We have a wall at the end of the choir isle when you come into St Paul’s.
Right now we’ve put a place for four plasma screens to be side by side in the vertical format.
So, they’re narrow and long, not wide
and these represent four examples of martyrdom, in a certain kind of way.
The whole notion of martyrdom is that you’ve accepted your fate
and that you are sacrificing yourself for some higher good or for some ideal that you have inside.
And, we’re meeting these four people on these screens at a time when they’ve already accepted it.
You have John Haigh who is the water person
and, he’s left for dead and then he’s hoisted up actually.
There we go.
And he’s literally hoisted upside down with his arms out.
Hold that. Hold that.
And it’s the position that St Peter was crucified in.
It’s one of the most painful ways in the Roman Empire to kill someone.
And, so, he’s upside down, arms out, like a piece of meat hanging down
and then slowly, again, he kind of wakes up again, sees where he is and then he gathers that strength again.
And, then this water comes down on him, pours on him
and buffets him.
He’s moved around with it and stuff like that and then finally he gets the strength
and, then he breaks through and he ascends.
Start turning off the water little by little.
His whole body actually comes up and goes right up out of frame and then you just see
drops after that, at the end, until little drips happen and then it’s gone, he’s gone.
And that’s the first one. The second one is wind, the wind and that’s done by Sarah
and, she’s battling the wind, that’s her protagonist.
The wind happens and it gets stronger and stronger
and then there’s this tussle again and then she breaks through that.
She sees where she is, she knows she can do this, she knows that she can continue.
A little bit more, bring it up a little bit more.
David, don't let her spin.
Then there’s the earth, the earth. The earth is, of course, the earth itself
and, that’s an image of a person who’s underground, who’s got dirt on them and stuff
and is trying to find the way out.
Arms down, slowly.
And that dirt, that element is actually going to be run backwards.
So, instead of the earth just falling down, falling down, crushing this guy
it’s a pile of earth and you see a hand and a leg and stuff like that and you realise it’s a part
of a person.
And, then they, sort of, come to the surface.
Heavy sifting begin.
And then out of that can, kind of, come this realisation that you can put all those parts together
and then suddenly things can begin rising up and going in other words, backwards
going to run the whole thing backwards and so the whole thing gets, like, pulled up.
The fire work is really intense. We’re trying to gather together multiple takes from different angles
so that we can bring together
multiple things in the same frame.
Looks really, really good and the colours are going to just really bounce off that shirt.
Yeah, because, I know, that’s, then I die.
I go up in smoke. It’s a black thing.
He wakes up and he realises, like, he’s in a really bad situation with fire around him
ready to burn him alive.
And, so then he has to come out of this cocoon and really begin to fight back.
So, he gets the strength miraculously to get to that point, he breaks through that
and then you begin to see light at the end of the tunnel
and things start calming down.
And, all of a sudden then he can look upward, outward and feel that he finally broke through.
And he’s, quote unquote, seen the light.
What I learned from this whole experience is the fact that what you’re seeing here
is not the image of the martyrs as we would see them through a camera.
But we’re actually now inside the martyrs.
So, I think that’s a very important distinction
that this is about what the people are going through internally, not externally.
I brought in the four elements, because those are forces of nature.
Death is a force of nature and they represent the rage of these forces.
The most intense of going through death and transcendence into the light, if you will.
To bring a work of this quality into this great cathedral
adds a dimension, I think, to the cathedral but it also adds a dimension to the work.
You are immediately reminded of all the great works of art that have dealt with those themes
and you think of yourself in the great cathedrals of Europe and it feels entirely natural.