conversations with the dead.

Adrian Heathfield on "Being in relation"

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 17:54:00 +1100

Adrian Heathfield on "Being in relation":

“I wanted to do one piece about human beings, and their struggle in life with each other. I find being tied together is a very clear idea because I feel that to survive we are all tied up … we cannot go in life alone without people. Because everybody is individual, we each have our own idea of something we want to do. But we are together so we become each other’s cage.” - Hsieh.

On-demand video of Heathfield’s discussion of performance artists Tehching Hsieh and Linda Montano’s “rope piece” in which they were tied together by an 8 foot piece of rope for an entire year.

Natural gobo, Napier St

Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:01:48 +1100

Natural gobo, Napier St

Ocean without a shore

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 16:15:20 +1100

In the latter part of today Helen and I went and saw Bill Viola’s Ocean without a shore at NGV. It was breathtaking. Utterly.

postedbysimon

Image of Ocean without a shore from the Bill Viola website.

Materials from “Conversations with the dead - by Bagryana...

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 08:56:17 +1100

Materials from “Conversations with the dead - by Bagryana Popov”, performed by Simon Ellis, shot by Dianne Reid. 30 October 2008

showing it

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:30:00 +1100

After two runs of the material for videographer Dianne Reid in the morning Bagryana and I invited a small group of people in to watch a run in the afternoon (this was the final day of the development): Peter Eckersal, Kath Papas, Jordan Vincent, Helen Herbertson, Michael Carmody, and Angela Campbell.

I wrote a few notes of some of the things they talked about after they’d watched (I’ve tried to be as accurate and succinct as possible here):

Peter talked of Bagryana’s voice in the work - in questioning her presence in the space both visually and aurally. He talked of the material hovering between “mimetic and affect”. Of it evoking qualities of memory. He described the “breaking down of the other”, and in noticing three distinct physicalities: shuffling, banging, and stillness. It was, to him, a “bare-life situation”.

Kath described the physical and textual layers connecting across time. In them not having a simplistic temporal relationship. She asked, “Is it Simon, is it portrayed?” … and of “confronting the difficulty of performing this person”.

Jordan wasn’t convinced by the texts, she said “I get it already”.

Michael talked of the connectedness of the “ruptures” (in which Bagryana asked me to list some things, and also when I speak at the end). He described it as a “nullification of a life’s work”, and was thinking “it’s all downhill from here” - but then was surprised that the work left him hopeful (my word really), or that it changed at the end.

Peter spoke some more about the differences between mediums - dance and theatre. He said, “you can’t really act this” (meaning, such events cannot be represented), and asked “how to apprehend the act?” He mentioned the work Nine Finger (produced by Roasas amongst others) which ‘depicts’ an african child soldier … (as an aside, this is clearly something that Peter and David Pledger’s company NYID have dealt with over a long period of time in the development of their work).

Helen talked of the balance of who is being watched - Bagryana, me …? She asked, “Is the audience present to him?”, and discussed “driving the relationships between the watcher and the watched”.

Michael also discussed not being aware of the personal connection of the project for Bagryana. Instead, he read the work as the “breaking of an anonymous life”.

images of letters

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:22:00 +1100

Bagryana, close.

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:21:00 +1100

Bagryana, close.

Dianne Reid documenting letter

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:20:00 +1100

Dianne Reid documenting letter

Shannon

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 21:30:00 +1100

Choreographer/dancer Shannon Bott called in today to watch a ‘run’ of the material. Afterwards, she asked, “Who am I in this?” She described a “flattening” of the work at the moment I started describing/listing my injuries at the end of the run … a flattening “into here and now”.

She asked questions about this person gk: “Is this what happened?”, “Did that occur?”

She talked of the work/material “hovering in whom”

Bagryana asked Shannon, “When did you not want to watch?”

Later, Bagryana and I asked, when I am ‘performing’ and I recovering from what is going on, is it me that is recovering or is it him?

"Hopelessness leads to an absence of dishonesty because there is no longer anything to be gained."

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 08:37:40 +1100

“Hopelessness leads to an absence of dishonesty because there is no longer anything to be gained.”

- Shalamov (well, I’ve reworded it, but this is the gist)

timezones

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:30:00 +1100

What is the logic of time in this material?

• of him then
• of him remembering
• of Bagryana now and remembering
• of me remembering in performing
• of me now

postedbysimon

what happens to bodies?

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:30:00 +1100

We’ve been asking question about what happens to bodies over time - whether through events that are beyond the control of the person, or that are done by choice (and in so doing, finding a bridge between gk’s absence and my presence).

My spine has bore the brunt of this time dancing; of 22 years of finding out where the edges are, and where I might be safe.

xray - lower spine. disc space at L5S1 a little shabby. this is...

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:38:46 +1100

xray - lower spine. disc space at L5S1 a little shabby. this is relevant.

postedbysimon

ct scan … postedbysimon

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 19:37:00 +1100

ct scan …

postedbysimon

Late on Friday night

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:50:00 +1100

But within the work, what I am learning about presence? Am I just revisiting well tilled soil - the same state over and over? -Simon

This is the problem, isn’t it-

once a mode of performing is established, where to go, how to continue the conversation?

Do we now need an audience? in order to take it further out, to have some movement?

Simon is now.

GK is no longer here. He disappeared even when he was still alive.

How personal should the conversation be? the fact that it is NOT personal- is that a cop out? Given that he can’t hear it, is it a closed circle? A conversation without a hearer? Is it with him that we are speaking or with the audience to tell them about him?

the conversation is with a big silence and absence.

And Simon is present, and getting increasingly exhausted.

I don’t want the conversation to be therapy. i don’t want it to be self-reflexive. yet it comes from a need to grieve, to apprehend, to comprehend. I am coming to realise what a man (whom I knew) went through at a terrible time, a time in aplace far away. But there is something about what he went through that is not can not be contained within that time or be associated with that time only. It was created by politics. And it repeats. So it spills out of its past and out of its personal nature.

really the conversation with him that I want to have is to ASK him. I want to ask him. What happened, why, what he thought, how he got through. I want to hear about it - why? To appease something? To take a little bit of the weight? (What would Simone Weil think of that?)

And because I can’t ask him I go looking in other ways. To attempt to understand a little through other people’s experiences. Varlam Shalamov - in Kolyma, and the men who are still alive in Bulgaria, who remember Belene.

And the work with Simon is part of that asking- it is part of the question-

is this the state of the body under pressure?

If your body succumbs to intense fear and intense disorientation (off balance) if rhythms become uncontrolled, if you are pushed beyond where you want to be, if you can no longer choose what to do with your body, how do you get through the present moment to the next moment, how do you stay you?

This state that I am watching, which makes me flinch, which disturbs me and makes me aware of a person’s breakability, would you have recognised this state? Is it like the states which you felt or witnessed?

Real experience is always so much messier, so much more troubling, so much more pragmatic, and yet- perhaps it is recognisable- this state which is worrying, which shows me a body in a fragile and extreme state.

By the way the quote posted by Simon about ‘forcing himself to forget’ is from Kolyma Tales, by Varlam Shalamov, from a story called ‘The Procurator of Judaea’.

It is an incredible story. The precise quote is

“All of this had to be forgotten and Kubantsev, a disciplined and strong-willed person, did just that. He forced himself to forget.”

Tonight I looked for old letters. The sudden presence of the dead, through their letters, is shocking and sweet at the same time. They are still there.

I didn’t find the letter I was looking for.

When Simon and I are working in the studio GK is not there. But what is there is my urge to speak to him about things that matter- or to speak even if it is not to him. And they matter to me because they have happened, they happened to him (and I saw the effects) and they continue to happen to other people in extreme political situations.

So the act of attempting to speak and/or to represent- yes, even to represent- connects to him.

A conversation doesn’t end with a person’s death.

It changes nature. I have been slow to have this conversation.

And yes it is bleak. What happened to people was bleak- what was done in a planned strategic way. So perhaps that is the only thing the work can be.

The quote about engaging with life in a more mature way after someone has died- that is a thought spoken by psychiatrist Dr Yerocham (spelling?) cited in HOT RED by Ilayla Alexandrova, a magnificent documentary novel about the systematic destruction of the Bulgarian intelligentsia by the Communist regime in the 40’s and 50’s. (and beyond)

postedbybagryana

"A conversation is a messy thing."

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:35:00 +1100

“A conversation is a messy thing.”

- Bagryana Popov, 23 October 2008

representation

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:30:00 +1100

We talked a lot more about questions of representation … of the tension between Bagryana’s personal history, my physical presence (as performer) and gk’s memory.

It is difficult to imagine how I can be viewed (by an audience) as anything but some form of representation of the states that gk might have experienced whilst incarcerated (and after).

How can such a simple (character-based) system of representing be problematised in this work? How might we foreground Bagryana, and Bagryana directing, me, and me dancing, and gk’s memory/history? That is, to keep us all present (or absent in the case of gk).

In questioning this we might get to the heart of this conversation (which is now between three people). In many respects it is the ‘expressive’ nature of Bagryana’s aesthetic that exaggerates this issue of representation. Because I am (in these materials) so clearly a human body under pressure, and because we have alluded to the presence of another man in another time (through music, words …) then the obvious reading is of me ‘being’ (or pretending to be) that man.

So, how are Bagryana and I able to be in this work, withouth resorting to becoming absent (in a theatrically conventional/traditional way)?

postedbysimon

Images from rehearsals with Bagryana

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 23:13:00 +1100

Images from rehearsals with Bagryana:

Working at Napier St Theatre, Wednesday 22 October 2008. Photographs taken by Bagryana Popov. (biggish download).

postedbysimon

open

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:30:00 +1100

We worked with an open improvisation for the work guided primarily by time (20 minutes). What might it be to not order or frame these various states at all … to provide space for the searching, the questioning and investigation of the expressive, psychological and physical terrain?

It was difficult, in part because (I think) the psychological impact of the working is high … it makes it very difficult to keep space for monitoring the ‘arc’ of the improvisation, to have a sense of the palatte, and how it might be being experienced from the outside.

Interesting though that after the first go, Bagryana and I talked about what went on. I then had another ‘go’ (immediately) and it was shaped by our conversation (and B’s direction). Perhaps this isn’t interesting (or surprising) at all, except to say that the course of the improvisation was worked or massaged into a form-content that we both preferred.

What was it about it that we preferred? It’s stillnesses, its space … the possibility of inviting a viewer towards the work (more gently).

postedbysimon

A poem. postedbybagryana

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:12:00 +1100

A poem.

postedbybagryana