A Delay in Glass

Author(s): Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio

Reviewed work(s):
Source: Assemblage, No. 6 (Jun., 1988), pp. 62-71
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3171045 .
Accessed: 20/02/2012 11:33
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Elizabeth

Diller

Scofidio

Ricardo
A

Elizabeth Diller is Associate Professor

Adjunct at the Channin School of Architecture, Cooper Union. This year she is
a Visiting Critic at the Architectural
Association in London and an Assistant
ProfessorAdjunct at the School of
Architectureat Columbia University.
Ricardo Scofidio has been Professorof
Architectureat the Cooper Union since
1967. Diller and Scofidio have been
workingcollaborativelysince 1979, producing numerous architecturalprojects
and installations.
In October 1987 A Delay in Glass was
performedin the context of Aproposof

MarcelDuchamp:A CentennialTribute,
sponsoredby the Philadelphia Museum
of Art, the permanent home of the Large
Glass. The photographspresentedhere
depict its first performanceas a workin-progressat LaMama Experimental
Theater in New York.

Delay

in

Glass

A Delay in Glass, or The Rotary Notary and His Hot

Plate, is an experimentaltheater work ignited by Marcel
Duchamp's The Bride StrippedBare by Her Bachelors,
Even, or Large Glass. It is a tragicomedy,a circuitous antinarrativewhose objective is the irreconcilabilityof text and
image. There are seven animate components, four human
elements - the bachelor, the bride, the witness, and the
juggler- and three constructedelements - the field, the
apparatus,and the mechanical bed.
The bachelor.The nine bachelors may be regardedas fractions of the masculine element, both in characterand in
the flesh. He is introduced as an apparition, one fraction
at a time. He is an archetype. He wears a generic suit that
he constructsaround his body from patterns. His suit is a
container;blue light leaks from his collar, his shirt, his
trousercuffs.
The bride. She is a physical specimen, an exoskeleton. Her
anatomy is a hinge. She wears chastity armor with a modesty mechanism; she wears a rotatingbride/widow'sveil.
The witness. He is an eyewitness. He is a voyeur. He is the
controlling eye. He governs the visual apparatusand is one
of its components. He wears a light as a prostheticdevice.
He recites litanies from eye charts.

The bride's armor

The juggler. He is the tender of gravity. He has the stability

of a tripod but is always out of equilibrium. He is the foil.
He is an automarionette. Gravityadjustshis will. He is the
master of irony. He specializes in black humor.
63

i6

i 1.

r"
4

..i
I/

assemblage 6

Glass:a slow liquid, continually molten,

a reversiblevantage and vanishing point.
Cut: a vertical diptych, an "inframince"
pulled out of the continuum, a section
cut through a perspective, a section cut
through time, through the moment of
desire.
Hinge: a generatrix, a form of spatial
contradiction, a strategy of reprogramming, androgyny, meanings that rotate
about the axis of a word, a fluctuation
between written and pictorialtexts, a

Analysisof the lower panel, the BachelorApparatus:The picture

plane of the perspective bisects the plan. It bisects the chocolate
grinder, the drive shaft of the water mill, and the hinge of the
scissors.The narrativespatial condition of the image is impaled
through the glass pane, the plane of the film of paint. The
moment of coincidence between image and glass is the section
cut, where all the dimensions are true and undisturbed by
perspective.

DIATEXT.

64

Diller and Scofidio

Af?:

:;n;

o
w:
:w~lwamwftm

Wl?::

The field of performance is divided in half across its width by

a linear track that creates a front and a rear relative to the
position of the audience. This centerline separates the zone
of the female from that of the male. (The verticallystacked
domains of bride and bachelor in the Large Glasshave been
rotated 90 degrees to form a site plan.)
The apparatus has two constituent parts, a concealing panel and
a revealing panel. The concealing panel, a taut plane of surgical
rubber, is suspended above the centerline from a beam that
rotates in and out of position between vertical supports. A pivot
hinge allows the panel to rotate 360 degrees; a rotation of 180
degrees alternates the locations of the bride and the bachelor
domains relative to the audience, always obscuring one.

~::10

The revealing panel, a light-weight mirrorsuspended at a 45degree angle above the far stage area, reflects, to the audience,
the image of the character obscured by the rubber plane. The
mirroris a surface hinge, rotating plan into elevation and
elevation into plan. The apparatus thus projectsthe bride and
the virtual image of the bachelor or, conversely,the bachelor
and the virtual image of the bride.
Originally,the theater of illusion required a division, a frame:
pro (in front of) + scenium (the scene). The apparatus is an
interscenium, bisecting the narrativespace of the stage but
reconciling it through artifice.

65

assemblage 6

The bachelor longs for his object of desire.

The Chase
Bachelor: I adore you.
Bride: I'm taboo for you.
Bachelor: I adore you.
Bride: I'm taboo for you...

The hinge is a desire mechanism, offering both temptation and

denial. It is a spatial prophylactic.Its futility is like the litany of
the chariot:
Slow life
Viciouscircle
Onanism
Horizontal buffer of life
Bachelor life regarded as
an alternating rebounding
Cheap construction
Beer professor
Tins,cords, iron wire
Crude wooden pulleys
Eccentrics
Monotonous fly wheel.
66

Diller and Scofidio

Bride, bachelor, juggler of gravity, oculist witness

67

assemblage 6

P,004

IIN

Li

>1 Ij

K.

O-

-I Lj

68

Diller and Scofidio

The headboard of the mechanical bed replaces the concealing

panel at the centerline of the stage. The bed, projected site for
the union of male and female and the separation of the
conscious and unconscious, is where the body surrendersto
gravity.The bachelor lies prone on the mechanical bed, his head
penetrating through the headboard toward the audience, his
body reflected vertically in the mirror.His disembodied head
recites commands to his beheaded body, which performs
motions of distress: left hand pulsates, right hand follows; legs
randomly respond in quick jerks.

Meticulous those phantom mechanics.

I am eliminated, back to this dream stage still,
moving forward through the day
backward through the night.
Forwardand backward.
What place is this?
Here is the language of the rejected land.
Here is the language of the dispossessed body.
My fatal exile into fiction.
My impossible exodus into night.
My solitary machine worked by the eros of death.

69

assemblage 6

The bride is introduced attaching her leash to the lower pivot

hinge at the centerline.

She traces her arc on the floor as the concealing panel is rotated
into position and the mirroris lowered to a 45-degree angle.

The mirror'srotation of elevation into plan converts the pivot

hinge into a pendulum, the leash into a noose, the wasp on a
leash into the pendu femelle, constraint into willing death and
hinge into hang. Etymologically,hinge is derived from hang.
70

Diller and Scofidio

Project Credits

Figure Credits

Set, body constructions, and staging

principals:Elizabeth Diller and
Ricardo Scofidio

Photographsby Michael Moran;

except for figs. 4 and 9, by Jerry
Vezuzzo.

Direction: Susan Mosakowski

Earlier documentation of this project appearsin AA Files, Daidalos,

and Lotus.

Music: Vito Ricci

Lighting: Pat Dignan
Bride:Michele Elliman
Bachelor:Terence Barrell
Juggler:Mariko Tanabe
Witness: David Alton

She falls to the ground. The bride hangs herself on her leash.

71