QUESTIONS
For you to consider....
What interests you? What works? and why?
Which works to push further?
Any ideas re. live performance in lockdown?
Or ideas of audience? Private / public - one-to-one performance?
Any responses welcome!
So there are two pieces of work I'd like you all to look at.
MUD CROWN (Performance Lecture)
This is a Performance Lecture I did in response to one of Laura Hope's seminars.
It felt like a pivotal moment for me because it was the first time I felt my peers (my audience), somewhat unanimously, understood my art practice! It felt like they could receive my work in a way that wasn't previously possible. I think the reason it was successful was because I lay down the ground, and led them into my practice, consciously inviting them in, so to speak. The frame of a lecture allowed me to include different strands of experience, research, and responses, (a multiplicity of voices) which opened up an expansive territory of ideas, simultaneously building up an atmosphere in which my live performance could land in.
My work exists on a continuum, each piece relates back and forwards and sideways, looping to other pieces of work or writing - and it is this sense of interconnection, duration, and non-linear time that I would like to evoke - and in which I feel the performance lecture allowed. Also there is often a tension in me and my work about making public something very private - and somehow I found this approach supportive of my live performance and of welcoming the audience in, as though the lecture expanded the 'private' sphere to include them.
Here is the zoom recording of the Lecture. Because of the internet connection the video image is disrupted, but the sound is fluid. It's about 20 minutes long, you can skip through and just get a sense of the 3 different sections:
The opening film sequence and artist statement
Hyperlinks on Youtube and other artists
Llive performance (and sweeping up afterwards!)
Mud Crown (Performance Lecture), 19'11"
For the home edit of the live performance go to link: https://vimeo.com/483694748
SIMPATICO - WIP - (Zoom sessions with Derek)
The second piece of work I'd like you to look at is a current exploration with Derek. We are moving into collaboration together. We are sharing poems and making performative / filmic responses to our own and each others writing. The overarching interest between us is in exploring SOUL and this links back to my artist proposal.
I am interested in what happens in one-to-one relationships and if we place friendship and sharing at the centre of our practice. A sense of being-with-together-apart. Of sharing intimate processes of making and allowing time and space for responsive-ness, play, respect, listening, attunement. My experience so far, between Derek and I, is that a very alive and creative field emerges... and trust is being developed - of 'letting another in', to somewhere which is normally private. Also it's interesting that this is developing through lockdown - how to share and make contact, despite the distance (all night WeTransfers!).
Another core thread that I am personally exploring and what has materialised through the performative response to my poem, and in previous work, is that of shapeshifting. Here's me talking to a friend/musician about it:
It's not so much taking costume, it's letting these natural elements take shape through the body.
There are three different video edits of the same material. Playing around with connection, flow, disruption, zoom, performing to camera, to myself (mirror) - and giving my footage to Derek to make his own edit. (Next week we will work with one of his poems - both making our responses, in conversation with each other).
These are explorations (not final pieces), this is the beginning... you can watch a few minutes of each to get a sense of the difference - or watch them all!
Boom and Burn (flowing edit), 5'10"
Boom and Burn (disrupted /playing with zoom edit), 7'
Boom and Burn (Derek's edit), 5'22"
And only if you have time - check out my recent post - reaquaintance with Dartmoor:
I got really interested in Black Holes, since hearing Karen Barad talk about them, in various lectures on YouTube... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7LvXswjEBY&t=1s
I'm also interested in YIN, as the aspect of REST and nurture, of coming back IN (in a culture that is predominantly (usually) OUT and driven (but in lockdown)). I've been listening to Jeannie Zandi - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-pj_ANL6d0
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