The last of our three Open Studios will be at Metal in Peterborough on the evening of Thursday 29 January. We have a Time and Space Residency at Metal between 27 and 31 January and will be installing work emerging from our collaboration.
On 15 January I’m taking part in a Future Network event at Metal in Peterborough. I will be talking about the work that I’ve been doing with Darren alongside dancer Kate Marsh. Kate is currently on a Time and Space Residency with Metal.
Kate Marsh (based in Peterborough) and Welly O’Brien (based in Brighton) are using their time at Metal to continue their research and development of a new dance duet. As two dancers with missing limbs, they are both interested in the specificity of their own physicality and how this informs and enriches their collaborative practice and performance. The process will also develop them as choreographers, moving from dancers who perform the work of others to creating and directing themselves. They will work with film maker, Charlotte Darbyshire and creative facilitator Luke Pell to develop ideas for the duet. Click here for more details.
We were delighted that about 40 people came to the Open Studio at The Place, and nearly all stayed for the discussion chaired by Dr Veronica Sekules, Head of Education and Research, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts. The mix of artists, curators, critics, dancers and choreographers led to a lively conversation about the contrast of the grace and beauty of the movement with the sense of constraint and frustration, about the incidental sounds of the elastic and the effect this has on viewers emotions and sense of frustration. Some viewed the projection and live movement as a visual experience, not necessarily looking for meaning, but appreciating as a ‘canvas’.
One viewer found the work shown compelling, a reflection of his own daily experience. He found Tea Break spoke so much of trying to get on and do things, against repeated obstacles. And he found the projection really compelling, the sense of struggle, which he could relate to his life and work.
Another pointed out that the way that the Tea Break films were shown on framed iPads introduced a further element of containment or constraint.
People discussed the contrasts in scale in the work shown, and the way that some had a narrative whilst the projection was more abstract, asking us whether narrative is important to us.
The projection and live element were the final part of the evening and choreographer Richard Alston said that he would have liked to have seen the development of the choreography as demonstrated in the film sequence before he watched Living Room. This would have enabled him to see how the work had progressed, leading up to the small intensity of the latter.
For another participant the projected film introduced a vision of multi-universes, dealing in space in 3D, where he was looking beyond, and back beyond that into further spaces.
It was really useful to install work and and showcase emerging ideas at The Place in December. At the first Open Studio we installed work in my house and studio, where the research workshops had been held, and it felt as if it belonged there. In particular, the works made in or referring to a domestic context could be installed in domestic settings.
At The Place the two Tea Break films were shown in a similar way, albeit in a dance studio. However, the Living Room film was projected onto and through a glass window in a small meeting room and this made it even more voyeuristic.
We had put together a 15 minute film sequence of work in the studio, with Hannah moving in different ways through the web of elastic. This was projected at The Place so that the audience was watching the film through elastic, layering real elastic with that on film. Five minutes from the end Hannah entered the space from the back, working her way through this elastic to dance the choreographic sequence in front of the projection. The movement was repeated out of sync with the film, leading to three layers of Hannah moving and additional moving shadows.
Darren and I had great support from staff at The Place – on the Monday evening a technician prepared the Founders Stuio. He put up the projector, lighting and a back cloth and two scaffold poles were tensioned from floor to ceiling to install elastic. On Tuesday we had help from Oscar all day to test out the projected films, sort out lighting and sound and put down a rubber floor. We stretched elastic from elements in the room, using the scaffold poles and some sandbags. Oscar contributed impromptu choreography whilst wielding a broom…..
During the morning we installed the two Tea Break films in their iPad frames but we waited until dark to see if our idea of projecting Living Room through the window in the Meeting Room would work.
In the afternoon Hannah arrived and we were able to see how the choreographed sequence worked with the live elastic, and intersected with the filmed material.
