Posted on

Horizon

stiffkey, norfolk

“The idea of murder frequently evokes the idea of sea and seafarers. No precise image of sea and seafarers may at once spring to mind: it is rather that Murder surges over our thought in breakers of emotion. If we suppose seaports to be theatre of recurrent crimes, then the explanation is simple and need not detain us; but the chronicles are numberless from which we learn that the murderer was a man of the sea – either in reality or imagination – and if the latter, then crime will have less affinity with the sea.”  Jean Genet Querelle of BrestRead on...

Posted on

Rock, Hide Me! Look at that Horizon

images courtesy of lisa furness

the feel of reverse – some questions about time as betrayed in performance

Manipulating ‘time’ has become one of the challenges of creating If Destroyed Still True. As part of the Interval open weekend at Interval, 31 College Green, we recently performed a epi-prologue to the piece that unwound key motifs and placed them in a reverse sequence. At midnight, audience, gathered by the door, met a stranger. This stranger, then moving backwards, as if in reverse, began to guide them, by a single light into the darkness.

Some questions:

does time get quicker before you die? How does this affect the pulse of the awakening moments, in our piece? In the midnight showing, the natural flopping of the freshly killed body is inverted and the performer must move from relaxed to tense.… Read on...

Posted on

The work of Jorg Buttgereit = the epic and dynamic decaying image

I’m very excited to be able to say that we finally have a copy of the ERMAZING “Der Todesking” winging its way towards us…

No other film director, perhaps with the exception of Bunuel, captures “the epic decaying image” or the tableau mort to the extent we are using for our piece. His use of these setups to explicate the differences between living and dead are useful to us; and his films hint to the connectedness beyond physicality, even through it into viscerality, that we are also trying to create in our piece.

The often clear demonstrative process used by the film-makers and the phoneyness of the props and actions interests us too:

plus the exquisite music of Hermann Kopp

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgaX5guXbtA&feature=related

Unfortunately, its very difficult to get hold of “Schramm” – another classic Buttgereit film – so here’s some trailers:

BEWARE DO NOT WATCH IF SQUEAMISH

wicked trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dd3Ayt0WSkQ

you might want to avert your eyes at the end

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxd0zn0uThg

audio optional on this one

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3605pjad8cRead on...

Posted on

Parallel Truths (Part One)

  • In the beginning, the man is playing with the bodies of his dead parents.
  • In the beginning the man’s parents are being controlled by him.
  • In the beginning the man is removing himself from the reality if his dead parents.
  • In the beginning the man has finally gained total control over his dead parents.
  • In the beginning the man is laying to rest two alternative personalities who have been manifesting themselves through the man.
  • In the beginning the man is trying to resurrect two personalities he has killed off, who have been manifesting themselves through the man as he feels a deep sense of nothing.  When he acknowledges this sense of nothing, he embodies this state.
  • The two shucked-off personalities/parents are still here.
Read on...