A blog by John Boursnell, reporting on, or at least thinking out loud about, the project 5 actions / 5 texts / 5 songs – a live art piece that uses repeated actions, ball-bearing dropping, cassette looping and singing to follow a text based score.
19/05/12 – Rehearsal on Thursday 17th.
A chance to try out some new equipment and different text in the studio a few days ago, as well as trying new ‘stage’ set up. The performance at BETA on Wednesday was originally in a much smaller space, and I wanted to emphasise this by having the audience stand very close. The new venue, Norwich Puppet Theatre, is great, but has a different feel.
What I wanted to try with this table setup (I have knelt on the floor before), was putting it v. close to audience seating, being roughly at the same height as them. Being at eye-line height meant I felt physically close to the audience (in this case, just two people) – and also (maybe this was the table), slightly professorial – or at least, like a science demonstrator.
There were a few flaps with the technology (it is quite new – must practice!), but I was pleased with how it went – it was good to perform and improvise again – this is why I’m doing the project – to perform this piece – and its easy to forget that when you’re thinking about publicity, tech etc.
11/05/12
Found it hard to really swing into action on this project, but things are afoot, and here are the breif headlines.
I’ve now made contact to both the mentors I’d approached for the project – Richard Layzell and Phillip Warnell – and pencilled in dates to speak to them. Looking forward to talking about the project outside of my normal circle – it always throws up interesting angles.
I’m performing the piece (or a version of it) at the BETA Festival in Norwich on May 23rd (details at betafestival.co.uk) – this is pretty soon, so a chance to make the work ‘live’ again.
I’ve alos been talking to poet Sam Riviere about producing some texts for the piece – I used some of his work before (with permission) but to sit down with Sam and hear his take on the work, and the possibilities as he saw them, was energising to say the least.
(read Sam’s work here: http://austerities.tumblr.com/ )
Actually feel I can go forwards now.
First post, Friday 27th April.
Well, the cheque from ACE dropped onto the mat a day or two ago, so this seems like a good time to start.
Ok.
This project is to develop a piece I made last year for Eastern Pavilions, called 5 actions / 5 texts / 5 songs. The piece used repeated actions, ball-bearing dropping, polaroid picture taking, cassette looping to create a fifteen minute performance from a text based score.
The project – as I’ll try to explore and make public on this blog – is designed to produce more material for a ‘library pf actions’ for th epiece – meaning it can be performed lots of different ways; different combinations.
There has always been a chance elemnet to some parts of the piece – the use of found, or randomly selected. I’m hoping to make this more transparent for the audience – not quite sure exactly how this will manifest yet.
I’ll be getting advice from mentores, and hopefully collaborating with a poet and an artist. Details to follow.
A video of the original performance can be seen here: http://johnboursnell.tumblr.com/post/12036112494/5-actions-5-texts-5-songs.
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