デレク・ジャーマンの庭

Alys Fowler “Gardens: planting on the edge in Derek Jarman's garden” http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/sep/24/derek-jarman-garden-dungeness-alys-fowler


今年は映画作家デレク・ジャーマン*1の20回忌に中るのだった。
Alys Fowlerさん*2は園藝ジャーナリスト。ケント州ダンジェネス(Dungeness)*3原子力発電所の近くにある「デレク・ジャーマンの庭」について語っている*4
少し切り抜き;


In my head, his diaries were first and foremost about gardening, then about sex, and perhaps a sprinkling of politics. My second reading was incredibly moving, though I had to laugh at my teenage interpretation. I'd got it the wrong way round: these are deeply political works about life and death through a garden.

Jarman gave his garden a certain narrative; perhaps he treated it a bit like a film or theatre set. His films were visionary, eccentric, romantic and rebellious, all of which could also be said about his garden. The plants were distinct players in the action. He's not the first writer to choose to talk of nature this way, nor the first garden writer, but he situated his love of gardening between his love of film, art, gay politics, life and sex.

He put wild with cultivated, made art out of rubbish and declared the garden a gallery where nature played the most important part. He sought refuge in his garden, but chose a setting with no boundaries, where everything is an edge: shingle, sea, sun, wind all shifting and changing.


In Jarman's day, the garden contained a greater variety; the plants that do persist are those that can survive largely unaided. The house is owned by Jarman's partner, Keith Collins, and is not open to the public, although visitors come and go. Perhaps it is a ghost of its former self, but it's a very happy ghost.

It is a weird and wonderful place, but in many ways humble: a small house, a tiny garden, yet the maker showed us all how wild and brilliant our own spaces can be if we're prepared to look sympathetically at the landscape around us, to make room for the flotsam and weeds in life as much as the jewels.
なお、Howard Sooley*5の写真、デレク・ジャーマンのテクストで、 Derek Jarman's Gardenという本が出ている。
ところで、『カラヴァッジオ』にせよ『ヴィトゲンシュタイン』にせよ、デレク・ジャーマンの映画は室内という印象が(個人的には)強い。
カラヴァッジオ [DVD]

カラヴァッジオ [DVD]

ヴィトゲンシュタイン (WITTGENSTEIN) [DVD]

ヴィトゲンシュタイン (WITTGENSTEIN) [DVD]