Becoming An Image

I waited ages to see Becoming An Image by Cassils, but tonight I finally got my chance.

I thought I knew what it would be like, because I know what happens and I’ve seen the pictures and, y’know, I have an imagination and everything. But… no.

If you’re not familiar with the work, it begins in the dark, with the audience close together in a circle around a central pillar of clay. We can’t see anything. Cassils enters the circle, naked, and we hear them begin to beat the clay. The only time we see anything is when a photographer uses the flash. For a split-second the image is burnt onto our retinas, then fades. The first couple of times it happened tonight there were gasps. It’s like having your brain photocopied.

Twenty minutes later, there remains only a lumpen, misshapen, hammered-to-fuck pile of clay.

I think it’s maybe the best thing I’ve ever seen.

Or not seen.

You don’t really see a lot. And what you do see is, like I say, unexpected.

Because I’ve spent 3+ years looking at the images of Cassils from this work, I’d completely underestimated what my mind would do.

Firstly, it’s not quite pitch black, because the tiny green on-light from the camera dances around the space like some kind of insect.

Secondly, you’re never quite looking where you think you’re looking. As one frame burns onto your eyes, you try to drink the whole image in before it fades, but that means your eyes dart around your head chasing its centre. The images in your brain moves with them. And then, when another flash happens, you find your eyes somewhere on the floor by your feet, or over at the other side of the audience, and you have to concentrate on anchoring your focus back on the clay so you don’t miss the next one.

And sometimes you’re still enjoying one fading image when that little green insect light dances its way out from the middle of it, and it’s like someone shaking your etch-a-sketch before you’re finished.

And sometimes you blink.

And sometimes you’re halfway through a blink and the only image you retain is a row of black and white feet from everyone who’s facing you.

And by the way it’s all black and white in your retina-brain. I wasn’t expecting that.

I kept having thoughts about what it meant and what it was saying — lots of things — but I think ultimately I’m much more interested in trying to retain a trace of those brain images — a trace of the traces.