'Ozymandias' will be a one night only sculpture / installation / sound event by Debora Alanna.
1060 North Park (at Cook St) in Victoria BC.
25 September 2014
7-9 pm
7-9 pm
Debora Alanna:
'Ozymandias' is based on ideas within the Ozymandias poem (below) by Percy Bysshe Shelley, first published in 1818. He wrote his poem in response to a museum artifact, an Egyptian sculpture remnant of King Ramses ll - broken remains of a lost civilization he saw at the British Museum. Because Shelley extrapolated ideas from an archaeological fragment for his poem, it seems fitting that I may use his poem as a starting point for this work.
My 'Ozymandias' sculpture installation (with improvised piano as soundscape) responds to images Shelley's poem elicits - the fragmentary remnants of culture / humanity. This sculpture installation projects what myth might remain of us if we perish entirely because we continue to exploit, abuse nature. Ozymandias alludes to what we may befall - a desert of existence - if we do not consistently employ generative action. Shelley’s poem helped me to visualize this conjecture.
My work projects our yet unwritten ancient story, our ‘stand in the desert’ with headless / heedless abandon allowing a time travellers’ glimpse into our worse possible future.
A plaster handmade sculpture central to my installation emerged from Shelley’s poem phrase ‘Two vast and trunkless legs’. Above, a hand-like form is situated above the legs holds a head (our head) in its grasp, on its side – Brancusi-like, the death of humanity. The ‘fingers’ hold hardened drapery that acknowledges how we are presently swathed in materiality that envelops our consciousness, conscientiousness.
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Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley. ~ 11 January 1818
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
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