DOWN •n. soft fine feathers forming the covering of a young bird
DOWN •adj. 1 moving towards a lower place or position
DOWN •adj. 2 unhappy
The premise behind the collaboration I have undertaken with Ailis is to make a link between journeys that can’t be made any more (the impossible desire to visit the past) and feathers which can no longer fly (symbols of the past)… It’s a melancholy piece.
Ailis has composed a beautiful electro-acoustic score and my half of the project has been to transform a set of old ordnance survey maps (as mentioned in a previous post) into feathers.
My hands really hurt. I’m not sure this really counts as “suffering for your art” but that doesn’t make me feel any better. I’ve been working really hard on DOWN this week – so hard in fact that the calluses on my finger and thumb created by constant use of scissors have now gone scabby. Nice. However, I think I only have about 1,000 feathers left to make and then it’s all done.
Ailis has put together a blog about the project – thanks to her for this and to Ajay for filming and editing.
http://downexhibition.tumblr.com/
