Curtains

– Petra Blaisse and Sophie Wehtje

Brief email exchanges. 

When meeting physically is out of the question, good old-fashioned correspondence still works, even if and for some time now, it is done electronically. This is how many of the editorial pieces on the Drawing Matter website come into being—through a chain of typed messages. It’s a ‘remote control’ kind of process at times, yet somehow both immediate and intimate without ever (or very seldom) in-person conversations. It all centres on the drawings in question, and through them authors come up with the most delightful words in relation to images. But, if it wasn’t for the eventual meeting, in the archive or serendipitously in other context of events we’d probably meet Major’s Tom’s fate—forever floating in the digital infinite sky of words and images…  

The following list of questions and replies was exchanged between Petra Blaisse and me after such a chain. I discovered that the Netherlands Dance Theatre was one of her first projects, and the very first curtain she made, which in her own words ‘kicked off a life-long fascination with the curtain.’ 

A list.

1. Was the Netherlands Dance Theatre (NDT) your first stage curtain you ever made?
2. The ‘curtain recipe drawing’ seems to trace the beginning of your curtain making (recipe or script?) and also to act as a document for someone else to reproduce. What was your own process leading up to this type of ‘construction’ drawing? It seems to me to leave room for interpretation in the process of its materialisation like a cookbook recipe.
3. The materialised curtain in action is very powerful—what play is captured in the images across spread 872-873?
4. Were you able to articulate this idea of the curtain as an ’emancipated presence—an actor—within the architectural realm’ at the time?
5. Could you say something about how this idea is played out in the NDT?
6. I wonder if the specific type, a stage curtain, in the NDT has played a role in your fascination with the curtain? In the way that it offers a theatrical sense of the manipulation of space using controlled light and material effects explicitly. The circle or dot (depending on function reflection or projection) that reappears throughout your curtains is an intelligent and playful way of creating these effects that are also understood or experienced as such. 
7. A collaboration that come to my mind is Lilly Reich and Mies exchange between architecture and the curtain. Did you know of their work or others that acted as points of reference to guide your interest and/or to affirm the fascination that had been triggered within you?
8. Was there something challenging in the OMA NDT project, team or process that led you to take unexpected risks?
9. Looking retrospectively at your work, are there other curtain-collaborations that have played an equally significant role in shaping your thought-work?

1. Yes, the NDT stage curtain was the first curtain I ever designed. It was produced in collaboration with a textile company and a theatre sewing company.
2. A recipe drawing is meant for others to use it as base for the production of the object in question; or as explanatory document after the fact, documenting the process for later use or as archive material. In our case a recipe drawing does not leave space for interpretation, unless it is for comments of the production company on technical details, which we than need to approve.
3. …just a coincidental presence of a couple in front of the softly lit curtain.
4. In hindsight yes, because the curtain turned out to be quite a presence, not only in architectural terms as dramatic, billowing ‘dress’ that  appears and disappears at various speeds, as an object that catches and reflects light within the dark and almost colourless auditorium; but also seen from the perspective of the choreographers, of whom many thought the curtain was overwhelming, dominating their often minimalist ballet and scenography.
5. The curtain became one of the building’s main symbols, used as identity of the Nederlands Dans Theater.
6. It played a significant role in my fascination with the large-scale curtain because of its mass, movements, effects, materiality, temporality, historic meaning across cultures, and its potential to influence space, sound, light, atmosphere. The dot as reflective tool (NDT), sound transmitter (Kunsthal), viewing points or light capturer is indeed something we like to experiment with.    
7. No. Also Lily Reich was unknown to me at the time I worked on the Dance Theatre. I was more influenced by my own experiences as lover of theatre, film and ballet from a very young age, where textiles play an important role as scenography tool (and stage curtain). As soon as one’s attention for this is caught, one starts to understand its importance to create ‘fashionable’, ‘filmish’ or ‘theatrical’ effects. 
8. In the 80’s we were all artists, makers and thinkers that experimented on everything, never taking anything for granted, viewing each daily object, tool and material as important ingredient for something yet to be invented. There was no interest in the financial side of things, we all just wanted to achieve the best and the most original solution to whatever we addressed. Nevertheless, we were solving necessities in a technically convincing way; only adding unnecessary effects when steered by our curiosity and creativity—for fun!
9. Our collaboration with sound nurds on the ‘sound curtain’ for the Kunsthal was one example; working with structural engineers on the ‘guillotine’ stage curtain for the King Abdul-Aziz Center for World Culture in Dharan, Saudi Arabia, is a second example; and our own Inside Outside collaborative invention for the ‘independent’ curtain held up by helium balloons was another.

Petra Blaisse founded Inside Outside in 1986, a multidisciplinary design studio that encompasses interior design, landscape architecture, exhibition design, and textile design. With a background in visual arts, Petra began her career as a freelance exhibition designer, collaborating with design studios and architecture offices such as OMA. Since 2016, she leads Inside Outside alongside her partners, Jana Crepon and Aura Luz Melis. The studio’s projects are internationally acclaimed, with works across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, South America, and the United States. A recent retrospective of the oeuvre of Petra Blaisse and Inside Outside by Mack Books titled Art Applied can be found here.