Line Describing a Cone Causes a Crisis

B and I headed down to Tate modern to check out the new Tanks galleries last Sunday and in particular to catch the special screening of Anthony McCall's complete Cone films. The films are part of what McCall calls his Solid Light Films and are an exploration of cinema in a purely physical form. The films step aside from the image we are used to seeing projected on a flat surface and remove all sense of narrative, focussing instead on the projection of light and its journey through space. The screen is in essence expanded; no longer are time and action unfolding at the screen plane, instead the audience are stood either side of them as they aoccupy the centre of the theatre between projector and screen.

The first of these expanded cinema films is Line Describing a Cone 1972. A beam of light is projected onto a black screen and gradually begins to draw a line, clockwise, until it has gone full circle and created a large hollow cone. Obviously the atmosphere needs to be quite dense in order for the light to be visible and so theatrical smoke is employed to delineate it. The result is a minimal and ethereal work blending sculptural form with the intangibility of projected light, existing in the space for only the 30 minute duration of the film. The four works that followed were Conical Solid (1974) a blade of light that rotates from a fixed central axis at varying speeds. Cone of Variable Volume (1974) a projected light cone that expands and contracts at varying speeds and Partial Cone (1974) which creates a range of surface qualities through a half-cone of light by blinking and flashing.

The films were beautiful and both inspiring and relevant despite being 40 years old.  The only downside was the somewhat ropey presentation by Tate.(B saw them at the Serpentine and informs me that they were much better done.) First of all there was some unknown delay in getting into the space followed rapidly by evacuation as the fire alarms went off having not been deactivated for the event that involved the production of smoke!  After an hours wait, however, it looked like we were finally going to get to see the cone films after all.

On entering the room a second time it was obvious that, despite its valiant effort in triggering the fire alarm, the puny little hazer on the floor was not going to cope with the cavernous back hall of the new Tanks space and unfortunately the films struggled at times to be as clear as they could be. When the little machine was puffing its hardest there were some beautiful textures developing within the crisp edges of the cone but these tailed off the closer you got to the projection screen.  The final film that was supposed to be more about the textural qualities projected was barely visible at all.  It led the two of us to think, and me to overhear another couple say "imagine how good this would have been in the 70's when everyone was smoking!"