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I Am Still Your Worst Nightmare
We just had a discussion at Residence about the 'I Am Still Your Worst NIghtmare' weekend and I thought I'd invite more thoughts and ideas to the discussion we had.
We spoke a lot about the contract between audience member and artist particularly with one-on-one performances. There was a lot of discussion around Rachel Parry's piece which put audience members in an awkward position and whether or not that was fair game or not?
We also discussed what pieces we particularly enjoyed. Dani d'amilia's 47 bones was well recieved as was Bill Leslie's balloon/harmonica thingy and a lot of us enjoyed Phoebe Davies Thud piece. There was also a lot of good feeling surrounding the two chaps with their heads in buckets of water.
We then talked about the artist (Das Schimmel) who wasn't officially part of the weekend who wandered around in character. Whilst we all felt it was fair enough for him to do it and we enjoyed the fact that he had there was a moment when he entered Alice Farley's piece in character where some people felt uncomfortable.
Also we chatted about the difference between a durational work and something you just do for a long time. Is there a difference?
We'd be really interested to hear other peoples views on all these things and also anyone who has their own questions/comments on the weekend's work.
Dani D'amilia's 47 Bones: Absolutely astounding. A complex series of invocations filtered down to one, perfect image. An atmosphere of complete serenity, perfection and peace. Biblical (if you play for that team), intensely human, alive, present, yet elsewhere.
I saw a lot of stuff that looked like other stuff. I was guilty as ever of doing stuff that was like other stuff.
Top marks to Dani for the creation of an image with intensity and such perfect clarity.
Things that I still need to think about:
Benjamin Chandler
Rachel Parry
Michael Pinchbeck
Things that made me smile:
Cruel to be Kind
Noisy Helium Balloons
Being treated like a child by evil Paula Davy
Things I could have done without:
Sunday morning hangover!
Over and Out
Mike
Just wanted to mention Mamoru Iriguchi, his work was a real highlight for me and one of the few piece which had a significantly different aesthetic/feel to it. It was a piece of work which could only have been made by someone with the innate sensibility that comes Japanese culture.
As I mentioned 'off-line' I excused the demands put on me as a participant because I felt genuinely scared in Rachel Parry's piece, which for me meant it fulfilled my number one rule: Don't Be Dull. I didn't trust her as a performer and I had the feeling that she could have done anything, but I was comfortable enough because I knew I could walk out at any point. However someone else might have felt trapped and that would be a rubbish position to be in, but at least you wouldn't be bored, just terrified
For me duration is time with a thickness to it, by which I mean that senses, objects, actions and thoughts/feelings accumulate and change. To present an extreme... A sealed and empty white room where nothing happened not even dust settling would be the ultimate example of granular, meaningless time, it would be anti-durational time. Moving on a room with a robot in it hitting a hammer on a rubber block for eight hours would not be a durational piece, because there is no change or development. However make it a person hitting them self with a hammer for eight hours and you've got intense duration, extreme accumulation (of wounds) and massive change, moving as it would from them being alive to the likely and drastic outcome of them being dead.