Assembling in the Hall, working in residency at CAST, exploring body-place through moving, seeing, listening, drawing, writing 2017
August 2017
Assembling in the hall was a residency at CAST Helston Cornwall in 2107 in which I was working on site in the old school assembly hall. CAST is an artist hub home-base for the Groundwork programme of events May-September 2018.
The assembly hall was in flux while a renovation was being planned and its emptied spatial quality, rough walls, unvarnished floor and dusty corners offered me a choreographic work-site to explore body and place in relation to themes of (dis) orientation and presence.
Inhabiting the time-space of the hall in the days of the residency, I observed the processual ways in which my body – moving and still – orientated between architectural surfaces, material details and quiet resonance of the hall. Moving, drawing, scoring, writing, installing and taking photographic stills were modes of working with and between sensations of seeing, listening and touching. This generated a doing-thinking space to linger and take note.
‘Rhythmic scores’ and ‘quiet positionings’ became choreographic modes of resonating with the hall as site, activating surfaces, tilting the architectural grid and becoming co-present with the material textures, objects, features, sounds, planes, views and weight of the hall. I worked with repetition as an effective strategy for scoring and documenting, assembling and dissembling objects and for transporting sensations of time-body-place to the page of drawing.
On the last day of the residency a group of eight people joined me in the hall for a workshop and in the evening more people gathered with us in the hall for a performance sharing – a start of a mode of working in collaboration with a site or project in which I share practice through workshop and public performance with workshop participants..Many thanks to Alberta, Amos, Bettina, Claire, Caroline, Liz, Pettrina and Tanya – and to all the team at CAST (Cornubian Arts & Science Trust).
Working back and forth between moving, drawing, score and still-image, the book-document ASSEMBLED: tilt/dust/rhythm is an extension of the residency in the old school assembly hall at CAST Helston Cornwall UK in August 2017. Please contact me if you would like a copy £4 +p&p.
