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