After rotating Miriam’s house organ in the Maison de la Musique, and viewing the scene from the west looking east, I recalled Antonello da Messina’s St. Jerome in His Study as I saw Miriam play the organ for the first time in its new position. Since the wall behind the organ was somewhat plain (not a bad thing) but needed a window to the world (according to Feng Shui), I created what the French call a répétition, i.e. a variation of an original, made by the author, but since the original author (da Messina) is no longer moving, it fell upon polytekton to jump in the breach left by him (da Messina). The idea? Create a large-format image (about 36 inches wide by 48 inches tall) of a modified St. Jerome where the saint is replaced by Miriam, i.e. St. Miriam, and the windows in the background don’t show a Mediterranean landscape but a view of the Swiss village of Vals (for reasons that shall remain a mystery). The new two-dimensional image on the wall recalls the three-dimensional reality in the foreground, not as a replica but as an adulterated copy, independent of the original author. Borges might say that the original is unfaithful to the copy. I might agree.
Time frame: 1 hour
Client: Musicologist, musician, transformational researcher, and Charles and Mary Sukup Endowed Artist in Organ Miriam Zach