2nd Jan 2011
Hi Dan, greetings from snowy Moscow.
I will check with Ailbe and Sarah about the 28th when they are back in the office. I'm not sure if I have a committment that day or whether there is studio time. I'll need to get back to you about dates in Fevruary and March too as I managed to come away without my calendar for next year....
I think we should try to think quite soon about making a timetable for work up to September. Decide on some dates that we want to work intensively.... dates for an "expedition".... dates for decisions etc.
I have been having doubts about Prehen House. Just can't quite find enough "up-sides" to it. The space feels quite limiting (not in a good way) I think and I can't get a feel of any relevance to our ideas. Maybe I'm wrong... open to being persuaded.
There is a good possibility we could use outside and inside space in the Ebrington Barracks Site. Almost certainly for free or very little money. The city are trying to animate it in the next 24 months ready for City of Culture. It is a huge outdoor space and there are lots of buildings in various states of (dis)repair around the grounds. Just in terms of access, variety of choices and indoor outdoor possibilities it could be good and the support from the City of Culture/ILEX (development organisation) could be helpful. If you think it might be a good idea to look at it I can contact Caoimhin Corrigan the "cultural broker" (whatever that is) and ask him to let us look around and have a chat with him about it.
Otherwise... what about the tower in Cushendall owned by Bill Drummond... do you know anything about that?
Or what about St Columbs Park? . . . .
Some thoughts:
what is our conception of this process in relation to ideas of natural and non-natural (artificial). Landscape has some history of bringing "nature" into the gallery/drawing room/hotel lobby, ... but often the "nature" of the landscapes were either melodramatic emphasising the safety of the non-nature context or very tame and unthreatening. In a way both approaches seem to at least partly deny the reality of natural forces.... they emphasise the alienation from nature. Maybe part of what i am doing in my embodying process is to relate the concept of nature outside to the concept of nature inside.... taking a "naturalised" physicality into an environment which is created to resist nature poses a threat to modern value sytems.... It is this natural physicality created in response to wind, rock, rain, sun, natural rhythms of sleep and waking, environmental sounds that makes me feel often out of place and disoreintated, not belonging, an outsider in highly mediated environments like malls, offices, and more and more, peoples homes. Steve Paxton said that Contact Improvisation grew in New York as a response to the fact that the only bit of nature that humans now have to deal with directly is gravity.
These thoughts lead me to think of either situating our work in a "natural" environment (whatever that might mean(????) or in a highly refined "non-natural one"... one in which the body/movement/physicality nature of our process and creation will seem "dirty"..... can we create such an environment? or do we need to find it?.... can we take a Natural frame and create a non-natural frame within it in which to place our response to natural forces....? Maybe we can do something like this as part of our process and documentation.
I see smelly t-shirt, rope and mud on a floor of of white bathroom tiles....
this all seems to have something to do with the ideas about climbing as a sport or not.... the sport idea locates the activity in the changing room and showers... in the sauna and the spa. The alternative has us washing in the sea or river and in the wooden Russian Banya....
... just some thoughts.... still no "clarity" on what it might mean.....
we DO need to take practical decisions soon. My feeling is that we have lots of background material, ideas, and we need to find a place to "apply" them soon so we can let that place seep into the process. In some way It seems that it almost doesn't matter what place (within reason). Anyway Ailbe is keen that we should have a decision by early on in February.
Prehen House
Empty Warehouse Space
Arts Faculty Building at Magee (underused in summer)
Foyer of Millennium Forum
A circus tent
A big lorry trailer (relates to your mobile cinema project and gives opportunity to travel the "show" and gives outside/inside (dark) possibilities, projection, structure to build onto and out from...
St Columbs Park and associated buildings (sports centre, st columbs park house,)
We don't have to do it in Derry.... so any spaces/places that appeal to you..... add to the list for consideration.
I am keen to do the embodying process more.... to revisit a location/route over and again to enbody more detail... to video the process in non-studio environments as well as in the studio... to photograph the details of a location/route.... do you have any ideas about a route that would be possible for me to "learn" and which would also be interesting for you..... or two routes in the same location.... what is your favourite climb.... or the one you find most intriguing? Could our "expedition" be a deep research into one route or a pair of related routes? Of course the research could include surrounding things... other routes nearby, the equipment, the food, the cups of tea... the filthy t-shirts etc..... but these things might focus on one route... one pattern of experience.... one changing relationship with the form of the rock... This could bring up interesting perspectives as a skilled experienced climber and as a novice.... the contrast between the musician with wide experience and skill and the one who has learned one tune on the same instrument....
.... I'll be in touch re- dates....
Happy New Year
Steve
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