grey skies

I came into your life

     like a ghost

          never left a trace...




Classic!  I used to play this a lot...

the walk home - October

Spaceman at St James

It's not hard to work out why converted churches can make fantastic arts spaces - they have a substance and quality of build, a grace and beauty of proportion that later buildings, constructed to more utilitarian agendas, can lack. 

In particular, the height of such spaces (soaring up towards the heavens...), and their acoustic (for songs and prayers to rise upwards...) mark them as special.  And there is a fittingness also in that, where there were once communal gatherings for the rituals of birth, marriage and death, similar comings together still happen, art and culture having filled the space of religion in many people's lives.

Contemporary theatre, dance, art, (and even film, as the Branchage Film Festival proved again brilliantly this year) thrive in open or unusual spaces.

Watching Spaceman by Dudendance in St James recently, I was struck by the purity of the space - this was partly because of the minimalist set-up, the Quaker-like simplicity of the white costume and the deliberate slow control of pace, which encouraged a meditative concentration in the audience.

Jersey Arts Centre had invited Dudendance's Paul Rous and Clea Wallis to undertake a three-week residency in St James to develop Spaceman, (previously seen at the Edinburgh Fringe 2009 as part of The Arches at St Stephens, and British Dance Edition 2010) so we had the privilege of seeing a performance that had become attuned to the space - and maybe the other way round as well - the space becoming attuned to the performance...

Spaceman draws inspiration from astronaut training procedures and evolutionary physical processes and the performance morphs from female to male, from animalistic to robotic, and incorporates projected film, a Sci-Fi scenario written by Paul Rous and atmospheric sounds.

I was struck by how the piece combined paradoxically both an ethereal quality and a sense of tension, arising from the intensity of focus and physical control of the performer. I also like how it evaded easy analysis, making me want to experience it again, to understand the narrative or to make my own from the subtle interactions of sound, text, film, building, dance, costume, physical theatre, still-life picture-like moments, allusions...

There was a good question and answer session with the company after the performance, especially about the merits of process versus product - which crystalized for me the great benefit of the programme of residencies organised by Jersey Arts Centre in St James during 2010 - the opportunity afforded for both performers (including local actors) and audiences to enjoy and understand more about process, rather than just the focus on the final product.  The act of creating is exciting - from the conscious mind or the unconscious, from research, dreams or memories, from the body or the intellect...

More again next year please!

shadow catchers

When I was quite young, I found a stash of discarded photographic paper (from a printing studio next door probably) and, not quite knowing what it was, experimented by putting objects onto the sheets - leaves and coins etc - to create 'magical' instant art.  Which was fun, but nowhere near as brilliant as this exhibition at the V&A sounds:

Untitled, (Körperfotogramm), Kassel, 1967 by Floris Neusüss

The essence of photography lies in its seemingly magical ability to fix shadows on light-sensitive surfaces. Normally, this requires a camera. Shadow Catchers, however, presents the work of five international contemporary artists - Floris Neusüss, Pierre Cordier, Susan Derges, Garry Fabian Miller and Adam Fuss - who work without a camera. Instead, they create images on photographic paper by casting shadows and manipulating light, or by chemically treating the surface of the paper.

Images made with a camera imply a documentary role. In contrast, camera-less photographs show what has never really existed. They are also always 'an original' because they are not made from a negative. Encountered as fragments, traces, signs, memories or dreams, they leave room for the imagination, transforming the world of objects into a world of visions.

Butterfly Daguerreotype by Adam Fuss, from the series My Ghost (2001)

I love that idea of fragments, traces, signs, memories or dreams - to be explored further in ghosting through...

Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography, V&A - 13 October 2010 - 20 February 2011

found no 10 - sand trees

ghosting through - 5 facts

1. 27% of the letters are vowels. Of one million first and last names we looked at, 87.6% have a higher vowel make-up. This means it is poorly envoweled.
2. In ASCII binary it is... 01000111 01101000 01101111 01110011 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01010100 01101000 01110010 01101111 01110101 01100111 01101000
3. Backwards, it is Gnitsohg Hguorht... nice ring to it, huh?
4. In Pig Latin, it is Ostingghay Oughthray.
5. People with this first name are probably: Male or female... We don't know yet. We're working on it!

(facts courtesy of http://www.isthisyour.name/)

wind tree