Halesowen College, and a trip to the beach with Dad.

I am joining the Halesowen College teaching team as guest lecturer for the week, as they take thier foundation students to Godreavy beach.
Acccompanying them will be Basingstoke College of Technology , staring recently retired and legendary Brian Stevens... my dad. Getting my hopes up for good weather, and the St.Ives Jazz festival as well as some great rocks to look at and some new young people to get to know.

The last Couple of months in brief

Encounter is the first piece in a body of new work that I have been researching since september 2006.
Previously I have made large scale architectural works which have altered the space of their surroundings dramatically and encouraged the audience to move around the space in an unfamiliar way and used colour to provoke sensation. See picture.

The notion of a work drawing attention to body and to a pattern of movement, both physically and spatially lead me to consider using movement and body more directly within my work. How would a dancer experience the work?

This new piece has come out of research into choreography in it's broadest sense and research into rock formation and erosion: form created by movement and natural choreography in the natural world. Here is a list of words that are associated with this piece, to offer a way in, or a starting point for thinking about it in an abstract way.
Converge,
choreography,
fragmentation,
match,
mirror,
replicate,
landscape,
explorer,
miniature world,
double exposed images of venice 2004,
deconstruction of a sequence of movement,
collage,
rehash,
accumulate,
collection of debris natural or manmade,
patterns of accumulation produced by movement,
material deposited by moving forces,
sediment,
rivers,
litter,
collect,
reconstruct,
reinterpret.

This text is not an explanation of the work, but a statement of concepts that were in my mind when it was created, a context perhaps.

The audience was invited into this intimate setting and invited to walk around the work, experiencing it at close proximity from different angles, at times objects within the space appeared in the video that was being projected onto them. There were moments of correlation, fragmentation, juxtaposition, clarity and lack of it, structured in much the same way a piece of contemporary dance.
I had a great response from the audience who found it engaging and it provoked discussion.

Working Holiday

I have been on the beach for a week with a group of very talented dancers brought together by Attik Dance, on a creative holiday.
It was the best week I can remember, and there are so many ideas rushing around my head. Watch this space.

Chris Lewis-Smith, film maker and lecturer at Bath Spa has made a film about the week called 'Watergate Bay'.

LAST DAY TODAY 12-5. CLOSING CELEBRATION 6-9.

To give some context for my show here is another interesting website www.choreograph.net, a site intended to extend our thinking about coreography...

"Choreography is not to constrain movement into a set pattern, it is to provide a cradle for movement to find its own patterns - over and over again - to prevent a body - whether bound by skin or habits -from stagnation and enable lightness, a primal energy and possibilities only to be found once relations start dancing."
Klien

Interesting project

One of my plans with this site is to share my research process.
This of course is not just practical research, and I though it was about time I posted some of my reading matter.
I came accross this project a little while ago, here's and extract, and a lnk to find the full article by ALESSANDRA SUN.

"Choreographers and architects often say that dance and architecture share the same concern, and the shared concern is space; dancing bodies and the architectural built environment manipulate space.
But what is space? Is it static and always there, or is it ‘produced’ by movement and by construction? Is it three-dimensional as we commonly understand it, or is Time also part of the equation, as Einstein and the physicists after him have proposed – giving us notions of ‘spacetime’? Is it measurable, or is space itself a measure? Is it a conceptual framework, or does it have its own ontology – its own nature of being and existence? Is space a perception? Can it be owned or, what do we really own when a ‘space’ is ours?

These are not my questions; they have been, for centuries, part of the philosophical and scientific discourse about space. They make it clear at once that space and spatiality – or spatial property – are complex and multi-layered; the space which dance and architecture claim to share is not only physical, for there is more to space than we see in its physicality" Alessandra Sun

www.humanitieslab.stanford.edu/49/75

Encounter Closing celebration

Join me for a drink and chinwag on monday the 30th of July in the project space 6 -9pm. There is also a great jazz/funk band playing next door in ben's cafe from 9pm. Love to see you there.

Images

Correlate

correlate.
I spent a lot of time as a child doing matching games, fitting together parts.
Correlation between shapes and colours appears to be a running theme in my work.

Converge/Diverge

Converge,
coreography,
fragmentation,
match,
mirror,
replecate,
landscape,
explorer,
miniture world,
double exposed images of venice 2004,
deconstruction of a sequence of movement,
collage,
rehash,
accumulate,
collection of debries natural or manmade,
patterns of accumulation produced by movement,
material deposited by moving forces,
sediment,
rivers,
litter,
collect,
reconstruct,
reinterprate ?

More playing around with the projector has lead to a departure of sorts.
The film here is projected across various objects, some featured in it, some not. As a reasult the movement is fragmented and the piece become more like a dance.
The thing that interests me in dance is moments when shapes and forms emerge as the dancers arrive at a position or converge with oneanother, which then disolve as the movement sequence continues.
Something similar is beginning to occur here which makes sense.

I have had some great feedback from my visitors too, lots of reference to collage, and a little bit of resistance.
I wonder if it is a natural thing to be frustrated by a language that you don't speak, and to seek to define and form a solid opinion about something unknown.

Showing work to the non art public can be like speaking french to someone who doesn't speak the language and has never been to france, perhaps met a french person once and though they were nice but a bit odd.

foreign.
other
uknown
risky
frustrating


I remember thinking contempoary art was a load of incomprehensible rubbish at one time, before I realised the potential of an unlimited journey wtih my imagination.
I am beginning to think that all opinions and viewpoints must be temporary if you are to really descover what your imagination holds.

26/07/2007

Over the last two days I have been trying out different projecting options... here some images of the first of these. Today I am putting my mind to creating new additions to the installation to project onto, mainly replacing the polystyrene surface which is currently suporting most of the image with a fabric sheet running form floor to ceiling which the projection will go through onto the back wall. This should extend the peice into the rest of the space as currently stops in the middle of the space.

Encounter opens 24th of July

Come along and see my new show. This is a new direction encompassing performance, movement, dance and film. I will be showing work in progress informally and inviting discussion and feedback. This is a great opportunity to see the creative process as it unfolds and have access to the artist in person to talk about the work.

ENCOUNTER, a body, a space, some objects.
24th -30th of July Project Space W15a The Old Grammar School Redruth.
12 - 4 weekdays 12-5 weekends.

This project is part of More cornwall, a summer season of artist lead initiatives across Cornwall.
Please see www.morecornwall.org for more information and spread the word.