2014 ongoing

Duration 1-4 hours

3 Em[bed]ding circle is part of the evolving series of durational drawing scores She’s only doing this which are performed in gallery-like situations and adapted to different scales and architectural formats. They can be performed solo or with multiple performers – sometimes with live feed projection presenting an aerial view of the live drawing event unfolding on the ground. The score works with paper and willow charcoal on the gallery floor.

In She’s only doing this the score operates as task-based constraint, performance event, material residue – and as document.

3 Em[bed]ding circle was performed at Draw to Perform 1 2014, Sensing site Parasol Unit London, Draw to Perform at Goldsmiths College London 2015 and Extrapool Nijmegen NL.

the score:

A performer steps onto paper, slowly spirals down and lying on one side, she circles around herself, continually and repetitively. With her hand resting behind the head and by pressing the charcoal stick into the floor a charcoal line is produced in her circular motion. In a spatial delay of ninety degrees, this same line is wiped over and pressed into the paper by the side of her hip. She cannot see the line as it emerges behind her head, but less than one rotation later she sees the line come into view and follows it – a rhythmic delay between making line and seeing line. 

The expanding darkening circleness spreading over the paper has both a spatial and temporal modulation and dimension – a time-space which the performer increasingly inhabits. Her body simultaneously embeds its presence and becomes scored too. The breaking and scattering of charcoal generates an acoustic score that reflects the visual, material and haptic entanglements of the event.  

The score can be performed solo or with multiple performers and/or over multiple circles which further complicates the material process and amplifies the emergent acoustic and graphic score and sense of delay.