines allude to the perpetual movement of time and history, where the past is continually made present. Falling Towards Another (A Score for the Void) prompts audiences to consider the particularities of this distinctive space and directs our attention towards its historical layers, architectural interventions and reconfigurations.
The title of the work, Falling Towards Another, is drawn from German philosopher Karl Marx’s model of dialectical logic, referencing the elliptical motion of planets: ‘It is a contradiction to depict one body as constantly falling towards another and at the same time constantly flying away from it.’ Guided by the graphic score, these two tendencies of motion form the basis of the push-pull movements of two dancers during a live performance around the void.
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The 2024 Judy Wheeler Commission is made possible by the generosity of the Simpson Family.
Installation view and performance, Falling Towards Another (A Score for the Void), Judy Wheeler Commission, Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, 2024. Photo: Daniel Grant.