Recovery - research and development blog for performance project with Nat Cursio and Shannon Bott

Not sure the link is that interesting, but I do like the term 'biomimicry'.

ske

Posted by Simon Ellis

August 9, 2009

Thoughts

Segments on One Leg

We spent time standing on one leg and making very gradually shifts to the rest of the body. We did this several times through at two minute intervals. Alternating legs and spacial arrangements.

What interested me with this was the delicate and careful attention to the moving whilst attending to staying on balance. Enduring on a micro scale.

treading water quietly...

Looking through Binoculars

Distance, isolation, private world, concealed.

Nat was moving in the corner whilst i turned the binoculars around to view her at long distant. Whilst the use of binoculars puts an immediate distance between 'the mover' and 'the viewer' it was very useful to get a sense of how the distance frames the scale of movement when the moving is small etc.

We have spoken about the audience and where they might be located in relation to the material. I was reminded of some of the discussion we had with Ben Cobham back in January, about my interest in being able foreground and background material the way film can do. I suppose it is about 'controling' the point of view (whilst obviously not the reading) of the audience. Framing things in very particular ways (the development showing did this in some way as we moved the audience and directed them where to view each vingette from.) I don't quite see that this is how the audience will participate in 'recovery' but using the binnoculars in rehearsal offered a way of seeing the movement and assumalting the distance between audience and viewer - although the lens presents something entirely different and may therefore not be useful....

Training Spaces

I had an image today, training zones, i saw this could possibly be of a different texture and tone to the other layers in the work, but had an image of us retreating to these places to train. I think this might be a fun thing to look at sometime. My interest in it has something to do with time. Actually training throughout the performance.

"It no long repairs it disposes of instead" Small Acts of Repair by Stephen Bottoms and Mathew Goulish

This is a quote from 'Small Acts of Repair' the book Simon gave to me. We have spent much time with a focus on recovering and what this might be, but this quote brings me back to the notion of 'disposable'. The 'disposable' world we are living in. Where repair is so often not considered as an option, it becomes about replacing, abolishing, abandoning (there might be other 'A' words) in terms of 'stuff' the 'environment' ' our bodies' etc. I feel as though I am being general and clumsy in the way i write about this but thought it worth sharing.

On another level it stimulates for me thinking about when something cannot be repaired or recovered and when might this be?

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July 28, 2009

states of rest

Hi Nat (et al) - great to read your thinking/research on torpor.

Not sure where to start ... I think this flexibility to environment (e.g. ambient temperature) with respect to survival is fecund. It does also make me think a lot about stillness (so imaginative); I wonder if these positions of rest/recovery you are describing could be repositioned or flipped through 90 degrees so that you more 'visible' to the audience? This could be done mechanically (ie on a platform of some kind), or technically - through using a ceiling mounted camera, or just physically (might be a bit strange). Perhaps this is also a place/idea for Pete's labelling system to come into play? I was having visions of a deeply blue (cold) space....

Oh, that's a NZ weta attached (from http://www.travelblog.org/Photos/3328810.html). Charming fellows. I remember looking for tennis balls next to the wooden wall in our front yard and happening across them all of the time. Never did shit my pants, but went close on a couple of occasions.

Posted by Simon Ellis

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July 20, 2009

preparation

I went to Marina Abramović's curated performance/installation at Manchester Festival yesterday (the work is called "Marina Abramović presents ..."). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Abramovic

I'll write about it in detail another time, but for now I thought it was worth mentioning that she spent an hour with us 'before' the works began guiding us through sensitising exercises that were designed to provide a way of being for our experience (When tickets are reserved part of the 'contract' is that we agree to spend 4 hours with the works, that we participate in their duration).

It was quite extraordinary in many ways.

It made me think quite a bit about what might occur before we see you in Recovery, or perhaps more specifically, what it is that you might have done before we see you, and how the audience is guided into the activity of watching.

I wondered about physically exhausting you both prior to each performance.
I wondered about an audience somehow being privy to this before they enter the performance space.
I wondered about the whole work being a physical recovery.
I wondered about exhausting an audience.
And I've been wondering a lot about sustainence. Physical, spiritual, biochemical ...

I'll talk about Nico Vascellari's work in the Abramović project soon ....

Simon

Posted by Simon Ellis

Comments [5]

July 17, 2009

torpor 2

found this here - cool site
http://lepcurious.blogspot.com/

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July 17, 2009

torpor 1

Torpor:

Certain insects, particularly ones that live in higher altitudes or near the Earth’s poles, use a state of torpor to survive drops in temperature. Torpor is a temporary state of suspension or sleep, during which the insect is completely immobile. The New Zealand weta, for example, is a flightless cricket that lives in high altitudes. When temperatures drop in the evening, the cricket freezes solid. As daylight warms the weta, it comes out of the torpid state and resumes activity.

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July 17, 2009

thoughts from last week - part B

2 of the provocations set by Simon - the 'non-pedestrian entering/exiting of rest positions' and the 'resin/tension/stickysubstance/floor' ideas resulted in me writing a short list of things that were continually resonating... things that had resonated before and keep coming back..

the shoulder blades. fraglity and fine detail. shifts and levering for example when an arm is pushing away from the floor

the ambiguity of our arms and legs when dancing foreground/background. shapes that the body make together. morphing. stick insect-like

hair covering the face. privateness. protective layer.

moments where something very abstract becomes very human. and the moment disappears again.

moments of becoming 'dormant' in unlikey 'places'..positions. where the body finds itself in 'torpor'

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July 16, 2009

zones and lenses

Some unedited thoughts from last week - part A

We watched most of the documented material from our summer sessions which made me aware that there was still a lot that was still of interest to both of us despite sometimes not being sure exactly why. There is definitely something compelling about zones in which to do things - like the appropriate time and place for endurance/keeping on and another for recuperation.

Repetition seems important. Skipping, winding up the arms, dropping the torso over legs and returning to standing over and over again. And Shannon suggested the setting up of a training zone... Where actual physically challenging, strength or stamina building activity occurs.

Binoculars. The body is encircled purely by the shape that is created as a circular frame when ones looks through them. I couldn't remove my thoughts from the circle. First it was like a Disney special effect and Shannon was the red riding hood or some such character within it... But after a while it became more scientific. The observation through glass, the magnification... The fact that you cannot 'still' the image because your hands are not steady enough to hold the binoculars perfectly still. So then it really became about a fascination with giant lens - and we'd had this thought before- how could you magnify the body in a performance context - without reverting to using video projection of a large body or close ups, which wouldn't have the same effect. A giant lens might cost tens of thousands!!!

part B coming soon

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July 12, 2009