Performance, alchemy and collage
A month long collaboration with
For The Love of People (Jez Coram/Caroline Hick) on WE ARE ALIVE AGAIN, at the Fabric Arts Lab in Bradford
Day One: Friday 1st November
We start.
A white sheet
A table
Some sticks
Some miniature furniture: a wardrobe, a mirrored table, a chest of drawers
Cut outs chosen from the boxes:
A group of children lean on the wardrobe
A family group (mine) the children (me and my brother) in bathing costumes stand smile and squint into the sun
Two headless figures in Victorian dresses clutching each other
A giant pair of hands, removed from the piano they were playing, up – ended,
A boot
A standing clock
Back projected onto the sheet: A static ocean-like image. Clips from a cinefilm
A lamp
An oval viewfinder on the camera – a frame mount from an old school photograph
Caroline moves a lamp slowly over the the scene. I stand behind the screen and moved a cd in front of the project, creating a soft violet circular mask. Jez films the scene from the front. A magic starts to happen. Interaction between objects, cutouts, light from a slowly moving lamp, back projection. With these simple elements and movement, the scene becomes animated. We become animated.
We watch back the footage and then sit in front of the table, mesmerised. We talk about alchemy: moving into an another state. Moving light, image, shadows. The stage is a construct. We can see how the illusion is created. But this doesn’t spoil the magic – but gives us consciousness of it as a story we can play with.
We can choose how we experience it. Move around and pick your view. Look from the side, see the shadows of the legs of the children against the wardrobe. Go up close, look at the faces of the figures, the detail of the furniture. Place yourself in front, peer through the viewfinder. Enter here, if you like. What it means is for each of us to decide.
What seems striking is not the particularity of individual objects and images – or trying to make them tell a story. It’s our willingness to enter into another world. How easily we can, with the simplest of means. And how much we want to.
This day of has made me think of:
– Memories of playing with and looking at pre-cinematic devices at the Cinema Museum in Girona, Spain http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_Museum_%28Giro… and http://www.museudelcinema.cat/cat/index.php in a childlike trance. I’ve been twice and I love the museum’s hands on interactivity, and the sense of magic and wonder it creates.
– Comrades: a film about the Tolpuddle Martys, told through the story of a travelling lanternist, by the late great Scottish director Bill Douglas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RqjsIVGRJE
We have set up a Facebook page where all three of us will be documenting the progress of the collaboration – you can see it here https://www.facebook.com/jeanmcewanfortheloveofpeo…
