Play Catch Up

As you may have realised, I have finally pulled my finger out and returned to update this blog following a rather long while away. Spent mostly over in Budapest at Trafo Contemporary Art House and playing catch up with long lost friend and houseboat home Waltham Abbey. 

So where to now and what so?

Here are some pictures of the recent performance at with Apryl Pipe @Vibes Gallery in South London.
Thank you to the wonderful team and the Dark Soul Dance Company and artists  for an evening packed full of exhibited art and weird and wonderful performance.

The performance was looking at the notion of meditative performance of offering and eating fruit. Using improvisation and Butoh techniques.

Experimental Process

When was the last time you took the time to really sit still and contemplate who you are? 

When was the last time you felt totally in your body? Felt the wonder of being in the world? 

When was it that you recognised the beauty of your hands and their ability to shape and mould?

Or felt the sense of balance catch you when you nearly fell?

Experienced the sensation of touching the earth through infant-like rolling around?

Why is it that the craving for release is rarely satisfied? 

Ignite the senses.

These small experiments are exploring playfully and meaningfully, what it means to exist.

Recognising the need to awaken the senses that dance behind the periphery of the structure of normality.

Position the self in the arena of confluence.

Imbue the self with the trust of intuition, the power of imagination and the light of inspiration.

Ignite

Jacqueline Traide's efforts

Are we different from the other beings that inhabit and share our world? 

Are we different from animals?

This piece first and foremost offered to me a real insight in the difference between ourselves and our fellow beasts. Left totally rehumanised, this art work created by Oliver Cronk and India Banks, not only offered a new perspective on animal testing procedures but has it lead to new understandings of what it means to embody animal? Is there a difference then between stunts and live action? Between embodied performance and acting? Indeed I would go as far to say yes. Throughout this 'performance' there seemed to be a non-thinking element, how else could such a performance be outlived.. to think, means to question and the question of getting up to use the toilet or walk out did not occur. To allow ones bodily responses to work out of intuition, as a reaction to procedures that have never been experienced before - is this then a stunt? Anticipation aside - here was a piece who's rough structure and framework was potentially known but being left unsuspecting some allows for a true openness to the experience. An non- rehearsed piece, in this case, is what carried it. 

As for the message? - let us not forget our capacities to work out of responsibility rather than ignorance.

Illuminate

What is it that I have to offer you?


What is it that you have to offer me?


What is it that we have to offer friends?


Or loved ones?


What things do you find most meaningful, more important, most needed in life?


Could these things be considered riches?

Would you be willing to share these meaningful things with a stranger?


These conductive-copper, thinking crowns have been inscribed by artists, teachers, lawyers, parents, brothers, sisters and being alike - with words that are alive, words that are in movement, who's exchange is for free and for freedom.


Your head is worthy of a crown
Come let us share our riches together.

What does it mean to move? What is it that goes on down to our cellular level? Are we not in flux all the time? Nothing static but the images we see through our eyes? Why is it that Goethe's second part of Faust is so extraordinary? Perhaps because like so many people, he was pacing, walking up and down dictating his idea's - not sat analysing, editing and re-writting like the first part. What was it then that he was tapping into - what is it I ask myself that allows us the space and time not only for reflecting but to think - not through our heads or our hearts but through somehow stimulating our bodies. The dark, mysterious, unknown places we call home. My exploration into moving to think looks not only at how we can lend ourselves to intuition but how through active meaningful movement we can somehow again find both our minds and bodies restful. Forget the gym, chop some wood.    

XO Performance

Thanking Dan Weir for collaborating with the filming of this piece. Filmed in 2010 this piece, which looks at the relationship between body and space and light, has lead to the development of further pieces choreographed by myself this year. These I will post shortly.

The Listening Bed, site/non site specific audio sculpture, London/Spain

The Listening Bed

My starting point begins with the term the new normal, the space after life changing circumstance we sometimes find ourselves occupying. This new normal itself, does not represent as solid terminology but rather as a subjective existence. It is neither described by adjectives nor can it be used as a label. It is the base point on which my most current work hangs.

After an event, which changes our lives, we see our perceptions change, grow and expand to encompass the parallel realities we can often be subconscious too.

After reaching a point of clarity, I began to simplify the backlog of this years’ work, down to my basic, underlying motives. I struggled with various methods of expression before coming to terms with its simplicity and instead built my most current work around a few base ideas arising from personal experience.

This personal experience lead to my exploration into western cultures and their ability to push aside difficult issues; how culturally people deal with such intensities such as trauma, loss and hardship and how can I, through art, express the essential need for people to reconnect to a part of our existence, which is ultimately disregarded through sensory deprivation and over intellectualisation?