Last year I have embarked on a journey exploring how I could ‘collaborate’ with just one body.
The following are three short studies where I play with juxtapositions of solo performances and situations to a theme, using projections, laptops, analogue in-camera editing and simple post-production techniques.
I) ‘yvettecreekside’
Meditating and responding to an abstract painting by my friend Yvette Blackwood. I move shapes, forms, directions, colours and materials in the work, twice, once without any other material, and once with my simple 20 meter black nylon strap, performed to camera, then edited together as a 'duet'. The spoken word text is randomly chosen - in the style of Tristan Tzara and the dictionary - from Antonin Artaud's 'The Theatre and its Double'. The spoken words strangely resonate with what is happening in my movement as well as what is happening in the painting.
II) ‘verblist’
In this second study I translate Richard Serra's 'Verblist' (1967/68) into movement. In 'Verblist', he compiled a series of what he called "actions to relate to oneself, material, place, and process.", a strategy that I too explore in my practice. Here I juxtapose different immediate responses and performances to camera, layering live performance, projections, in-camera editing, postproduction etc. on top of each other to create a quintett. The soundscape, Ned Sydney Prevezer's 'brutal' one of four soundscapes he created for my project 'water returns to brutal form' in 2020, is randomly chosen and strangely works with the rest of the material.
III) ‘walking’
'walking' began with films and images of urban detritus and views encountered on my street. The material was first translated into spoken word, then movement, and finally the three were collaged together to create a ‘ballet’ of words, objects, views and choreography.