Thurlstone, Butter Bay, 30th March 2021 - swimming in the Spring tide, highest tide of the year, 8am.
Beginnings:
I started this module with exploring collaboration, 'friendship as practice', and a 'public of one' with Derek. This felt like the first steps in expanding my art practice, which is a very intimate and close practice. Derek and I spent a couple of months having weekly zooms, which transpired in us sharing not only our art practice but our poems - which lay the ground for making filmic responses to our own and each other's poems. This felt very alive, a great sense of exploring and not knowing - and enjoying the cross-fertilisation of our practices - that the intimacy of our practices was not lost but enriched by the sharing.
Boom and Burn Series:
After reading out one of my poems to Derek, I felt encouraged to expand the poem into a performative, filmic enactment - using costume/ shapeshifting to position many voices together. My audience was the camera, and therefore the 'viewer' of the film - it was commented that my eyes linked all the different voices (shapes) and that the audience felt invited in. This was actually a big shift in my work, to have a sense of a genuine 'welcome' to an audience, that I could offer my work willingly and therefore it was received more easily! Before this point there had always been an element of not wanting to offer my work to a public, to reveal what is intimate. Perhaps an anger or shame, or an expression of a tension within me between private and public space - which has been an ongoing exploration in my work for years. This piece felt like a reflection of an inner confidence in me, to simply be inside my work, and simultaneously create enough distance or space in the work that allowed for an audience.
Derek also took my film footage to make his response. This felt quite a tender process for me, to relinquish control of my footage! But trust had built up between us over the weeks and I was interested to see his interpretation.
Tutorial with Beth:
Further discussion with Beth around the ethics of collaboration, what is it exactly? What are Derek and I exploring? Is it true collaboration or simply a sharing of work and responses?
'Solitude', my filmic response to Derek's poem:
Derek read out a poem that he's written years ago, it was a poem reflecting a pivotal moment in his life - and to take his words and respond through film felt like a sensitive thing to do! I wanted to honour and respect his poem (do it justice!) - and yet I'd taken his words within me, to meet with my own life experience... and this was my response. I really enjoyed experimenting with the medium of zoom, zooming myself so that the sound warped and reverberated, distorting the poem to create an eerie sense of isolation and echo - like the voice was many. Something about the essence of the poem and the times we are living in: that there is enforced separation/ isolation and zoom is the only way, for many, to keep in touch.
My Public Performance, to an invited and specific audience of 5 women:
I have been exploring ceremonial-encounter-ritual 'performances' for some time now, mostly in private, sometimes with a camera to record them. I have been wanting to expand these to include an audience and feeling quite shy about it. I never know what is going to happen in these ceremonies, and this element of the unknown and including an audience felt like scary territory! But the opportunity arose to do one with a close group of fellow artist women - and it was a success! In that I trusted my own process and could allow for the ceremony to take place - and the audience received it well. It was a very deep process for me and also a turning point in my practice - a growing confidence to step into a more public realm and be seen.
I include some feedback from the audience members:
I felt that I was very much a part of what was happening, and I felt that there were these stages of stepping with you. I remember taking off your clothes as one step and just feeling a relief of how you were with your body in it, in yourself and with yourself. And then the drum and the walking and feeling somehow that I was with you, listening and responding to the drum. And then all the preparation and feeling that I was experiencing in my senses the texture of the mud and the sound of the water, I could feel my body imitating, somehow my neurons were imitating the sensations. And then when the mud came in contact with the skin and the body, I felt such deep descending, a sense of peace, of rightness
and relief. And I just felt like it was right and true – much more of a communication that any words can do – it was direct communication about how earth and body are one. I felt that. And how earth is beauty and body is beauty and that beauty is not a pretty picture, and that beauty is not contained in some parameters from the outside. I just felt like I was dropping deeper and deeper into a space of no mind just deep reverence. And I felt close to the earth and close to the land and I felt something was being healed in my body and was being healed in the world for the earth. And also, I felt this presence of something ancient that was pleased that this was happening. And then I just really loved when you sat with your back – I also remember that – and the sound, when the sound came. That felt really like a crowning somehow, that the sound was more of the communication that was non-linear and non-rational but very direct. And I felt like it was for everybody and then when K came in, it’s like she confirmed it was for everybody and that your body was the sacred body and then by her honouring your body she was honouring the sacredness of body itself. I felt like you made your body their body – it was no longer yours. (A.K, Dartington, Devon).
It was very moving to watch- the intimacy and openness of the performance piece and how you shared your power. Both your power and your vulnerability and the importance of that connection. It left a lasting impression and I feel the value of what you are doing – I can see a combination of performance and workshop – participatory performance workshop – doing something at Dartington, the Glade.
(H.R, Buckfastleigh, Devon)
What stayed with me form your performance… I thought you were so natural in it – I really liked it; it didn’t feel like you were performing at all. It didn’t feel like anything more than what was coming naturally in you, which was very beautiful. And I really saw both this strong powerful warrior Queen there and then also this quite small vulnerable human. The whole spectrum of being a human
being. I feel touched remembering you like that, in all your vulnerability and strength. That’s the main thing from it. I’m just remembering now the sounds and the looking over your shoulders and such a sense of coming from what was coming from you in the moment – that’s what was so unusual about it being a quote ‘performance’, because it wasn’t performing, it was being. And when K came forward there was a bit of ‘oh is that alright’ and I would love, there’s a part in me, that would love to be there with the mud and my naked body and have the permission to do that. The question whether you would offer it as an invitation, which I felt actually. I just remember the moments of the giggly little girl in it, I loved because it was very real and that alongside the strength and the mud. I honour you Zanna, in what you are offering. What I appreciate about you a lot: the mixture of strength and vulnerability – both – it’s inspiring. (P.H, Buckfastleigh, Devon)
Future Plans:
I have a performance booked for 14th May, at The Glade, Dartington. The Glade is an outdoor space in woods, with a few different structures offering shelter, and a fire pit. I am collaborating with Heidi Rose, who offers council there. This is a public event which will allow for an audience of 10 women. I will so a ceremonial 'performance' followed by a council held by Heidi, in which the audience members are invited to share their experience, but also to open up a conversation about woman's body. This event will last for 2 hours and may open into a series of similar events / workshops exploring these themes. I want to start inviting audience members directly into the ceremony so that they can apply mud to their bodies in a ritual healing and sanctifying of woman's body. There are proposals of working on Dartmoor or by the sea, perhaps expanding the length of time to a day, where we lead the audience into the ceremony first by spending time in place and coming into body - building a sense of the relational field. And then sensitively and respectfully collecting / using the natural materials found there - to co-create a collective ceremony in collaboration with the land and other beings inhabiting place. These ceremonies are an act of bowing down and offering back to nature and body.
Ceremonies with the sea, the turning of tides and seasons, with natural forces, elements and materials.... continue...
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