festival workshop
I've never been so knackered in all my born days.
And every evening I would come home, eye the growing pile of dirty plates, and go to bed. By about Sunday someone had put them in the sink and poured water over them. (Everybody: "I didn't do it, I've been at work all day!")
I thought I'd actually stopped running after everyone and doing housework, but from the state of the house, this is not so. Wednesday, last workshop day, Thursday, cleanup, Friday I had a big evaluation meeting, today, blessed leisure.
We were each supposed to write two reviews a day and have them ready by the next day, but that was a tall order. It got so that if anything was cancelled - like the post-gay Duckie event - all you felt was relief. The valuable thing was being forced to write regardless, being strictly edited for clarity and getting instant feedback in pragmatic terms : this works, this doesn't, this sentence is too long, etc. Hothousing. So, with me, the great thing that happened was that I stopped being all detached and started writing how I actually think. Like from "Each statement falls deliberately into the space as the stage gradually brightens" to "Bloody hell, he's haring away sharpish, was I supposed to lose sight of him?" Liberating.
Stuff I seen.
You sit in a big black leather recliner in front of a huge screen. You have headphones, get a band of sensors round your chest and hold a handset that measures your pulse, and on the screen you see your breath translated into expanding concentric circles and you hear a throbbing musical pulse that is your heartbeat. You try and make patterns with the circles, see how big you can get it, whether you can make it disappear, what happens if you start panting - It was hypnotic.
There was a dance performance by a bloke dressed all in white - white suit (sharp), tie, shirt, shoes - he started off very structured and gradually stuttered into into broken, random movements; he told fractured stories to the audience, one of which was about Jacob wrestling with the angel, or was it with himself? Yes, all the clothes came off. Then they went on again, not quite as tidily. - he had the most beautiful body, not an ounce of extra flesh - you could count his ribs - but with shapely hips and legs like a girl...I was distracted, but that was a wonderful performance. I can believe he was being an angel. As, you know, in a dance about a human fighting his angel nature.
I got took on a walk round the docks with a recorded voice in my ear telling me where to go. Simple concept, that was an amazing piece of work that made me cry. There was another thing to sit in, an enclosed egg - you sit in the dark (there's a panic button) and listen to what turns out to be the vibrations of your own body, amplified. I was disappointed, I wanted it to be more like putting your head in a speaker. There was a woman who crawled round the gallery bookshop insinuating herself into spaces. What else? There was a video installation where if you sit down, loads of birds come and roost in the trees, and if you get up, you chase them away. There was an ecological lesson there that didn't quite work, because it was much more spectacular to see them fly away in a flock than to see them roost.
I think I tended to see the things that were more structured cos I have low tolerance for young people messing about in arty fashion. Apparently 'disrupting audience expectations' is a big indicator that it's Live Art you are watching, rather than say, experimental theatre. 'Theatrical' wasn't being used as a compliment. But there was one event by the Pacitti Company which was theatrical. We had to sign a contract when we got there: not to look behind us, or over our shoulder; not to ever tell anyone what wish we made. Then we had a white ribbon tied round a wrist, and our palms were crossed with a coin before we were ushered into the waiting area. After that they had my permission to do whatever they wanted, really, I was completely engaged. We had to walk down a dark path past a man spinning straw into gold and a welcoming woman in evening dress, into the story circle. And we were all terrified to even glance over our shoulder! Anyway, it was a long, very vivid, series of bodily images: piles of coins, an antlered man, a black embroidered ribbon of story that was handed round the circle; red ribbons round throats, a naked Christ, a woman with hair flowing upwards from her head, showers of black words...I was just thinking it needed more sex or violence or something when the naked Christ laid down on the coins and had hot red wax was dripped on him to stick model trees to his body...they served us sherry when they took each white ribbon from us and told us to make a wish while they tied the ribbons to a tree.
Then there was the man who became an oyster. 'Performance lecture' is the name of that particular style. It was a dinner party, with a flipchart. Ten of us, with fairy lights on the table, being served champagne while the artist told us All About Oysters and how erotic it is to eat them. Then they served us the oysters.
Think I ate mine? I can't even eat clams. That are already dead. God, it's brutal. Great big shucking knife, slice through the abductor muscle, force the little thing open. Erotic wasn't quite what I was thinking. Second course was angels on horseback, grilled oysters in bacon...I tried to have a go at that. The next day he was going to Become an oyster (he definitely said it with capital letters) and we each had a timed slot to go see this process. So next day I go in and there's a sunbed at the end of a darkened room, glowing neon blue. Figure on the sunbed. I approach, and by this time I'm thinking 'Please don't let him be naked, please don't let him be naked' because I've seen four strange willies already this festival, and that's a bit much for an old married lady. So I go up to the blue glow and he's lying there on the glass unblinking, staring straight ahead, on a little pair of fluffy cherubs wings. And he's wrapped in slices of bacon.
Now I was told there had been a session with the photographer with him swaddled in slime and polythene and rolled down a cliff, which I think would have been a little more convincing.
Isn't it funny how, at this particular cultural moment, men can take all their clothes off without worrying about unwanted connotations and women can't? I mean, not that they'd necessarily want to - there were no naked women in this festival - but it's striking we have such different ways of reading male and female bodies.
The gallery can be proud of their audiences because the place was packed. Even if the audience was a little homogenous. I had to write one piece which I'm worried about in case someone never speaks to me again. Ah, there was a double decker bus outside the gallery for the 'fringe' element where you could smoke and have a cup of tea.* mutterings about co-opting the avant-garde* They did 'Siberian Aerobics' on the cobbles - it was as cold as anything last week.
Oh, and there was a symposium about digital practice/live art which I won't bore on about except to say, anonymous distributed consciousness, yay!
And every evening I would come home, eye the growing pile of dirty plates, and go to bed. By about Sunday someone had put them in the sink and poured water over them. (Everybody: "I didn't do it, I've been at work all day!")
I thought I'd actually stopped running after everyone and doing housework, but from the state of the house, this is not so. Wednesday, last workshop day, Thursday, cleanup, Friday I had a big evaluation meeting, today, blessed leisure.
We were each supposed to write two reviews a day and have them ready by the next day, but that was a tall order. It got so that if anything was cancelled - like the post-gay Duckie event - all you felt was relief. The valuable thing was being forced to write regardless, being strictly edited for clarity and getting instant feedback in pragmatic terms : this works, this doesn't, this sentence is too long, etc. Hothousing. So, with me, the great thing that happened was that I stopped being all detached and started writing how I actually think. Like from "Each statement falls deliberately into the space as the stage gradually brightens" to "Bloody hell, he's haring away sharpish, was I supposed to lose sight of him?" Liberating.
Stuff I seen.
You sit in a big black leather recliner in front of a huge screen. You have headphones, get a band of sensors round your chest and hold a handset that measures your pulse, and on the screen you see your breath translated into expanding concentric circles and you hear a throbbing musical pulse that is your heartbeat. You try and make patterns with the circles, see how big you can get it, whether you can make it disappear, what happens if you start panting - It was hypnotic.
There was a dance performance by a bloke dressed all in white - white suit (sharp), tie, shirt, shoes - he started off very structured and gradually stuttered into into broken, random movements; he told fractured stories to the audience, one of which was about Jacob wrestling with the angel, or was it with himself? Yes, all the clothes came off. Then they went on again, not quite as tidily. - he had the most beautiful body, not an ounce of extra flesh - you could count his ribs - but with shapely hips and legs like a girl...I was distracted, but that was a wonderful performance. I can believe he was being an angel. As, you know, in a dance about a human fighting his angel nature.
I got took on a walk round the docks with a recorded voice in my ear telling me where to go. Simple concept, that was an amazing piece of work that made me cry. There was another thing to sit in, an enclosed egg - you sit in the dark (there's a panic button) and listen to what turns out to be the vibrations of your own body, amplified. I was disappointed, I wanted it to be more like putting your head in a speaker. There was a woman who crawled round the gallery bookshop insinuating herself into spaces. What else? There was a video installation where if you sit down, loads of birds come and roost in the trees, and if you get up, you chase them away. There was an ecological lesson there that didn't quite work, because it was much more spectacular to see them fly away in a flock than to see them roost.
I think I tended to see the things that were more structured cos I have low tolerance for young people messing about in arty fashion. Apparently 'disrupting audience expectations' is a big indicator that it's Live Art you are watching, rather than say, experimental theatre. 'Theatrical' wasn't being used as a compliment. But there was one event by the Pacitti Company which was theatrical. We had to sign a contract when we got there: not to look behind us, or over our shoulder; not to ever tell anyone what wish we made. Then we had a white ribbon tied round a wrist, and our palms were crossed with a coin before we were ushered into the waiting area. After that they had my permission to do whatever they wanted, really, I was completely engaged. We had to walk down a dark path past a man spinning straw into gold and a welcoming woman in evening dress, into the story circle. And we were all terrified to even glance over our shoulder! Anyway, it was a long, very vivid, series of bodily images: piles of coins, an antlered man, a black embroidered ribbon of story that was handed round the circle; red ribbons round throats, a naked Christ, a woman with hair flowing upwards from her head, showers of black words...I was just thinking it needed more sex or violence or something when the naked Christ laid down on the coins and had hot red wax was dripped on him to stick model trees to his body...they served us sherry when they took each white ribbon from us and told us to make a wish while they tied the ribbons to a tree.
Then there was the man who became an oyster. 'Performance lecture' is the name of that particular style. It was a dinner party, with a flipchart. Ten of us, with fairy lights on the table, being served champagne while the artist told us All About Oysters and how erotic it is to eat them. Then they served us the oysters.
Think I ate mine? I can't even eat clams. That are already dead. God, it's brutal. Great big shucking knife, slice through the abductor muscle, force the little thing open. Erotic wasn't quite what I was thinking. Second course was angels on horseback, grilled oysters in bacon...I tried to have a go at that. The next day he was going to Become an oyster (he definitely said it with capital letters) and we each had a timed slot to go see this process. So next day I go in and there's a sunbed at the end of a darkened room, glowing neon blue. Figure on the sunbed. I approach, and by this time I'm thinking 'Please don't let him be naked, please don't let him be naked' because I've seen four strange willies already this festival, and that's a bit much for an old married lady. So I go up to the blue glow and he's lying there on the glass unblinking, staring straight ahead, on a little pair of fluffy cherubs wings. And he's wrapped in slices of bacon.
Now I was told there had been a session with the photographer with him swaddled in slime and polythene and rolled down a cliff, which I think would have been a little more convincing.
Isn't it funny how, at this particular cultural moment, men can take all their clothes off without worrying about unwanted connotations and women can't? I mean, not that they'd necessarily want to - there were no naked women in this festival - but it's striking we have such different ways of reading male and female bodies.
The gallery can be proud of their audiences because the place was packed. Even if the audience was a little homogenous. I had to write one piece which I'm worried about in case someone never speaks to me again. Ah, there was a double decker bus outside the gallery for the 'fringe' element where you could smoke and have a cup of tea.* mutterings about co-opting the avant-garde* They did 'Siberian Aerobics' on the cobbles - it was as cold as anything last week.
Oh, and there was a symposium about digital practice/live art which I won't bore on about except to say, anonymous distributed consciousness, yay!