Abstract
This work for The Lady Chapel by Matthew Sansom and Andy Thomson explores through sound, music and moving image how ideas of a sublime heterotopia are engendered both in terms of the historical and contemporary contexts of this living Cathedral space. Heterotopic space(1) is apparent here in the way that multi-layered space, representations of space, representational and social spaces intersect throughout the Cathedral. The mirror space, for example, used to look at the Cathedral ceiling is such a space. It occurred to us that we could highjack this mirror space to represent other aspects of space and of the sublime as indeed the ceiling itself does, it being a wondrous example of ingenuity and skill but also a representation of a heraldic and symbolic sacred space of man and of the majesty of Christ’s reign. The work represents other sacred spaces through sound and image, perhaps also finding the sublime in the everyday. Texts included in the work are from the following sources: Kierkegaard, Changeux, Sanai, Foucault, C.S Lewis, Plutarch, 1 Corinthians 12:12, Qur'an 41:53, Rumi, Exodus 3:14, John 3:8, Al-Nasafi, Sextus the Pythagorean, Al-Kharraz, Ansari, Rembrandt, Derrida, Žižek, Bergson. 1. Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias - essay by Michael Foucault - Architecture /Mouvement/ Continuité October, 1984; (“Des Espace Autres,” March 1967 Translated from the French by Jay Miskowiec)