ferran adria' at qeh

ferran adria'

from el bulli talking to jay rayner

QEH

chef as rock god

chef as artist

fab and fun

*** 'drawing breath recycled' - jean fraser, sue ridge, rosa ainley, annie whitehead

Drawing Breath Recycled
... maps and journeys .......
an exhibition about breathing with:
Jean Fraser

Rosa Ainley

Sue Ridge

http://www.sueridge.com/HOME.html
Herne Bay Junior School
Annie Whitehead

http://www.earthmusic.com/annie.htm

and
Betteshanger Brass Band

@ Horsebridge Galleries, Whitstabe
http://www.horsebridge-centre.org.uk/index.php?q=node/911
Curated by Jean Fraser
www.drawingbreath.org

An arts and health project about breath and breathing, the Drawing Breath project is based around a cycle ride during the summer of 2007 searching for oxygen on the Kent and East Sussex coast, and the conversations and conditions encountered on the way - a landscape adventure about survival and what remains possible as we grow older.

Featuring a life-size driftwood bicyle sculpture, a new brass band composition and new photographic work and maps of the journey, plus a sound piece about breath and vocalisation. A wall of air will be constructed by the audience during the exhibition.

Special thanks to the individuals and groups who contributed to the journey, including Canterbury & District Breathe Easy support group and the Eastern & Coastal Kent Respiratory team.

Artists and participants include: Rosa Ainley – multi-media practitioner Betteshanger Brass Band Jean Fraser – photographic artist Herne Bay Junior School pupils Sue Ridge – multi-media artist Annie Whitehead – jazz trombonist and composer Artists and participants include: Rosa Ainley – multi-media practitioner Betteshanger Brass Band Jean Fraser – photographic artist Herne Bay Junior School pupils Sue Ridge – multi-media artist Annie Whitehead – jazz trombonist and composer.

the experience of this show is all about listening and noticing - the overall effect is somehow still and resonantly present: jean fraser's potraits are all moments of people captured with an easy joyful glowing presence; sue ridge's maps make you stop and enjoy minute journey details and repetition, and her x-rays of jean’s lungs overlaid with the journey map outline and together with rosa ainley's sound piece – that has you empathetically holding your breath and aaahing into the air around you – suggests a simultaneous fragility alongside substantial strength and resilience; jean and her daughter’s video to play with annie whitehead’s music makes the movement of air mesmerising, and the driftwood bicycle made with year 5 at herne bay junior school is just magic.
there is nothing competitive or hard in this show. it does not boast endurance or mileage or impressive technology. neither does it pretend to find anything that isn’t already there waiting to be found and enjoyed and savoured, so that of brandishing it instead invites you to stop and look and look some more and listen and remember and smile and wonder a few ‘what if’s...’ and breathe a little slower, a little deeper.

life enhancing.

'Lunar Sea' (Momix)

'Lunar Sea'

Momix

at Peacock Theatre

http://www.sadlerswells.com/show/Momix-Lunar-Sea

American company Momix returns to the Peacock Theatre to delight audiences with artistic director Moses Pendleton’s fascinating other-worldly dance creation Lunar Sea. Step into another world where figures glow eerily as they float through the darkness – combining props, light and shadow, Momix’s Lunar Sea is a “black and white ballet” in which dancers in fluorescent costumes float and fly magically, unbound by the laws of gravity.
"A fine merger of illusion, suspense and comedy" THE GUARDIAN

Presented under black light and featuring projections and puppets by Michael Curry (part of the Lion King design team), Moses Pendleton’s surreal world of dance and optical illusion is an exceptionally inventive production that will enthral all ages.

http://www.mosespendleton.com/

Artistic Director ~ Moses Pendleton

with

Tsarra Bequette, Jennifer Chicheportiche, Joshua Christopher, Simona DiTucci, Jonathan Eden, Donatello Iacobellis, Robert Laqui, Danielle McFall, Sarah Nachbauer, Christopher Patterson, Cassandra Taylor

Lighting Design ~ Joshua Starbuck and Moses Pendleton

Costume Design ~ Phoebe Katzin, Moses Pendleton, Cynthia Quinn

Puppet Design ~ Michael Curry

Video Projection ~ Moses Pendleton

Video Editing ~ Woodrow F. Dick, III

What a cool show
This is a company who are completely sure about what they do how they do it and how they offer it to us in their audience They know when and how to dazzle us with quite awesome spectacle when to tease us a little and let us see their secrets and when - as with the curtain call - to confront us with their perfectly toned human strength, agility and acrobatic dancing

The first half is called the sea of tranquility and is full of whimsy and teasing and subterranean images floating and flying and dangling and dancing and whizzing and rolling through a kaleidoscope of superimposed images of lunar and interstellar spectrums

Favourite moments
The rolling jelly fish
The rotating legs
The seahorses

The second half is called the bay of Seething and is much hotter and brighter and sharper and dangerous and angular and starts with birds and then is more plants and insects fighting and feeding and crawling and flying
favourite moments:
The zipper insects
The six legged and the four legged spiders
The feathered mouths / wings / flower
The long-winged birds making a crazy waving angular line together
The ghosts that fly through
An easy a show to enjoy and smile through wonderful and surprising enough to hold us mostly captivated through its not quite 2 hours.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/marktrezona/LunarSeaMomix#

*** 'helium' (slung low)

'helium'
slung low
at barbican
http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?id=7613

Bella’s grandfather keeps sending parcels to her. Inside each parcel is a helium balloon… This imaginative installation tells the story of Bella’s quest to discover her grandfather’s hidden past. From the inside of a Lancaster Bomber, to a magic show in 1920s London, we uncover the mysteries concealed by a series of helium balloons.Combining live and digital performance Helium investigates guilt, responsibility and the true meaning of ‘release’. As the performance unfolds in a series of boxes, each audience member has a short adventure of their own.



post script:

the day after seeing this show i open my the box and and take out the helium balloon. and with joy i discover that it is tied with a white ribbon to the storybook of the show. there is a programme inside too. and as i read the story with the remembered images from the show i do have a very special experience. and i am right that there is much density in this story and that i have absorbed only parts of it, and i love this company for anticipating this and giving me the story to find at home and discover fully ...





in the Pit foyer we're greeted by a couple of men in blue overalls from H Removals who check our names, give us a lollipop and a small card inviting us each to a birthday party, and a list of:
Things we'd like you to know;

- close all doors behind you.

- what you save with cheap boxes you'll pay for in breakages.

- that those ignore you aren't being rude it's just that they can't hear you.

- never pack explosives, combustibles, food of any kind, liquids or pets.

- always press the switch before going in. Once.

- pack all boxes to capacity.

- it's cracking to see you.

with love, H. Removals

and then one by one we are met by our H Removals guide, who sits us down and runs us through a very reassuring briefing about what to do and what to expect. Of course I knew when i booked this that i would quite probably be having to manage my bloody claustrophobia, and so it was as i was led from one small room to the next, and this was a lot easier than it might have been thanks to this expert guiding. At the same time the style and tone of this did make me feel like i was supposed to be 5 years old, which was a little unhelpful to my experience of the show. swings and roundabouts then, tricky to get right, and way better to overdo than underdo guiding as we know to our great cost, but perhaps they could relax a bit of the 'we soooo want you to have a great time' approach. a quibble.

so in the first room i am alone with Bella, who is on the phone to her family, in her recently deceased grandfather Max's room. We then hear through the radio Max in conversation with his gargoyle alter ego? twin? nemesis? satanic master? from them i learn that i am an eavesdropper and necessary to Bella being able to get the story of her grandfather's past. There is a strong sense of clues being laid down and a puzzle that i will have to try and solve. this room is intimate and the experience of being alone with a performer in a small room familiar for me after experiencing 'masque of the red death', but it's interesting to notice just how fast i have learned to become easy in this new audience~performance relationship and wonder how differently it plays with different individual audients.

my guide opens the door and - leaving Bella reading her grandfather's book - leads me out from this first room, hands me a box of popcorn, and steers me into a model movie theatre very reminiscent of the ones janet cardiff & george bure miller have made. A film is playing of 'the great Garibaldi or some such a magician, who appears shoots himself when his card guessing trick goes wrong, altho he reappears later saying something i don't remember (i've since re-seen it on the promo video and been reminded that he's saying "course it's frightening. that's the real trick: making what inside outside". meanwhile max and his gargoyle are back in conversation from the speaker box and talking about me and to me and this dominates my interest. There is a sense of more clues being laid out, and instructed to look up i find a joker playing card attached to the ceiling by a sign to 'take this card'. i do. the experience of this room is mostly confusing - maybe i haven't been concentrating enough or have become too distracted between film watching, conversation listening, popcorn munching and realising i can relax enough to know that my claustrophobia isn't getting the better of me. one of the things i do enjoy in all the rooms is that the time in each of them is long enough to get beyond the immediate novelty and begin to immerse in what is happening: in fact i could have enjoyed much longer (so it must have all been successful to have over-ridden my small space panic!)

so to the third room - the belly of a WWII bomber, with with one of the radio ops. this time i've been instructed to put on the headphones and to 'be brave'. the airman is trying to have a radio conversation with a friend called Duffy (martyn is convinced they used his name from the booking, and change it for each person, but i'm not so sure). the airman makes contact with Duffy, tells him that he's going to be a father, loses contact, and once again this is being over scored by the voices of Max and his gargoyle. then the floor falls open to show me film of a plane eye's view of the bombing of Dresden (martyn told me this - i wasn't clever enough to get this specific fact), and from this bombed and burning cathedral leaps into the foreground the gargoyle speaking directly up into our bomber but i'm so busy noticing effect of the trap door appears to have not worked smoothly and wondering if this is all i'm supposed to be being brave about and wishing it was just that bit more convincing that i don't remember what he says (but again from the promo video i've picked up the message "don't leave me behind"). i'm also still feeling under some pressure to solve a puzzle, pass a test, and perhaps this interferes with my focus, but again i think that given more time to become immersed and/or maybe less apparent density of information to be processed from Max and the gargoyle i could have quite fully entered into a belief of this world: there was so nearly the possibility of feeling i am in this bomber in radio silence with this airman whose friend has probably just been shot down.

'harrowing isn't it' says my guide as he takes me to the next room and i feel guilty because no it hadn't been really, although i think perhaps this comment was the key to release me from trying to solve the puzzle and licence me instead to simply bear witness, and this made the last two rooms easier to just be in. The penultimate 'box' is a hospital room, where i come face2face with the gargoyle, dressed as an orderly cleaning up the room, Max's voice as an image across the heart monitor screen. i think i missed important parts of the story in this room, except to pick up that because i - as the eavesdropper - was there still there listening then Bella was still turning the pages of the book in which she was learning this her grandfather's story, and that somehow during the bombing i'd just seen, Max and the gargoyle had become inextricably linked together, and that now that Max was dying the gargoyle was turning back into stone and suffering visibly as this happened. i don't know why Max laughs so maliciously while this happens, and somewhere too i am still bothering away trying to identify whose famous voice Max has (patrick stewart in fact - and a less famous voice would have saved me this distraction).

then the last room is a white space with a moving projection of cathedral arches and stained glass windows. this is the easiest room to just absorb the last of the story - a memory of Max's - that the gargoyle doesn't have because it was the one and only time time Max forgot him - of Bella letting go her helium balloon and it floating free. there is some association being made between the pages of the book of this story now heard and the helium balloons being set free and at last as Max fades away so too can the gargoyle and they can still together float free. and we watch a projection of Bella collecting her grandfather's snowscene and leaving his now packed away room for the last time, Max is finally released from his wartime guilt.

i am led out from the removal box rooms and on the way back to the foyer my guide gives me my own box with my name and inside my own white helium balloon, to go with my lollipop and my joker playing card. so it does nearly all fit: the birthday party was Bella's where she released her helium balloon, the lollipop i decide is simply a toy to help keep me and other anxious eavesdroppers calmed (and actually it works for this - the thought that i could suck it soothes despite the fact that i hate the things). the joker playing card and the suicidal magician remain an enigma for me i'm afraid.

this is a good-hearted and genuine show, warmed hugely by the care and thought that has obviously gone in to making it safe and accessible for us as individual audients travelling through new performance territories. and i love that this company is a diverse group of deliberately mixed artists and this fusion has gone into its devising and performance (just as we aspire so hopefully to do one day). it must be expensive to run because of its low audience numbers and high guiding team. it is limited by the low level of technology - the projections are not as good as we now see them in theatres and galleries, and the sound suffered for me because of the high high precision in janet cardiff & george bures miller's work.


and so from reading later i learn all the details that the above narrative of my experience has troubled over, missed or muddled:

~ the gargoyle is more precisely a grotesque - "a gargoyle spouts water".

~ 'the Great Capaldini''s show is a birthday treat for the eight year old Max, and he is the boy at the centre of the botched card trick. which in fact isn't botched at all but introduces us to Max's propensity to feel intense guilt: it is his fault the card trick has gone wrong. and the magician is not suicidal - this is simply part of the drama of the act.

~ the young airman is Max himself of course and the gargoyle chooses him to leap into from his burning cathedral in his burning city. and his friend Duffy is Duffy and not just Duffy for m duffy and me.

~ the restoration of the dresden cathedral brought no redemption for Max, it did not re-make the gargoyle's home nor offer any passing on for either of them.

~ we are invited to share this story. this is no longer just Max's story for Bella, but for us all to put our faces and names and memories and imaginings to: "just as Bella has my diary, you have what you have just experienced..."



"thank you for coming" the company write on the last page.
thank them for making such a special, wonderful and memorable experience.


but i look forward to what they make next ....
http://web.mac.com/slung.low/Slung_Low/slung_low_home.html


see also composer/sound artist Heather Fenoughty's blog about her making for this show:

www.heather-fenoughty.com/blog/2008/09/21/helium.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/marktrezona/Helium#

*** 'waves' (katie mitchell)

'Waves'
A work devised by Katie Mitchell and the Company from the text of Virginia Woolf’s novel 'The Waves'

the Company:
: Kate Duchêne
: Anastasia Hille
: Kristin Hutchinson
: Sean Jackson
: Stephen Kennedy
: Liz Kettle
: Paul Ready
: Jonah Russell

Director: Katie Mitchell
Designer: Vicki Mortimer
Video Designer: Leo Warner
Lighting Designer: Paule Constable
Music: Paul Clark
Sound: Gareth Fry

http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/waves

A tale of friendship, loss, identity and love, Waves is an exploration of human consciousness, tracing a band of friends from childhood to old age and death. The fragmented and dreamlike narrative of Virginia Woolf’s novel is exquisitely evoked using live film, sound and musicians.
Following a sell-out run in 2006, and prior to Broadway, a second chance to see the original National Theatre cast in this unique and acclaimed production.

Eight actors play the friends in 'The Waves' and a Reader who we take to be Virginia Woolf herself. The same actor always gives us the face of their character but they variously play different character's voices, hands, legs, feet ... And once each character's voice is established using the read narrative device of "... said Neville / Jinny / Susan / Bernard / Louis / Rhoda / Percival" the strong character acting helped vocally by distinct accents and intonation rhythms meant it was always clear who we are listening to.
This is everything '...some trace of her' was but for me even better and I can't decide whether this is because I am more familiar with the film -theatre -sound mixed live art form -certainly I felt much happier with the decisions I made about where to put my focus - or whether there is something more simple in the both the narrative line and the telling of this story that made it a much richer deeper and certainly more moving experience. The same delight and thrill I got from watching the fabulously sophisticated execution was still there, but this time I was a lot less the 'boy in a candy shop' trying hopelessly to make a grab for everything, and more the willing Alice happily jumping through the rabbit hole into this world and its people being made before us.

They give us many wonderfully evocative moments and the effect this time is so very close to reading a novel with flashes of imagery coming in and out of sudden focus. And a lot of the best moments come from patterns:
+ the shots of different faces at the train window going off to school- and then the knees coming home
+ the split-frame dinner to farewell Percival to India
+ the series of photos with Percival before he goes oft to India
+ the sequence of moments when each of the friends read the telegram telling of Percy’s death
+ the shoes walking over wet leaves during the final reunion

The film pictures made in this show seem a lot simpler than ‘… some trace of her' and are perhaps all the potent for me because of this - my brain is given more time to fully experience the moments being made because i am less frantically keeping up making sense and feeling wowed. This extra involvement is helped by a greater degree of directing our focus and less film: in ‘… some trace …’ the film images are constant and this means that it’s always up to you moment-by-moment to decide where you put your focus. And while I love the idea of this the activity of doing it - especially the first time - is unrelentingly busy; with less film in this show I am easier about putting my whole absorption in to the film images when we get them knowing there are other times for me to watch the live action. And the use of one long table and lighting and simple un-filmed props (such as the reader's cigarette and reading lamp) means that while it is always possible to watch the peripheral activity, I have a much cleaner sense of where the main focus is. And I think this gives me a deeper more emotional experience. Yes we are capable of taking in multi-layered information from an array of fields, but this leaves us no spare space or capacity to experience the inside of any moment and the experience remains intellectual only.

So for me this earlier and less sophisticated Katie Mitchell show using live theatre-film-sound is a near-perfect experience - moving and evocative, sensuously potent for the eyes and ears, emotionally resonant, and troubling and sexy and warm and familiar and richly richly experiential at every level.

http://picasaweb.google.com/marktrezona/WavesKatieMitchell#

*** "... some trace of her" (katie mitchell & the company)

tuesday 12th august 2008

...some trace of her
inspired by The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
adapted by Katie Mitchell and the company

: Cast includes
: Jamie Ballard
: Pandora Colin
: Sam Crane
: Gawn Grainger
: Helena Lymbery
: Hattie Morahan
: Bradley Taylor
: Ben Whishaw

Production credits:
Director: Katie Mitchell
Designer: Vicki Mortimer
Director of Photography: Leo Warner for Fifty-Nine Productions
Lighting Designer: Paule Constable
Composer: Paul Clark
Sound Designer: Gareth Fry

at cottlesloe, national theatre
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/sometrace

You know, I can't understand how one can pass by a tree and not be happy about the sight of it. Think how many beautiful things there are at every step, things even the most wretched man cannot but find beautiful. Look at a child, look at the grass, how it grows, look at the eyes that gaze at you and love you...
A woman lies dead on a bed in her wedding dress, a silver knife through her heart. The two men who loved her lie beside her.
I don't understand even now how it happened.
This multimedia performance develops the use of live video seen in the ground-breaking production of Waves at the National Theatre in 2006/7. Waves returns to the Cottesloe from 20 August to 9 September, prior to a UK and World Tour.
In the ...some trace of her programme Director of Photography, Leo Warner, describes the unique process of bringing ...some trace of her to the stage; plus how to access exclusive video footage from the show.
http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/38744/programme-extracts/programme-extract-for-emsome-trace-of-herem.html

Some of things said by Katie Mitchell in conversation with Dan Rabellato at the platform pre-show talk:

There are 2000 muscles in the face –we want to show the subtleties of expression I see in the rehearsal room, but which in a theatre even this size from 4 or 5 rows back becomes a just white shape, and from further back the whole body is just a white shape

It takes 3 days to make 1 minute of the show

we don't experience life as one linear neat storyline - we are constantly jumping our attention from one thing to another

this is a show about faith - about what people who have this structure and what those that don't might do: does it make them more / less moral?

there is an early sequence where a man talks about his thoughts through his experience of his last 3 minutes of life before his execution, only then to be reprieved - this is a show where the characters are "living in the shadow of death" (dan rabellato's phrase)

she is hugely influenced by Eastern Europe theatre makers – they set the bar - where makers take the work very seriously, make productions in terms of not one show but 3 or 4, spend 4 years making it, make a show that runs for several hours, make work of great beauty, emphasise the importance of craft

… and then the show …

as we sit down the company and already alive and casually busy on the stage, all in black non-descript clothes, demanding little attention, the giant film screen invisible

the floor is covered in hundreds of markers coloured coded for positioning cameras, lights and props
at each side are open shelves stacked neatly with clothes and materials
a couple of tables with poise lights
a couple of wooden platforms for the Foley sound effects

as the company make the show and the story unfolds before us we get a series of close-ups on faces and objects in period black and white film, often with a second actor voicing the dialogue so we receive it as the characters thoughts, and then perhaps with another setup providing us the view of what they are doing with their hands
we choose what we look at – the lovingly photoed closeup pan of the tea table and its accoutrements on the live version laid out on the floor or the actor reading the dialogue from a book into a microphone or the shots coming into and out readiness around the stage

I moved from a delighted boy in a candy shop thrilled with the sights on offer to wanting and getting the chance to immerse fully into the story and its characters to lastly wanting and getting some emotional vibrations. the last of these was the least provided – it’s there in the performances and the overall making but always played against the deliberate consciousness of the artifice going into its performing. it’s a small carp but I would have liked the dialogue to have come free from its speakers rather than read from the book and happily sacrificed the story of the video makers buried in the story of the show they are making – I could easily have absorbed and become accustomed to the busyness around the stage and become buried in the story, its people and their emotions if I’d been allowed.

but never never did the constant and efficient bustle around through over and under the various action points steal or distract – they were there to observe if we chose but never competing or contaminating the main focuses of where the story was happening.

andf the music also being made live but out of sight was an absolutely integral part of the show providing movement, mood, atmosphere and extra layers of storytelling

some moments from the show that – to coin Mitchell’s phrase about “the idiot” – that have burned into my memory

+ the quick and effective way the woman's back story is given to us through a vision of her as a young girl with a doll being preyed upon in double mirror leering image by the older man who will dominate and own her and the sexual splash of water
+ the long lists - by him at the start; by her at the end - of "I want ..."s
+ rolling up his sleeve so he could provide the bare arm to brush his own collar in preparation for his wedding
+ the beautifully lit tiny window pane with rain and flower that appeared as a blurred background in the film
+ the layered shots of the protagonist with white lights flying horizontally across his vision while we simultaneously watched them falling vertically in front of their camera
+ the layered shot of the two women with the one reflecting in the window she is watching the other through
+ the moments when we have a more complete scene on stage than the close-up film is giving us
+ the moments of tenderness or tension or isolation between two characters together in close-up on the screen while being completely separate on stage

+the continual flow of seamless moves in and out of the action from performing to filming to voicing to setting up to performing to lighting –to sound effecting to resetting up

wonderful and rich and magical and potent and thrilling and enthralling and gloriously controlled and contained and unfurledmy one wish for next time is that I can add “and moving” to this list

"hadley's experiment" (chris johnston, livestock)

wednesday 7th may 2008


"hadley's experiment"

by chris johnston

presented by livestock

CAST

anton maiof ~ sound artist

chris johnston

harry thompson

nicola dane

directed by dale heinen

at the tudor room, old ship hotel

brighton fringe festival

livestock is a theatre and arts organisation exploring themes of mental health and related issues. its next project concerns motherhood.

http://www.livestock.org.uk

based on a true account, this is the story of warren who wakes up one morning to find his life directed by imaginary gangsters that he can see and hear. these 'operators' lead him into a journey across country and into a different kind of life.

using sound and video, the company presents an almost unbelievable story of 'hearing voices' experience.

programme notes

the play is an original piece, however it is inspired by and very loosely based on a book by barbara o'brien entitled "operators and things". this book was published in the u.s. some time ago and recounts an extraordinary 'hearing voices' experience. we have tried to draw the essential discoveries from the book and re-present them in "hadley's experiment".

in our story, the central character, warren, discovers the existence of a previously hidden layer to human existence in which figures called 'operators' are active. 'operators' control human beings.

in the world of 'operators', certain terms are used to describe features of human life:

'stoning' ~ an action performed by one 'operator' on another to disable it

'latticework' ~ the part of the human brain used to record and memorise experience

'cowboys' ~ operators who go about trying to obtain contracts of 'things' illegally

'things' ~ human beings

'operators' ~ invisible agents who control human beings

'flies' ~ 'operators' in pursuit of causing stress to human beings

'operator council' ~ the governing body of operators

'open head' ~ a head opened by trauma or distress therefore visible to passing 'operators'

action cutting from back & forth from t.v. (video footage) and live as warren comes and goes from the car

also used for flashback story telling and to introduce other characters - wife, daughter, angry man and then the run to hide the sugar jar with the burned notebook leading to conway's attempt to get warren to throw himself under a train

suitcase full of things in plastic bags. and sand. and a sealed jar of sugar. and a dress for gwendolyn (blow up doll) and a jar of peanut butter. and a radio.

strong storytelling. reminiscent of matrix movies w'out the hi tech obviously)

great to see chris in action

unfortunately a tiny audience - must have been very hard to perform to.

problem with this for me was inconsistent focus - sometimes directly addressing us in audience sometimes played inside the 4th wall.

the best of it was the story. the less strong was becoming involved anyhow in warren's story or plight.

memories, bodies & landscapes: “the gathering”

monday 10th march 2008

“the gathering”
discussion forum:
memories, bodies & internal landscapes
bernie grant arts centre,
3.30pm sunday 9th march 2008
How do female artists connect with and draw on their own memories in their work?
Featuring Peggy Shaw, Anna Furse, Akosua Bambara, Cassie Waller, Shirley Williams, Rosanna Raymond and Campbell.

http://www.berniegrantcentre.co.uk/pl78.html

Autobiography and personal memory runs through women’s storytelling.
“The Gathering” festival harbours weekend of strange revelations, physical protestations, secrets revealed and declarations bellowed, brings together an unprecedented line-up of distinctive voices in female music, live art, visual art, spoken word, film, fashion and literature for cross cultural exploration and mind body expansions.

Some of the world’s leading female artists come together to discuss and examine aspects of memory and the creative process of their work, from cutting edge film to physical performance.

Join in the discussion and consider “how female artists connect with and draw on their own memories in their work?” …

Peggy Shaw
independent New York performance artist, painter and poet
http://www.splitbritches.com/pages/peggy.html
my notes/quotes:

“I work from impulse…”
“I have lumps in my body … if I squeeze them really hard maybe I’ll get a monologue…”
“I write for 10minutes without taking the pen off the paper … a technique for automatic writing: if stuck write ‘what I mean to say is …’ … keeps you honest …”
“after every show I try to have talkback – everyone can share the personal memories…”
“I work a lot with lies: try to lie and interesting truths come out…”

Anna Furse
award winning director and writer of over 50 text driven and devised works
classically trained dancer influenced by study with Peter Brook, Grotowski and in new dance forms has developed her own training methodology that creates theatre from the body outwards “Glass Body”(2005) – innovative infertility installation from a performance devised from her experience making her daughter through IVF developed with Imaging Dept, Assisted Contraception Unit and Hospital Arts at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital and with scientific mentoring of Prof. Stuart Campbell at Create Health
http://www.athletesoftheheart.org/
my notes/quotes:

“our memories are in our bodies – that’s all we have…”

my notes about “Glass Body”:

... in the centre of the space a stainless steel hospital trolley, an open drawer showing a pair of child’s red shoes, a child’s red jacket, a string of pearls (all of which appear in the show), its surface covered in sculptured salt providing the ‘screen’ for the video of the performance: a performer (woman) and a voice Anna) – it's about seeing the you inside your body, about the birth of ‘our kid’ Nina – (universal name for girl apparently), about eggs, cells, x-rays, sonic sounds, whale sounds, submarine sounds. stacked on the bottom shelf of the trolley are petri dishes that audiences are invited to write messages onto – one reads “to all my lost babies”. a bank of computers showing a moving exhibit of these petri dishes and one with an ‘interactive toy’ that invites you to piece together a woman’s reproductive system by dragging and placing – i was completely hopeless. reminiscent of those cut-out dress-up dolls with the different clothes and accessories - i was better with these once. at each end a projection of a painting of an early medical examination ...

Akousa Bambara
visual orator©, designer, jeweller, enameller and ceramic artist
Akousa has developed and produced Dialogue Panels© also known as Wall Jewellery© and Dialogue Tags©
http://www.ligali.org/article.php?id=1760
my notes/quotes:

“my work is about reclaiming – it’s about owning our [Afro-Caribbean] stories …”
“our story is constantly being interrupted by others’ assumptions …”
“I make in metal because I want the work to last … I want it to be dug up in 1,000 years and interpreted as an important part of the record …”
“I call myself a direct descendent of the kidnapped people of Africa – I call myself a dark power …”

Cassie Waller
video artist and photographer currently studying Interactive Media at Bernie Grant Arts Centre
“Found At Sea” uses archive media of her parents from 1976 to 1985: 16mm fottage of her father building a boat is integrated with taped conversation between her mother and father, the video reconstructs his obsessive journey to escape his life. Dedicated to and about my parents.
my notes/quotes:

“in the end it was exorcising … I’m not angry any more …”

Shirley Williams
influenced by textures
Shirley already possessed dressmaking skills from watching her seamstress grandma cut and make clothes without need of a pattern. Collage introduced her to the fundamentals and her garments now sell to celebs from her stall at Spitalfields market her exhibition is a series of recreated collaged books made from and out the memories the original books contain, including her own memories

my notes/quotes:

“the way I put things together is instinctive but the elements have been gathered over a long period of time … I collect things sporadically …”
“I like fragments … layers upon layers upon layers …”
“I try to recreate texture … manmade things that collide with nature …”
“I make scrapbooks and notebooks that hold a lot of my memories …"
“my work is reactionary … I like to work with something that already exists … like a collection of garments that I’ve got from charity shops that I’ve deconstructed and put together as a collage into a new garment …”

Rosanna Raymond
New Zealand born performance / installation / body adornment artist and writer currently living and working in London.
A ‘Tusitala’ (storyteller) at heart
http://www.londonfale.org.uk/spotlight-rosanna01.html
my notes/quotes:

“I am a ‘afulcasi’ – a half-caste … part Maori and part Samoan…”
“I was brought up and influenced by my Samoan grandmother in oral histories and crafts..."

Barby Asante
London based multimedia producer and artist
whose work focuses on concepts such as identity and self-expression: how much do we define personal identity through comparison, competition and aspiration?
Much of her performance installations place the viewer at the centre of the artistic process through physical interactive experiences: in her show “wig therapy” she has an assistant book people in for an hour’s session trying out wigs and talking
http://www.artsadmin.co.uk/events/event.php?id=341
my notes/quotes:

“I want to leave the audience feeling empowered not manipulated …”
“in Slovenia I felt belittled by their reactions and one inner voice said ‘you don’t have to take this shit’ and another inner voice said ‘you started this dialogue now you have to follow it through’ … I learned so much about how to work with what actually happens to make the conversation … what can I use now to make this conversation happen? …”

Campbell
queer filmmaker (no biog provided)
my notes/quotes:

“my film is about how my mother parented me and what was taken and rejected from how her mother brought her up …”
“some things are so ingrained you can’t let go of them …”
“how we move is African – they couldn’t beat that out of us …”

"Instructions for Modern Living" (Duncan Sarkies and Nic McGowan)

saturday 5th april 2008

Instructions for Modern Living
Duncan Sarkies and Nic McGowan
The Pit

barbican bite08
Tuesday 1 April – Saturday 5 April 2008
New Zealand

this is the show we saw last night - from nz as you will see.
and interestingly we were a split jury on this one:
i loved it and martyn hated it (amended this to a more neutral response after hearing them talk about the making and performing of it in the post show talk).


they take the model of a band performing a set of 'songs', except that in this case the 'songs' are written dialogues and monologues of an array of characters trying to get through a long night of sleeplessness to the morning, written and performed by duncan sarkies with live music made and performed by nic mcgowan. they made the show very much together in a series of 'jam sessions' -impro-ing the words alongside the music.


the piece is very laid back, lethargic, melancholic, amorphic (add further nightime slowmoving adjectives of your choice - martyn's might be laconic. soporiphic. deadly...) - very nz in in this deliberately unhurried atmosphere and one of our criticisms is that all the effects added together into this one same affect - music, lighting, words performance, images - there was nothing acting in counterpoint. so what you got was a stage full of tech kit - sound gear & musical instruments (keyboards, vodophone, weird electronic thingy - therefone we think it's called - you play it with your hands seemingly thru thin air), microphone, music stand that duncan used to work thru and discard his scripts from, video camera, old fashioned record player with a sarah vaughn l.p. on it. and behind them a large screen that images were played on and that we saw thru the layer of them and their equipment. they wanted us to see them physically making the show as it happened and to know that all the sound and many of the video images were live. so you get this very trance like music being set up in a series of layered loops building up on top of and over each other: keyboard, synth orchestral sounds, voice, etc etc etc. behind this different night time images suggesting the scene of the story.

and we get story after story - always from the 1st person - so either monoloque or dialogue. all performed thru a microphone so the change in voices and sounds that duncan was able to give us was phenomenal.


we start with...

...a house at night with it's lights on until we see a shadowey person come thru into the front room and then leave turning out the lights:

"we haven't told wendy about the ghost that lives in her room. wendy is our new flatmate and we want her to stay for a bit. so we haven't told her about the ghost. but the ghost seems to like wendy. it is always there in her room when she comes home from work. and again when she goes up to bed..."

... an apartment block in the rain with all its lights blazing away thru the gloom:

"it's 3am and i'm here at radio whatever waiting to take your calls. whatever your problems give me a call and let's talk. well i see the board is clear so i'm standing by and ready for your call. we all have problems. and let's face it anyone who is awake and listening to this show at this time in the morning has certainly got a problem or two. so the board is still showing clear so i'm ready to talk to you. well perhaps i should get the ball rolling. i had a troubled childhood. like a lot of people. not a happy little child...."

...a car driving thru city streets seen through the front window:

"...i'm on my way home. and i know that i'm not going to like what i find when i get there. i know my wife will be home. but i also know she won't be very happy to see me. chances are she'll be in bed already, pretending to be asleep when i walk in. there'll be nothing for dinner i shouldn't think..."

this story finished with the car reversing:

"...so what if we could rewind the tape of our lives. where would you like to go back to? back to that time you were young and out partying every night? back to being at school and never getting picked for the cool teams? back to being a young kid and...."

...a screen of static:

"...huston this is friendship, over"
" friendship this is huston. receiving you loud and clear, over"
"roger that huston. nothing to report. all isgood here. over"
" copy that friendship."
"actually, when i say all is good here there that's not quite the truth. actually, i'm not so good with words, but well how to say, i guess it's just that i'm really bored. over"
"huston? please confirm you are receiving. over"
"oh. this is huston. yes. copy that friendship. just can't think of how to help really. over."

"this is friendship. yes roger that huston. i guess this is one i'll just have to work through by myself"
"actually frienship, i'm pretty bored myself as it happens. over"
"oh. well i've got a power nap scheduled so i'll sign out huston"
"there's nothing to do here. and i haven't even got a window. what do you see through your window friendship? over"

"well huston. you know the pictures of the earth you see quite often on the covers of those atlases?"
"yeah"
"well the view from my windon pretty much looks like that."
"oh. copy that friendship"

....a figure leaning against a wall looking at a wall of tvs in a shop windowall playing the same pictures:

sorry - can't remember this story but it was my favourite image and i went into a bit of my own dream with it i think

...a silhouette in a pub of a couple of blokes facing each other over a table with their beer glasses:

(bass voice) "did you hear about the brazillian?"
(pipey voice) "that's a landing strip isn't it?"
"no. i mean the people. from brazil. the brazillian the police shot in london in the tube station?"
"oh. yeah"
"it's not right that. it's just because he was of the wrong colour."
"yeah.you've got to be right colour these days"
"especially over there you do. since 9/11 they've got police everywhere."
"wasn't 9/11 america?"
"well you know what i mean. they've toughened all the security up and you can't move anywhere over there now"
"really? sounds like a terrible place to be"

...a silhouette of a couple in armchairs from the back with their tea cups on side tables watching a tv show about a gadget for putting your hair into aperfect bun:

"are you enjoying this?"
"yes i am. it's interesting."
"oh. do you think so."
"yes i do. why? what do you want to watch?"
"no no this is fine."
"if you want to watch something else just say so."
"no this is fine."
"we could turn it off."
"and do what?"
"and have a conversation. we never talk."
"allright then."
"what do you want to talk about?"
"you start. it was your idea."
"ok... this is a really nice cup of tea"
" on no no no. that's not a conversation. you cannot have a conversation about a cup of tea"

i've taken a lot of liberties with the writing of these from memory - the essence is there but duncan sarkies is a proper writer and i'm trying to just recapture my future recollection.
gives you the idea tho i think.

there was also a happy monologue along the lines of ...

"...how did i get so lucky. i'd resigned myself to spending the rest of my love life lover-less. and then you came along. what did i do to deserve you? ..."

and the last piece was a new age sermon about rejoicing in the beauty and wonder of the world and its natural beauty with the only day time images they used - waterfalls, dolphins and other 'glorious nature' pics - because they wanted to have something different in the mix and a place to lead to and end with. but it didn't come off well for us and it was too unclear that the tone was meant to be heavily ironic (where the rest of the voices had been - to themselves at least - sincere & true).


so anyway...
i am watching and thinking:

wow this is so exciting and what a brilliant model for a way to make a show and how great to be given all this space to have my own thoughts and dreams in and maybe these aren't the stories i would want to be telling but as a jumping off point for imagining and experiencing something how rish and wonderful and how cool that i'm gonna get the chance to be learning some of this technology at g'smiths and yes yes yes ...

and i turn to martyn at the end and say

"wasn't that so great. what did you think?"

and he says:

"i hated it!"

cos i think he has meanwhile been watching and thinking:

"oh god i recognise all these no-hoper losers all too well and i am so not interested in their stories and god this is self-indulgent and slow and who cares and this is soooo nz not in a good way and all right all right i get the message move on already ..."

then from the post show talk and quite a lot of our own post show talking we have both modified our views closer together so he doesn't hate it quite so much and can see things to like about it and i have admitted it some faults and agreed that a big one of these was that there was no anticipation or surprise - you kinda figured out what you were going to get early on and then as the piece progressed you had less and less need - and thus desire - to stay alert and involved.


but another thrilling experience at the theatre in ye ole london towne.

and fantastic to be getting cutting edge performance this good from our homeland.

http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?id=6485

http://www.barbican.org.uk/news/artformnews/theatredance/instructions-for-modern-living