i am too big for this town & The Measuring Room [2008 -]

i am too big for this town - BLANK Gallery installation view, CiCi Blumstein 2008. Photo: Radek Hlavacek

In early 2008, for architecture08 festival, I decided to re-visit a large-scale installation first made for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern in 2002 – Feature Creature. This multi-disciplinary work centred around 5 dancers each attached to a huge helium filled sculpture. We worked with the soaring space of the Turbine Hall as a movement partner in a one-day, durational performance. The idea was to enable audiences to experience the movement of the dancers and sculptures from different perspectives, and for the contact improvisation and Butoh based choreography to be completely permeable – visitors were free to meander through the performance area, adding their own movement qualities to the piece.

Feature Creature – Tate Modern installation view. CiCi Blumstein 2008

i am too big for this town and The Measuring Room, turn the spectacle of this earlier installation on its head and, now stripped of all performers, movement, sound or moving image, allow the spectator to become a choreographic and architectural explorer. The installation falls into two distinct yet interconnected areas: Whilst the large airy sculptures, squeezed into a much smaller gallery at the edge of town [BLANK Gallery in Brighton], create unknown in-between spaces to explore, the confined and exact space of The Measuring Room challenges participants to negotiate and engage with its rules: Visitors are asked to play with a simple urban planning rule, the Floor Area Ratio or FAR, within the clearly defined space of a large sculptural measuring triangle. The more they play and physically negotiate / inhabit this triangular space, the more ‘creative plot’ paper they will be able to take away with them, to use as they wish.

See below for images of both parts of the installation.

i am too big for this town – main space:

i am too big for this town – BLANK Gallery installation view, CiCi Blumstein 2008.

i am too big for this town – BLANK Gallery installation view, CiCi Blumstein 2008. Photo: © Bip Mistry

i am too big for this town – BLANK Gallery installation view, CiCi Blumstein 2008.

The Measuring Room – BLANK Gallery installation view [door], CiCi Blumstein 2008.

i am too big for this town – BLANK Gallery installation view, CiCi Blumstein 2008. Photo: Radek Hlavacek

i am too big for this town – BLANK Gallery installation view, CiCi Blumstein 2008. Photo: © Bip Mistry

i am too big for this town – BLANK Gallery installation view, CiCi Blumstein 2008.

The Measuring Room – BLANK Gallery installation view [door], CiCi Blumstein 2008. Photo: © Bip Mistry

The Measuring Room:

The Measuring Room – BLANK Gallery installation view, CiCi Blumstein 2008. Photo: © Bip Mistry

The Measuring Room – BLANK Gallery installation view [door], CiCi Blumstein 2008. Photo: © Bip Mistry

The Measuring Room – BLANK Gallery installation view [door], CiCi Blumstein 2008.

The Measuring Room – BLANK Gallery installation view, CiCi Blumstein 2008. Photo: © Bip Mistry