Allowing It To Unfold...

" You should have a practice in art that actually looks forward to a moment that will be different. I think that's the point that we haven't actually grasped. Critics look at a work and they say, 'That's only a negative deconstructive understanding of personal experience', without seeing what the work as a whole represents in terms of a positive view of social change and what art could be in the future." Mary Kelly interviewed by Monika Gagnon, C Magazine 1986 (10), 24 (Pollock, Griselda (1994). Vision and Difference, p. 155)

In reference to previous posts it is still very much a patriarchal world, now filled with many voices but still the struggle for change. I can honestly say I myself am struggling with feminism and my place within it as a practicing female artist. Instead of producing what I want to produce I still tend to fight myself and listen to those nasty little voices that tell you that what your doing 'sucks', or 'this is going to be crap', etc, etc before the work even has a chance to take shape. The way I have found to quieten this issue is to listen to very loud and heavy music or to watch trashy TV while making. This way my attention isn't so enveloped in what I am doing and I tend to 'just do it' (NIKE ADD) and tune into the noise, instead of the 'mental noise', that is.

This is what has been great while working with the Gone To Earth production, because I am no longer the 'genius' sitting in my ivory tower creating! Collaborating is a wonderful thing in terms of letting go of the pressure of having to be the sole creator of something fantastic. It can also be a really interesting time to relinquish control, as well as to rein in ideas that your mind is running off on a tangent about! At present I am working with a lighting team, a design team (myself and Bev), music design, the director and the cast themselves, so I can only say that this experience will certainly teach me many new skills (like patience for one) and will enrich my solo practice and give me the foundation to consider other collaborative artistic ventures. I think it will bring many new ways of looking at what and how I create (in a solo situation) after returning from theatre. I believe this will expand my practice into new areas and might help to create some of the many performative ideas I have conceptualised.

Since my last post on Gone To Earth many new concepts for stage design have developed. I have recently been looking at Russian Avant-Garde theatre design and went to Margi with what I thought she might have in mind. It is very hard to imagine what someone is thinking so its easier for me to find images or draw what I think is unfolding.

Fig 1. The Man Who Was Thursday, 1923
Fig 2. The Magnanimous Cuckold, 1922

Margi really liked fig 2. and the idea of using scaffolding as part of the set design. In rehearsals in the Woodward Theatre on Monday night we put the scaffolding on stage and let the cast utilise it during perceptual practice and it worked beautifully. Definitely a keeper! The imagery and shadow work that was created by them climbing on it and with lighting projecting onto the back screen was very rich and layered and again with more layers created by platforms and ladders was a truly stunning effect. A little like collaging but instead of my usual material of paper on a vertical surface your creating both vertical shadow imagery with horizontal 3D structures.

Other ideas that have come from the Woodward rehearsals are using sand on the floor to create patterns like the rice used in the Songs of the Wanderers performed by Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan. This is also a way to map the path of the cast, each night the end result would be a different pattern.

Songs of the Wanderers: "The dancers work with and in the field of rice, moving slowly as if nature had begun to reflect on its own seasons and its cyclical memories. The dancers, carrying branches, become a landscape, transform into an oratorio of slow gestures that sometimes, as in a storm, erupt into sudden tempests of emotion, while all through the evening, one dancer stands still on stage left, entranced in private meditation, a steady trickle of rice falling on his shaven head and forming a small mountain at his feet. At the end, the dancers leave, but one man remains at work, a cosmic farmer tilling the earth and plowing, slowly, very slowly, the golden rice field. A spiral emerges as if a mandala was built to our quiet comprehension of eternity." (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~orpheus/events.html)

Song of the Wanderers

Cloud Gate Dance Theater of Taiwan:

Wild Cursive/Final Chapter of Cursive: A Trilogy

"This astonishing new work is influenced by kuang chao (wild calligraphy), considered the pinnacle of Chinese cursive aesthetics, in which all rules are broken and the characters freed from any set form. Giant cascading scrolls of rice paper are the sole set decoration, as black ink seeps slowly onto the paper creating wild abstract patterns. The subtle slow motions and dynamite attacks of the dancers, whose training includes modern dance, classical ballet, meditation, martial arts, and tai chi tao yin, echo the serpentine lines creating spellbinding movements and lyrical flows within a forest of ink." (http://web3.colum.edu/eventoftheday/archives/2006_10.php)

Wild Cursive

Moon Water also by Cloud Gate:

"To the Chinese, Moon Water, or Shui Yue, is reminiscent of two things. One is a Buddhish proverb: "Flowers in a mirror and moon on the water are both illusory." The other describes the ideal state of Taiji (t'ai-chi) practitioners: "Energy flows like water, while the spirit shines like the moon." This transcendent new work departs from these famous quotes in a poetic rendering of the Daoist philosophy. "Moon Water" is a study of real vs. unreal, effort vs effortlessness, yin and yang, and, in the end, a study of time." (http://www.international.ucla.edu/china/events/showevent.asp?eventid=1061)

Moon Water

These productions are very minimalist in stage design but intensely stunning in appearance. Completely unlike the Russian Avant-gardes sets whose designs seem somewhat clumsy in comparison yet still revolutionary for its time. These are however two very different theatre styles to interpret and appreciate and I think a combination of these elements could be a really interesting concept but am sure many other ideas will unfold before the final set is complete!

Further developments will be documented in my next post...