The beep stops her smiling

The beep stops her smiling
She enters
Her hand in her pocket
She says

Out in the foyer
There are lots of people waiting
Two people sitting down
One standing
One is listening to his i-pod

Music comes on

Ildiko makes 3 steps
Somewhere she's never been before
They play Grandmother's footsteps
via text

Ildiko hides behind the sea
She has a screen for a head
She dances on a flight case
She hands over her phone
And her hand

They dance
The distracted dance of a texting teenager
Their technology leads
They follow

One is asked to strip
One whistles
One dances
One stands with her back to me
Knock knock
She says

He wears his shades
Nobody puts baby in the corner
Time of my life
Goosebumps
Three legged pig
Gene Kelly
Can't eat him all at once

The music stops

There is something engaging about watching you text
Wondering who is going to pull the trigger first
Waiting to find out what happens next
Rosie sleeps
Ildiko leaves

The phone is left on the floor
I am watching
Waiting for it
To vibrate
To wake up
For us to move on

They spoon

The End

Waiters Waiting

Hurry sickness

I am thinking about the idea of waiting and waiting for something or someone and being a waiter. I was a waiter once and there was something interesting about the passing of time. Fast when you were busy and slow when you were not. As if it was better being a waiter when you weren't waiting. I like the idea of serving our audience food and the idea of waiting for your food to arrive. There is a point in a conversation where you are distracted by the food either arriving or not arriving. I like the idea of the real time of cooking in performance. I was thinking maybe we should perform to less people at a time but be there for a longer duration as the food is served. Possibly from the kitchens at Clarendon. Possibly from a microwave - the idea of readymade meals. This made me think of Hurry Sickness - the need to do everything fast and cut down the waiting time e.g. putting something in a microwave for 99 seconds instead of a hundred seconds so you spend less time keying in the digits. I think of the waiter in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life waiting for Mr Creosote to explode or taking us on a journey. I think of Manuel from Fawlty Towers and the drunken waiter in Dinner for One (A German film Ildiko will be able to tell us about). I think of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and the hierarchy of the restaurant. I think of waiting for your dinner guest to arrive. All these ideas are somehow connected and I would like to try and draw them together more during the Readymade Residency.

The Waiters

How much of human life is lost in waiting.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Waiting is a trap. there will always be reasons to wait. The truth is, there are only two things in life, reasons and results, and reasons simply don't count
Dr Robert Anthony

I never thought it was worth it, you know waiting for your love, and then I felt your kiss, I could wait forever for this
Anon

People count up the faults of those who keep them waiting
French Proverb

Waiting is Painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worse kind of suffering
Paulo Coelho

Rosie

Waiting

I like this idea of waiting and waiting spaces. Have briefly worked before with the idea of non-places; places in between, where only waiting happens, before you go, before you arrive, waiting for time to go by, waiting for someone else to appear, just waiting.

Also been thinking about gestures - un-concious and conscious as we wait, aware that we might be being watched, unaware that we are being watched, the effect that waiting has on our bodies physically.

Also - as I am eager to play with merging film footage and performers (particularly black and white) I like the idea of everyone collecting one waiting moment /sequence from a film to play with.

Rosie

Waiting for Time and Space

Well I am proud of myself for actually working out how to write an entry on this blog! Well done me. Anyhow, I am very intrigued and excited that other people are interested in the idea of waiting, in all its forms. It is something that keeps rearing its head in my own writings and work. When the inclination takes me, I write rather sporadic diary entries in my note books and waiting seems to be a recurring theme that runs through them all. Some of them are just drunken, self-pitying rambles but there is some good material to be gleaned from them all and they all have a time and place. As I said at the initial meeting for this project, I am particularly interested in durational performance at the moment and this seems to be the perfect subject matter for such a performance; everyone, even the audience, is waiting. Also, the idea of waiting spaces mentioned early in the blog interests me. I'm sure we have all spent a vast amount of time waiting in such places, especially transport buildings and hotels where the anticipation levels are always high. I think there is something in this idea which we could explore, even if it is just one of many starting points.

Tim

Finally...

Finally I have managed to get in the BLOG and have some time for some ideas!

I like the idea of a waiting room, I also like the idea of someone lost. SOme of the ideas we have been playing with for Them and US circles around this but the idea that someone is stuck somewhere and is trying to find a way out, is in a place that comes from nowhere and leads nowhere but they are trying to find a way forward...

I started a game on my MA which was about a woman haunting people's desktops which I thought I could mention. I will try and put the file online for people to download and try out if we are succesful with the project.

This is an old inspiration but I think it is still interesting from a performative/game/narrative perspective:
http://www.onlinecaroline.com/

Rachel

Falling Elvis

On Saturday I visited the Contemporary Art Museum in Amsterdam and saw a piece by a Dutch artist who had taken the software used by game programmers to simulate someone being shot and applied it to graphic images of Elvis. I don't usually connect with digital animation work but this was strangely moving and it threw up lots of questions about death as comic or tragic, ugly or beautiful. Reminded me of my original idea for the Readymade Residency of dying a death, stage death, people who have died in performance e.g. Tommy Cooper. This isn't part of the act etc. Karma Physics > Elvis is a modification of the bloody science fiction first person shooter computer game Unreal 2003. The viewer is pulled slowly through an infinite pink fog filled with floating, twitching bodies of Elvis Presley. The convulsions of Elvis are controlled by the original game’s Karma Ragdoll real-time physics system - generally used to simulate the physical dynamics of game character death. To watch the video click here.

Fun context

On Sunday I saw a five hour installation by La Ribot called Laughing Hole. Performers plastered a room in a museum with cardboard signs and fell in and out of uncontrollable fits of laughter. It was something like a lunatic asylum. I wonder if whatever we make could have this durational quality as I'm finding this interesting in my own work and it might be a departure for other members of the group. I know Tim made a four hour performance and Active Ingredient have created projects that last 28 days. We could then think about what a 'fun context' for the work might be - a museum, a gallery, an outside space etc. It would be interesting to see how we could find a form and duration that suits the subject matter. e.g. a long piece exploring the notion of delay. The reason I chose this image is I think it should be a fun context and I like this combination of words. The light adjective and the heavy noun. On friday I am performing a show inspired by the Sound of Music in a double bill with a piece inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow up. I find I am always a part of this dichotomy. The work inhabits a world somewhere between the amateur and the academic. But whatever it is I like it to be fun.

Grass on the roof

I am sitting in a hotel in Holland with grass on the roof and trees trying to hide a motorway. I wonder if we could look at the idea of waiting spaces. Places we stay in between and pass through. Airport lounges. Hotel lobbies. Train stations. Theatre foyers. Where the inside is outside, the outside is inside and everyone is present but noone really belongs. At least not for very long. This would be an interesting metaphor for the fact that we are all meeting to take part in the Readymade Residency and it is an autonomous space in between us - like the messages in a bottle. Spaces and places are always a good starting place. Or the idea of non-places. Where we belong and where we don't belong. Where we are and where we want to be. We could look at George Perec's Species of Spaces and Other Pieces and Marc Augé's Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity. 'Marc Augé coined the phrase "non-place" to refer to places of transience that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as "places." Examples of a non-place would be a motorway, a hotel room, an airport or a supermarket.' [Wikipedia]. I am spending time in hotel rooms overlooking motorways in between checking in and out of airports drinking beer I can't pronounce from a supermarket where I don't understand anything. We could investigate ideas of liminality and thresholds - a student at Clarendon wrote something beautiful - 'I am just sitting here where one thing starts and another thing begins' - in fact this could be some kind of title.

New Approach

Had an email from Rachel sending me a link to another company that are exploring Message in a bottle. Lets scrap a theme and just bring in ideas we want to work on, tasks of ways of making work - maybe we can share ways of making that we stereotypically use in our companies work? For now we could just scrap book on the blog any bits of writing or ideas that anybody could use, or could inspire another idea or that you want us all to look at

Why?

The Readymade Residency intends not only to develop new artistic skills but hopes to initiate and nurture a much-needed creative economy in the contemporary performance sector in Nottingham. It will provide a safe and creative environment for artistic dialogue, and the re-establishing of a contemporary performance network in the region.

The main objectives of the residency are to:

• Initiate a new creative economy in Nottingham
• Establish a supportive network of contemporary performing artists
• Form a platform of exchange
• Create a safe and creative environment for artistic dialogue
• Discover new working relationships
• Realise the creative potential for future collaborations
• Encourage skills development and explore methods of making work
• Develop ideas for further performance projects

Message in a bottle?

She bought us 12 red wines for Christmas
Message in a bottle
2 down, 10 to go

I bleached his hair
Message in a bottle
From red to white

I bought him perfume
Message in a bottle
But he still uses mine

He bought me a stella
Message in a bottle
And a ticket to Belgium

I poured on the olive oil
Message in a bottle
But found it was chilli dressing

I would have thought of you
But I lost my bottle
See what next tide brings