Altering One's State of Mind
An Atlas of Es Devlin, an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, from November 18, 2023, through August 11, 2024.
It is an understatement to say that the extent of Es Devlin's work is impressive. As a world-renowned spatial experience designer, she goes by the official title of British artist and stage designer.
Es Devlin's work is best described in her own words in the exhibition's overture:
Es Devlin's Voice:
I've always drawn on my books.
I write in their margins,
Underline the phrases that resonate,
The play scripts, opera, pop music scores and lyrics, poems, research texts, lists of endangered species and languages.
My markings are a map
So I can find my way,
Pick up my train of thought
Next time I visit.
I've always loved books with printed dashed lines and scissors,
Books that invite you to cut and fold, paste their pages - to transform printed text and music into sculpture,
To translate Ideas into forms
And action.
When I was about 11 years old, I remember walking down a music school corridor.
Light and sound emanated through the glass windows of each practice room.
I could hear someone playing a Bach cello suite through one window, a Miles Davis trumpet piece through another, a soprano singing Mozart, someone was reciting a Shakespeare text, a guitarist was playing Led Zeppelin.
I observed a shaft of light in the corridor illuminating dust particles in the air, and I thought:
Being here, in the space in between, between music, light and architecture - this is also a kind of practice.
I'm still walking down this corridor now - sometimes alone, often holding hands, running at speed, with choreographers, composers, directors, writers, activists, engineers, and dancers.
We read and draw alone and together, imagining worlds that don't yet exist.
All of the ideas start on a piece of paper like the ones in front of you, in a room like this. We cut and glue pieces of cardboard into sculptures that will be translated into spaces much bigger than this. Sometimes in front of audiences of hundreds, sometimes thousands, or hundreds of thousands.
Every audience is a temporary society,
A rehearsal community.
We arrive in one state,
Sit or stand close together in the dark for a few hours,
Collectively imagining our way into experimental perspectives,
Collectively imagining our way into a new world.
We depart in an altered state, the architecture of our minds redrawn by new thoughts and feelings.
Sometimes we use magic and illusion.
If we can destabilize our own expectations about how objects behave in a theatre,
Then maybe we can start to question our other fixed beliefs.
Here, we can rewrite the rules.
We can decide together, right now, that this studio wall is not really a wall, but a piece of paper - which we can tear open and walk through together.
Photos top to bottom, left to right: 1. Opening film installation | 2. Iris | 3. Exhibition gallery | 4. Model, Your Voices, Acrylic, filament, nylon thread, and LED, recreated for exhibition; Installed 2022, Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, New York, USA | 5. Model of the Seed, a 15-meter sculpture at the Jubail Mangrove Park, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 2020.
