EXTRACTS FROM THE PRESS DOSSIER: INTERVIEWS FOR THE 8th INTERNATIONAL ISTANBUL BIENNIAL #2
used for 8th International Istanbul Biennial,
curated by Dan Cameron
(both in English and Turkish)
© Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts, Istanbul, June-August 2003
"NEW VENTURE OF MINE, IT’S GOING TO BE A RESTAURANT, DO YOU LIKE IT"?
AN INTERVIEW WITH RUNA ISLAM
Basak Senova: To begin with, what is the story behind the project that will be presented at the Istanbul Biennial?
Runa Islam: The project is a film/ video work that I’ve just completed. It is the result of a commission, based specifically in the NE of England, that required an artistic response to the region. I located a significant building, which still lives off it's reputation from it's cameo in the early 70’s cult film, Get Carter. I discovered it to be in almost exactly the same state as it was in the film. The building was a purpose made multi- storey brutalist car park. Officially, it is known as the Gateshead Shopping centre and car park, or aka ‘Get Carter Car Park’. Amongst other things, it was set to be the paradigm of modern architecture in the mid-60's, something very avant garde for the NE of England. At the top of the 13 storeys structure was a pavilion like space designed to be a restaurant with a 360-degree vista of the region. It really has an impressive view, which fulfils the vision of modernist architecture; to function as a vessel to house in very formal materials, an interior that minimally intervenes between the natural environments. It is particularly the large curved edged, mostly, square windows that epitomise the feeling the design of the late 60’s early 70’s. The restaurant, though visionary for that time in the region, was never created. Neither was the nightclub, also intended to be sited within the top floor.
In the film there is a scene where architects are consulting the proprietor concerning the interior décor. The very famous consequent scene, is a classic, where Micheal Caine, who plays Carter, intrudes and throws the proprietor from the top of the car park. The restaurant seems to be left incomplete in both the film and in its’ subsequent history.
BS: Both as an unfinished modern architectural utopia and a setting for a cult film, Gateshead Multi-Storey Car Park -with its never finished restaurant on the top- is an unsettling landmark for the Newcastle/ Gateshead. Thereby, there are always generic codes -time and space based- of the building inscribed in the common memory of the region. So, there must be many storylines about the building, how did your research develop?
RI: There are many strands and stories that opened up in my research of the space. I spoke at length with the architect, Owen Luder, who is now retired and based in London. He described how the building, monumental in scale, was one of the first multi-storey car parks in the country. It was to be a modern symbol, of mobility, consumerism and leisure. He explained how the shopping centre at the base of the car park was created for a new class of shopper, but the types of retail outlets desired only opened up in nearby Newcastle. Almost from the beginning the complex became a ‘peripheral’ town ‘centre’. The dereliction also began early on, firstly, the place was closed for many years for lack of use, (later opened with no real renovation). Secondly, as the materials used in the development were poor the building showed signs of premature decay. There are also stories of corrupt councillors of the time embezzling and misdirecting money and resources meant for the construction. I didn’t follow these trails of investigation as I felt they were obvious in what could have emerged as a documentary of the many tales.
I actually took up a line of inquiry, asking Owen Luder to let me have a look at the original plans for the restaurant interior. I became very intrigued in the incomplete vision he’d had of a restaurant up in what now seems, an unsurmounted plateau. Surprisingly, the venture of the restaurant never reached a point where interior designers were asked to make plans. In my film/ video, the mock up film set of the restaurant was made as part hypothesis/ conjecture and fiction between myself, the architect and the reference books that are available on design of that era. Owen Luder pointed me towards Robin Day, the interior designer of the Royal Festival Hall and the Barbican in London. The luminous orange chairs are his very famous trademark polyprop chairs designed for mass production. Ubiquitous throughout the 70’s in public places like canteens, function halls and classrooms. They are very functional and despite being reminiscent of school, I thought they looked quintessentially stylish and formal in my hypothetical restaurant.
The strand that really influenced the work, though all the aspects have significance was when I was told that the original maquette of the building still existed. The almost perfectly in tact nature of the maquette instigated my interest to make a piece that could shift and project between comparisons of the model, the actual/ real and then the imaginary (of how the restaurant should have been). The piece is actually titled after the details written on the side of the model ‘Scale (1/ 16 inch = 1 foot)’. The model is the miniture, incarnate from the architecture imaginary. Scaled up, it becomes the real, and from that position I have returned to the imaginary, by creating a open-ended story which works like a wish fulfilment of the architects vision. I actually see it as a wishful daydream of the building itself. The installation, presented at the Istanbul Biennial, will become a meditation on a series of film passages that concentrate on the maquette, on the real building and a set of non- narratives that occur in a fictional restaurant, which is a film set (another model).
BS: Your project puts forward three mirror-like narratives on building up the restaurant: (i) of the building, (ii) of the film “Get Carter”, and (iii) of the plot that takes place in your project. Basically, you are re-creating another cinematographic time and space realm, which develops in synch with the other narratives in the common memory. How do you define the parameters of this realm? (In other words what is your referent to use/create the differences and the similarities of this new realm?)
RI: It’s important to mention that the installation engages two screens in it’s presentation of the edited filmed material. This already creates a doubled time, and in effect a type of reflexive mirror. Though the screens are made to emphasise the element of projection rather than reflection. One image is smaller and placed in the way of the larger screen. From some positions the smaller image can look larger than the main screen in the background. My idea was to muse on the how the real is often diminished by the imaginary. Or how the model can out scale the real. The large screen has mainly scenarios of the restaurant in which waiters are preparing to serve two old diners. It also represents images of the maquette in comparison to the real building, which in effect is smaller in scale. The installation from a side perspective is set up to mimic a projection. Looking similar to a small image in a film projector, magnified by the distance it is thrown.
The shifting perspectives and meanings are important in what you consider the multi-narratives involved in the work. It is certainly multi-referential. The waiters and the diners playing out rituals of an idealised restaurant are underpinned by the other stories. The socio-political history of the building as an undermined and failed venture are interplayed with the architects prototype and the consequent empty ‘relic’ like nature of the building. The real time is weaved with a fictional and bygone time. And of course the cinematic time you mention. The iconic legacy of the building’s appearance in Get Carter, overshadows its abandoned present state. If the building is demolished, as is rumoured, the maquette, the cameo in Get Carter and the small fictions I have created, will out live the ‘actual’ site.
BS: What do you think about experiencing different periods of time in the same space? How about constructing fictive spaces in sync with periods of time?
RI: This is very much the nature of the work. Especially, the work is divided across the screens to promote the associations and disassociations between the separate times/ images. In one passage during the 16 or so minutes of the entire piece, both screens are filled up with same image of a 360 degree camera turn in the empty restaurant space. At this point a very lively composed music track takes over and the sync of pictures are disturbed by the incongruity of the image and sound.
