Dr Gen Doy
This is a page from Eros/ion, a book accompanying sound works responding to sites on the Suffolk Coast. I linked changes due to coastal erosion with the erosion of the self and the ageing yet still desiring body. I also visited Dungeness, similar to coastal sites in Suffolk. The staircases within the lighthouse interiors create ambiguous spirals. Are they interiors of a body, ears, a throat, a stomach? What is their scale? Are they empty shells? Since I visited Orford Ness, the lighthouse has gone, the sea finally undermined it. It spiralled out of existence. I attempted to climb the staircases and struggled due to vertigo. It is deeply unsettling as you feel drawn to the edge but fearful. I connect these images and experiences with Hitchcock’s film Vertigo, with its mixture of desire, voyeurism, deception and sudden revelation. The scene in the art gallery where the private detective’s gaze follows the spiral coil of “Madeleine’s” hair is the spiral staircase which sucks him in. In the film the eye and brain follow the spiral; in the lighthouses, you lean your head back and sway as you look up, and then decide whether you want to ascend or not.
