NIGHTSHADE

SIMON LEUNG: PROPOSAL FOR THE SIDE OF THE MOUNTAIN
AN OPERA BY MICHAEL WEBSTER AND SIMON LEUNG

Conceived as an original “opera film,” Proposal for The Side of the Mountain brings together the work of artist Simon Leung and composer Michael Webster in a potent collaboration that combines the heightened drama and tragic content of a traditional opera with a minimalist conceptual approach.
Set in the Darkened wood of a public park where men cruising each other move toward clandestine sexual encounters, Proposal for The Side of the Mountain takes place at sundown, when daylight releases its hold and the reign of night begins. The central action of the opera involves the anonymous sexual meeting of two men–the baritone older and more experienced, the tenor young but already mourning his youth. While the two lose themselves in physical intimacy, the voice of a third man (the countertenor) is heard calling for
his dog, which has wandered off in the mountainside chaparral. As the sexual encounter intensifies, the younger man hears the lost dog being set upon by a pack of coyotes. He wants to call out to the dog’s owner but is paralyzed–he can bear neither to interrupt the tryst nor make his presence known to the police.
Proposal for The Side of the Mountain is a four-channel video/sculpture installation that takes place in a full-scale model of the Project Room–the site for which it was originally planned. By tracing its evolution from one space to another, Leung exposes the processes involved in making the work while preserving the integrity of the original proposal. The room functions simultaneously as a site-specific work of art and as a small theater for the opera. Steps resembling a Giottoesque, stylized mountain act as an architectural metaphor for the opera’s setting and as an audience seating area; in this context, viewers become both observers and formal elements in the work itself.
Leung has configured the four video monitors to mimic linear perspective–the deeper the image in the background the farther away the monitor. Three channels situate the audience in appropriate proximity to views of the Observatory, the city, and the protagonists in the park. The fourth monitor alternates its gaze between the dog walker and abstracted images from the surrounding landscape.
Proposal for The Side of the Mountain explores issues of public and private space, corporal and spiritual expressions of passion, and the wooded landscape as an antidote to the urban environment. The wild coyotes–who tear their domesticated counterpart to pieces–perhaps signify the intense, but forbidden exchange between the two men. They also allude to the tenor’s moral dilemma: he must choose between saving the dog and submitting to the desires of the flesh, becoming like the coyote–nocturnal, wild, and ravenous.

SANTA MONICA MUSEUM OF ART PUBLISHED 2002