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    Es Devlin Imagines Worlds That Don’t Exist

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    Es Devlin is a British designer of memories and psychologies, ideas and dreams. She has created environments for operas, dance works and plays (her scenic design for “The Lehman Trilogy” won the Tony); designed concert tours for Beyoncé, U2, Kanye West, Adele and Miley Cyrus; worked on the opening ceremony of the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games and the closing ceremony of the London Olympic Games; imagined fashion shows for Louis Vuitton; and invented huge installations, centered around endangered species and endangered languages.Her cross-disciplinary work is category-defying, and so is her new monograph, “An Atlas of Es Devlin” (Thames & Hudson) — an exquisitely produced and immersive artwork in itself, containing photographs, texts, foldouts, pullouts, translucent overlays and cutout pages that reflect the intricacy and imaginative extent of Devlin’s processes, from concept to final iteration.Pop concerts, like Beyoncé’s 2016 Formation World Tour, are about achieving the intimacy of television “on a gladiatorial, sports arena scale,” said Es Devlin, the tour’s stage designer.Kevin Mazur/WireImage, via Getty ImagesAn example of Es Devlin’s scenic design, using the box motif, was “The Lehman Trilogy,” shown here at the National Theater in London in 2018.via Es Devlin StudioAn exhibition of the same name, based on “An Atlas,” opens at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum on Saturday, Devlin’s first major solo show in the United States. “In many aspects, it’s a three-dimensional manifestation of the book,” Devlin said in a recent interview at her home in south London, where a long refectory table in front of floor-to-ceiling glass windows was laden with books on climate change, economics and art.“There is no presumption that you know what my work is,” Devlin, 52, said, describing the exhibition, which will begin in a replica of her studio before a wall opens to reveal a series of apertures, inscribed with the names of everyone she has worked with.Devlin has “reinvented the wheel in every field she has been part of, whether theater, poetry, sculpture, climate or installation,” the art historian Katy Hessel said. She added, “I would define her as a visionary.”Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artistic director of the Serpentine Galleries in London, said that Devlin’s gift is not just to unite “so many different talents, of design, architecture, writing, drawing, but that she has created an art form of collaboration. She creates a communal space for the rituals of theater, pop concerts or art.”Over several hours and a vegetable curry, Devlin picked favorite works in the book and the exhibition, speaking with characteristic verve about her past, her partnerships and her passions. “For me,” she said, “there is no hierarchy between the value of the opera ‘Carmen’ and Beyoncé.” Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. A series of teenage sketchesA sequence of drawings by Es Devlin, 1989: Studies of a female figure constrained within a box. She later translated the box into theatrical space.Es DevlinThis sequence shows six drawings of a female figure with a box or a cube, made when I was 18 years old, in 1989. I had just started an English literature degree at University of Bristol, and I would have been reading “Beowulf” and living in the library.I was very attracted to figures of speech that conjure unstable and impossible matter, where matter and language won’t sit together. All the great poets live in this place. As I was reading and writing, I became more and more eager to draw. I resisted going to art school because the people going there knew what they wanted to say, and I didn’t. I wanted to learn.In these drawings, a person is constrained within a box that is too small, or is static within the box, or manipulating it. The person holds on to it like an iceberg, uses it like a lookout post or a climbing frame. Of course the box translates into the theatrical space. I have made several works, like “Don Giovanni,” or “The Lehman Trilogy,” using a box as a structure for design. These sketches are a map or atlas of everything I have made since.2. A hand mapEs Devlin, “Redraw the Edges of Yourself,” 2023. After making observational drawings of endangered species in London, she made a poster that shows the porosity between her hand and their form, her knuckle and the edge of a bird wing.Es DevlinLast year, Hans Ulrich Obrist, who has been a real mentor for me, called to ask me to design a poster for a project at the Serpentine called “Back to Earth.” By the next day.At the time, I was working on a project called “Come Home Again,” for which I drew 243 endangered, nonhuman species living in London. I was inspired by the environmental activist Joanna Macy and other writers who speak to the continuity of the biosphere and the self. In other words, if you saw other species and the rest of the world as a continuation of yourself, you wouldn’t harm it.I was drawing insects, fish, plants, mammals, sometimes 18 hours a day, and in a slightly hallucinatory frame of mind. When Hans Ulrich called, I just put my hand on paper, drew around it, took photos of some of the drawings, and plunked them around the outline. When I did that, I felt that continuity between myself and the species I was drawing — between my knuckle and the edge of a bird wing, the veins on my hand and on a leaf. The species are a sort of tattoo composition on the hand. This drawing, which is a D.I.Y. pop-up, is placed inside the book, as a gift.3. A line of lightEs Devlin, “Morning I,” 2009. Photograph of a line of light between curtains.Es DevlinThis is a photograph I took, around 2016, of a line of sunlight coming in through curtains or blinds. Now, every day, when I wake up, I photograph the line of light and spend about 20 quiet minutes meditating on this. In the exhibition there is a voice-over about this, with the image.Lucio Fontana, whose work I saw at the Tate as a teenager, is obviously a huge influence here. The first film I worked on, in 2008, with the composer Nitin Sawhney and the choreographer Dam Van Huynh, was a story about a person entering a line of light; in art you can! I’ve used it in many other pieces — Alastair Marriott’s “Connectome” at the Royal Ballet, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Howie the Rookie” — and I know I’ll continue to do so.4. ‘Miracle Box’Es Devlin, “Miracle Box,” 2016. She built a box covered with projections of her hands trying in various ways to access a light at the heart of the rotating cube. The work was part of a series of revolving box sculptures including Beyoncé’s Formation Tour and “The Lehman Trilogy.”Es DevlinIn 2016, Hans Ulrich Obrist invited me to give a talk at the Serpentine. I thought of myself as a set designer, so I was excited to be welcomed in [the art] world, which can frankly be quite exclusive. I talked about the mechanics of the suspension of disbelief, and while I was talking, I built a box onstage — all very basic, Velcro and tape. But when I finished building it, the lights went off, music came on and the box turned, covered with projections of my hands trying in various ways — cutting through clay, paper and mirrored board — to access a light that appeared to be at the heart of the rotating cube.I have made a version of this in lots of different modes. For Beyoncé’s 2016 Formation Tour, I thought about how the art form of the pop concert is an attempt to achieve the intimacy that television, and now films, give to people, but on a gladiatorial, sports arena scale. When I first talked to Beyoncé, she had written a poem that had the line “an electric current humming through me.” I think what she was expressing in the poem was the sensation that she was a medium for her songs.When I was flying over to meet her, I made some sketches on the plane. I hadn’t heard the “Lemonade” album yet, but knew it was about a relationship and a crisis. I wanted to show something between the poster icon and [King Lear’s] “bare, forked” creature, a small figure, constantly in motion, magnified in the revolving cube.5. ‘Carmen’: The suspension of disbeliefDevlin’s opera set for “Carmen” in Bregenz, Austria, in 2017 was based on a scene where Carmen throws cards into the air.Es DevlinHands suspended between sea and sky, magic, illusion, the suspension of disbelief. This is one of my favorite things, the backdrop for the opera “Carmen,” in 2017 in Bregenz, Austria. This is an extraordinary venue for an opera festival. After the Second World War, Maria Wanda Milliore, a young set designer, suggested performances on a barge on the lake because the concert hall had been bombed. My design was the first by a woman in that spot since 1946.I was watching bull fights, wanted a big bull, but the director, Kasper Holten, said no. So we went back to the text and were looking at the scene when Carmen throws the cards into the air. As I imitated that action, Kasper said, “That’s it!”It’s really difficult to make work on a barge in a lake, to make the cards look like they are floating. One of the reasons the set is so beautiful is that there are no visible speakers. Here, whole chunks of the hands are made of gauze and are full of speakers, as are the cards. The whole thing is a big, 25-meter-high sound-emitting device.6. ‘Your Voices’Es Devlin, “Your Voices,” 2022, an installation at Lincoln Center created in collaboration with the Endangered Language Alliance.Es DevlinDuring the pandemic, when so much cultural work was extinct, I had an invitation to make a piece from the Champagne house, Moët & Chandon. If this sort of project is not truthfully approached, it can end up as an advert.I wanted to collaborate with the Endangered Language Alliance, which Brian Eno had introduced me to. The anthropologist Wade Davis said, “Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind”: When we lose a language we lose a library of cultural, historical and biological references.I felt the installation should be at Lincoln Center because New York is the city that is home to the most languages — 637 at last count. I used a compass as the basis of the design for an illuminated kinetic sculpture on the plaza, mapping the languages across the city, then stretching the 637 lines across the arc to connect with one another. You could stand inside the object and it was like being inside a musical instrument. At the same time, you heard recordings of the endangered languages all around you, speaking the E.M. Forster text, “Only connect,” and other poems. There were choirs from the Bronx, a Ukrainian and Russian choir, Japanese and African choirs. It was a deeply condensed version of being in New York City.7. The iris“An Atlas of Es Devlin” opens with several layered pages with circular apertures, an iris shape, with the names of collaborators.Es DevlinThis figure turns up a lot in my work, and it is the opening piece in the exhibition. It is based on a series of eight cutout, circular layered apertures at the start of the book. In the exhibition, the room is filled with a replica of these pages with holes through the center, built to the height of the room. The visitor walks through them, and becomes part the structure.In a circle around each hole are the names of all the people who I have worked with; it’s an atlas of participation. Any collaboration is about seeing through the lens of the designer, the composer, the choreographer, the playwright, the director. What I quite like is that the iris shape isn’t stable; there are a lot of currents clashing together and centrifugally holding. This is about trying to develop a muscle to see through the lens of others. More

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      Es Devlin’s Next Stage

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      The British designer, whose new installation will be unveiled at Tate Modern this week, made her name in theater. These days, you’re as likely to find her work in art galleries, stadium gigs and fashion shows.LONDON — Es Devlin was sitting in her garden communing with nature. Or rather, she was waving her phone, trying to get a bird song identification app to pick up chirrups from the surrounding trees. “Definitely two birds talking to each other, isn’t it?” she said. “I always want to know what they are. I’ve got a bit obsessed.”Obsessed is one way of putting it. For the past few years, Devlin, one of the world’s most in-demand stage designers, has been moonlighting as a conservationist. Most recently, she has been getting to know the birds, bats, moths and fungi that are most at risk in London from threats including the climate crisis and habitat loss.Those creatures will be celebrated in “Come Home Again,” a “choral sculpture” created by Devlin and her studio that will be unveiled on Wednesday. Installed outside Tate Modern until Oct. 1, it will be filled with the sounds of birds, bats and insects and decorated with Devlin’s black-and-white drawings of 243 species on an endangered list prepared by the London authorities. Devlin had been sketching for almost four months, she said, sometimes for 18 hours a day.Her work ethic is relentless. She reckoned that, since beginning as a theater designer in the mid-1990s, she had worked on “about 380” projects — but also that she’d done “a few since I last counted.” And while plenty of visual artists have made cameo appearances as stage designers (Chagall, Dalí, Picasso, Indiana, Hockney), Devlin is rare in having traveled in the opposite direction. These days, you’re as likely to encounter her work in art galleries, stadium gigs, fashion shows or architecture expos as in theaters or opera houses.The animals in “Come Home Again” are all featured on an endangered list prepared by the London authorities.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesThe list features birds, bats and insects.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesDevlin said she had been sketching for almost four months, sometimes for 18 hours a day.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesEarly on, she developed a reputation for crafting stage visuals that became the talking point of a show. In 1996, for her first professional job at a regional English theater — Christopher Marlowe’s murderous “Edward II” — she studied plumbing to create a bathhouse-style set whose showers ran with blood. Two years later, at the National Theater, a ghostly set for Harold Pinter’s “Betrayal” impressed the famously cantankerous playwright. According to newspaper reports, he asked during an opening night meet-and-greet, “Have you met Es Devlin? She wrote the play.”One reason Devlin drew so much attention was that she rejected the English theater orthodoxy that designs should be attractive décor that would blend into the background. “I wasn’t ever afraid for the objects I made to be the protagonists,” she said. “Not everyone thought like that.”When one of Kanye West’s assistants called, in 2005, and asked Devlin to help save his ailing “Touch the Sky” arena tour, she was on a plane to New York 24 hours later, with books about James Turrell and Wagner to inspire the rapper, with whom she collaborated on new designs. Her most recent large-scale triumph, a set for the Super Bowl halftime show, last February, involved a larger-than-life-size model of part of Dr. Dre’s hometown, Compton, Calif.“Whatever she’s working in, Es does it with absolute commitment,” said Alex Poots, the artistic director of The Shed, in a phone interview. He first spotted Devlin’s work at a fringe London theater in the early 2000s and convinced her to design a gig for the British art punk band Wire, her first foray into music. “There are so many different sides to what she can do. That was obvious even then.”Devlin’s set for Kanye West and Jay-Z’s 2011 “Watch the Throne” tour. via Es Devlin StudioThe work at Tate Modern is a case in point. Like many of Devlin’s projects, “Come Home Again” has many layers and teems with references: From outside, it resembles the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which it faces across the River Thames. Inside, the audience will be invited to sit down and enjoy performances by London-based choirs. When they aren’t performing, the space will be filled with recorded bird song and animal noises.Devlin explained that visitors would also be able to scan QR codes inside the installation that will bring up information about the endangered species. “If we give something a name, we give it a place in our imagination,” she said. “The piece is all about imagination.”When it was suggested that this sounded complicated, Devlin grinned. “I really like complexity,” she said.Devlin’s set for “The Lehman Trilogy,” which premiered at the National Theater in London, in 2018, before transferring to the West End and Broadway. via Es Devlin StudioThough more and more of her work is taken up by self-initiated projects, rather than commissions, Devlin said she still sees herself as a collaborative artist; well-funded gigs in fashion and music help her maintain a small studio of architects and designers. “I will often have an idea, but I really lean on my studio to help me evolve it,” she said, adding that concurrent projects often fed into each other, even if they’re wildly different.A “rain box” — a glass enclosure onto which images of rain were projected — cropped up in both a London production of Brian Friel’s play “Faith Healer,” in 2016, and a stadium tour by Adele that same year. Boxes, indeed, have become something of a Devlin signature: A spinning cube stood in for a Manhattan gallery and a Beijing police interrogation room in her design for Lucy Kirkwood’s 2013 play “Chimerica,” and the action of Stefano Massini’s “The Lehman Trilogy,” which came to Broadway earlier this year, took place inside an airless, rotating glass tank.The curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, who has collaborated with Devlin several times, said that her determination to work in several fields had opened a path for younger artists. “You see that happening more and more,” he said. “People are working in poetry, but also visual art. They’re making music as well as tech. The thing that’s impressive about Es is that she’s been doing it a long time, and that her work is taken seriously in all these different places.”Devlin had broken ground, Poots agreed. “I’m not sure she’d have been able to have this kind of career 10 years ago,” he said. “It’s like the world is finally ready for her.”Devlin said that she had worked on “about 380 projects” since she started out as a theater designer in the mid-1990s.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesThe fall is turning into something of a Devlin retrospective in London. Last week, revivals of two operas she designed for the Royal Opera House, “Salome” and “Don Giovanni,” returned to the company’s stage. On Wednesday, a new production of Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” directed by another longtime collaborator, Lyndsey Turner, opens at the National Theater.Alongside the drama and opera work that still occupies much of her time, she is planning an art show in New York with Pace gallery, exhibiting her drawings. Oh, and there is a book for Thames and Hudson in the works — highlights from her vast back catalog. It was meant to come out a few years ago, but she hasn’t had time. “I should really finish it,” she said, grimacing.How does she describe herself these days? Designer? Artist? Something else? She laughed, and said she drew inspiration from Christopher Wren, the polymathic astronomer-turned-architect who designed St. Paul’s Cathedral: “Multi-hyphenate is fine.” More

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      Processing the Pandemic at the Manchester International Festival

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      The annual arts event in the north of England suggests that focusing on community and inclusiveness could be a natural, post-pandemic outcome for artists.MANCHESTER, England — “Your City, Your Festival.” The slogan is emblazoned on the 2,000-odd posters strung up around the city center here, above pictures of ethnically diverse faces of various genders and ages. That would be the Manchester International Festival, which, against considerable odds, in a region of England particularly affected by the pandemic, opened on schedule on July 1. (It runs through July 18.)Since its inception in 2007, this festival has had a distinctive identity: It presents only new work, across multiple disciplines, usually through high-octane creative collaborations. But this year, despite the (mostly virtual) presence of artists from 22 countries, the festival feels more local than international, with a strong focus on community, inclusiveness and political engagement, mostly expressed through film and the visual arts.The pandemic’s influence on this is clear. Most of the international participants have not been able to travel to Manchester to research, rehearse or perform. Live performance in theaters is still a risky gamble for producers, and the shared productions that have made ambitious projects financially possible in the past have been off the table.About two-thirds of the 2021 program comprises planned projects that had to be reconfigured “because artists couldn’t be here, or we couldn’t rely on having live audiences,” said John McGrath, the artistic director of the festival. The remainder, he added, were new commissions that “weren’t even previously on our radar.” (The $4.15 million budget is about two-thirds of the previous festival amount, he said.)One of the reconfigured events was Boris Charmatz’s “Sea Change,” which opened the festival on Thursday. Originally planned as an outdoor dance performance before 4,000 people, it instead ran for three hours along Deansgate, a wide central shopping thoroughfare. Timed slots controlled the number of onlookers strolling past the 149 performers, mostly local and nonprofessional, who were arranged in a long, continuous line down the center of the street. As sound reverberated from speakers along the trajectory, the performers gesticulated, shouted, whispered and contorted, before running to touch and displace another in the next group, in an ongoing game of tag.Themes emerged and mutated. One group counted down repetitively from 100; another ran in place in different ways; a third shouted out angry slogans (“My body, my choice!” “Boris, out, out, out!” “Free, free Palestine!”). Others reached out hungrily, lay shrieking on the ground or whooped with exultation. “That’s just how I felt after lockdown ended,” a passer-by said with a laugh to her companion.“All the gestures were linked to current circumstances,” Charmatz wrote in an email after the performance. “The anger about not being able to dance, not being able to touch one another, to be between life and death. Every participant interpreted these ideas in his or her own way.”From left, Sean Garratt, Charmene Pang, Jahmarley Bachelor, Kennedy Junior Muntanga and Annie Edwards in “The Global Playground.” Tristram Kenton“Sea Change” was touching and ambitious in scale but not especially memorable as an artistic enterprise. Neither was the children’s show, “Global Playground,” directed by Sue Buckmaster, which incorporated dance, theater, music, puppetry and ventriloquism. Presented in the round, its central conceit involved a director (Sean Garratt) trying rather haplessly to make a dance movie as first his camera, then a brash puppet, talked back to him, while four charming onstage dancers (Jahmarley Bachelor, Annie Edwards, Kennedy Junior Muntanga and Charmene Pang) eluded his control.Gregory Maqoma’s highly varied choreography for these dancers (as well as Thulani Chauke on two large screens at the sides of the stage — a nod to travel problems during Covid-19) and Garratt’s ventriloquist skills were the best parts of the unevenly paced show, which meandered from one set piece to another. More