AK's idea to use the smoke of a cigarette and the cigarette in the hikinuku scene detailed below in his post, is interesting and I would like to try out a corresponding use of same:
The 'pataphysical dance (formerly Aristotle dance... or perhaps simply 'triangles'...) will according to my tentative plans use a dry ice machine to emit smoke clouds from the corners of the stage.
A spectator looks at the screen at: the 4 triangle capes from above, with the UV light projecting (or flashing if we can't get use the UV bulb in the projector) a spiral motif onto the white capes, and smoke plumes spiralling into the scene from the 4 corners. A pseudo-alchemical ceremony, a spectacle too.
Then, the camera pans lower and the source of the smoke is revealed: an extremely large cigarette (prop) which is evidently a fake prop. Or, perhaps it is carried across the scene of the four dancers by a stage hand. (To some polite coughing would be too much)
The connection to the cigarette of the hikinuku is apparent: what is suggested poetically in that scene is distorted in the 'pataphysical. What is elegant in the hikinuku scene is made hyperbolic in the 'pataphysical. This potential relationship could set up nicely two points on a continuum which we are already exploring... the occident/orient, truth/untruth, recognition/exploitation (?)...
SH
Friday, 22 October 2010
CONGRATS CONAL RE: LUX!
Analysis of the Divine Word, LUX:
THE SIGN OF OSIRIS SLAIN! - T (NOT SHOWN)
THE SIGN OF ISIS IN MOURNING! - L
THE SIGN OF TYPHON AND APOPHIS! - V
THE SIGN OF OSIRIS RISEN! - X
LUX!
LET THE DIVINE LIGHT DESCEND!
THE SIGN OF OSIRIS SLAIN! - T (NOT SHOWN)
THE SIGN OF ISIS IN MOURNING! - L
THE SIGN OF TYPHON AND APOPHIS! - V
THE SIGN OF OSIRIS RISEN! - X
LUX!
LET THE DIVINE LIGHT DESCEND!
Simplified Hikinuki Dance (AK)
I hope you are all well. been mentioning bits of this to Conal, but wanted to pull it all together here. I think - based on time, etc, AND aesthetic considerations - I personally think that the simpler the Hikinuki section/series of images is the better. This would contrast with the more choreographed, ordered section that Simone has come up with.
1) In 'The Heron Maiden' the dance begins with Tamasuburo rising through the stage. I like this as a simple metaphor for the idea of something coming out of nothingness, of an emergent property appearing from the chaotic system, of subjectivity being born (this last point, in relation to the rending of the garment and the splitting of the subject).
2) The 'rising' could be achieved by the figure rising through the stage on some kind of deus et machina thingy - but this is impractical, expensive and time consuming. What about the figure rising before a static camera, the figure on some kind of see-saw that lifts him/her, and then possibly a final shot of them standing on the ground. Hey presto - done by editing?
3) Rather than hem the gauze garment - which would make them heavy - if we work on the pattern and get that right and just make them without a hem then we save time and weight and the gauze looks more diaphanous. Save a lot of time and unnecessary work, I feel.
4) We could paint the Lacanian diagrams onto naked torsos rather than print onto the gauze, or project the diagrams.
5) A small cut at the front and the back of the 'Lacan kimono' costume would mean that rather than pulling the garment off, in a traditional hikinuki fashion, we could rip it off the static dancer/person's body. I think this would look beautiful slowed down (same flowing speed that the subject rises initially in).
6) The 'dance' or action would then be:
i) Person rises in Lacan guaze kimono, possibly extends arms so the diagram can be projected.
ii) Kimono ripped off by 'stage hands', seen or not.
iii) Person walks backwards in a slightly supplicant pose, as the Heron Maiden does after her first hikinuki.
iv) The process begins again.
7th) And final point! I think we could set a date to practice make-up on Leanne, if she is still up for the Yoko section. I think that the text piece (me as Conal as me discussing elements of the process of making this peice) would work as a voice over for the Yoko 'performance'.
1) In 'The Heron Maiden' the dance begins with Tamasuburo rising through the stage. I like this as a simple metaphor for the idea of something coming out of nothingness, of an emergent property appearing from the chaotic system, of subjectivity being born (this last point, in relation to the rending of the garment and the splitting of the subject).
2) The 'rising' could be achieved by the figure rising through the stage on some kind of deus et machina thingy - but this is impractical, expensive and time consuming. What about the figure rising before a static camera, the figure on some kind of see-saw that lifts him/her, and then possibly a final shot of them standing on the ground. Hey presto - done by editing?
3) Rather than hem the gauze garment - which would make them heavy - if we work on the pattern and get that right and just make them without a hem then we save time and weight and the gauze looks more diaphanous. Save a lot of time and unnecessary work, I feel.
4) We could paint the Lacanian diagrams onto naked torsos rather than print onto the gauze, or project the diagrams.
5) A small cut at the front and the back of the 'Lacan kimono' costume would mean that rather than pulling the garment off, in a traditional hikinuki fashion, we could rip it off the static dancer/person's body. I think this would look beautiful slowed down (same flowing speed that the subject rises initially in).
6) The 'dance' or action would then be:
i) Person rises in Lacan guaze kimono, possibly extends arms so the diagram can be projected.
ii) Kimono ripped off by 'stage hands', seen or not.
iii) Person walks backwards in a slightly supplicant pose, as the Heron Maiden does after her first hikinuki.
iv) The process begins again.
7th) And final point! I think we could set a date to practice make-up on Leanne, if she is still up for the Yoko section. I think that the text piece (me as Conal as me discussing elements of the process of making this peice) would work as a voice over for the Yoko 'performance'.
Wednesday, 13 October 2010
Dazzling outfits- modelled by Simone!
James Clerk Maxwell, Tartan Ribbon, 1861
Simone said she wasn't up for it but I suggested a James Clerk Maxwell impersonator - he was a man of 30 when he took this photograph- the first colour photo- I could step in wearing all but the pictured bow . .
Tuesday, 12 October 2010
The air of the cold genius from Purcell's King Arthur
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsWJniZht1A&feature=related
I think if we end up with something like this we're onto a winner! MY favourite thing this hour is to open several browsers at once and let them compete..
I think if we end up with something like this we're onto a winner! MY favourite thing this hour is to open several browsers at once and let them compete..
Friday, 8 October 2010
Tamasaburo going to the Japonist bridge in Inversnaid to meet another version of - himself as Gerard Manley Hopkins.
This is an adaptation of the final scene of my second book. The book will never be finished in the usual sense. Not sure how or if we could use this. Its a parody of the voiceover from the Tamasaburo Kabuki plays/dances on youtube, and a parody of my own earlier style as a slightly romantic, blood and tears writer. Again, an avoidance of an 'immediate' expression, on my part. A parody of the search for artistic truth and origin.
-
Tamasaburo asked the way to the river whilst still on the boat, and was directed to the empty grey ash path in front of him. The sun had risen, but it was unseen, hidden behind a thick low covering of cloud that obliterated the peaks above. He thought the river would be close to the road, couldn’t imagine Hopkin’s in the difficult landscape, the scrawny poet-priest’s soutane slapping against him as he traversed the same bleak path a century before. The poet had come with a companion, a guide, Tamasaburo imagined, walking the road and distracting him, Hopkin’s not listening, smiling but internally appalled by the horror of the raw and seeping nature before him. And then the scene changing in the poet’s inscape, his perspective shifting as the dark, brumal groin in the landscape became a tabernacle, the river becoming biblical; an Edenic stream flowing from his feet.
Tamasaburo could hear the river in the distance, the sound of a constant exhalation, an increasing exultation as he moved towards the unseen source, the words from the poem he had written for the poet folded in his pocket, rising in his mind.
Come springtime my heart leaps,
as I go to view the flowers,
where, by mountain hamlets,
the valley river roars with a noise like rainfall,
drowning out the wind blowing through the pines.
There seemed no evidence of spring or him here yet, the season, like everything, still undecided, early spring or late autumn.
Adorn yourself and follow,
for their faces are made-up in colours, red, white and pink.
How enchanting! How enchanting!
Blossoms of just forteen days.
But no colour here, the black of his usual garb making Tamasaburo appear like a decaying black tree moving, unnatural, over the landscape. And then the copied, twisted and inverted words of his own poem, written on the back of the first, answering his own love letter.
Winter comes, my heart in hiding,
as I walk over the barren fields,
where, by mountain villages,
the river roars by with the sound of an unseen storm,
drowning the cruel wind that moans through the branches.
The falls had come into view and were nothing like how he desired them to be – a japonist Victorian iron parabola spanned the river, conquering the fast flowing water beneath, tidily channelling the chthonic tumult. He mounted the bridge and his eyes darted along the path on the other side until it appeared to end, suspended in mid air. It turned and fell sharply into an impenetrable screen of pine trees, where he stood, watching.
Tear your clothes and follow,
for their faces are made-up in black, white and grey.
How sad, how sad - the dying flowers of fourteen days.
I watch him emerge from the scrubland, his head darting and bobbing, the shadow of a white heron that I barely recognise as him. He is wearing a black mourning coat; his chest is covered in black cotton that parts the heavy wool covering, his legs wrapped in charcoal canvas. He cannot see me here. I watch him for half an hour as he paces back and forward over the bridge, unsure, lifting his head and tilting it back to look into the distance. Before he leaves he kneels on the bridge, facing away from me, and bends forward or leans back, I cannot tell, black folding into black, a ritual with no point. I see a white ball fall from his hand into the river; it hits the water and expands, a sheet of blank paper moving through the chaos. A poem for the river.
-
Tamasaburo asked the way to the river whilst still on the boat, and was directed to the empty grey ash path in front of him. The sun had risen, but it was unseen, hidden behind a thick low covering of cloud that obliterated the peaks above. He thought the river would be close to the road, couldn’t imagine Hopkin’s in the difficult landscape, the scrawny poet-priest’s soutane slapping against him as he traversed the same bleak path a century before. The poet had come with a companion, a guide, Tamasaburo imagined, walking the road and distracting him, Hopkin’s not listening, smiling but internally appalled by the horror of the raw and seeping nature before him. And then the scene changing in the poet’s inscape, his perspective shifting as the dark, brumal groin in the landscape became a tabernacle, the river becoming biblical; an Edenic stream flowing from his feet.
Tamasaburo could hear the river in the distance, the sound of a constant exhalation, an increasing exultation as he moved towards the unseen source, the words from the poem he had written for the poet folded in his pocket, rising in his mind.
Come springtime my heart leaps,
as I go to view the flowers,
where, by mountain hamlets,
the valley river roars with a noise like rainfall,
drowning out the wind blowing through the pines.
There seemed no evidence of spring or him here yet, the season, like everything, still undecided, early spring or late autumn.
Adorn yourself and follow,
for their faces are made-up in colours, red, white and pink.
How enchanting! How enchanting!
Blossoms of just forteen days.
But no colour here, the black of his usual garb making Tamasaburo appear like a decaying black tree moving, unnatural, over the landscape. And then the copied, twisted and inverted words of his own poem, written on the back of the first, answering his own love letter.
Winter comes, my heart in hiding,
as I walk over the barren fields,
where, by mountain villages,
the river roars by with the sound of an unseen storm,
drowning the cruel wind that moans through the branches.
The falls had come into view and were nothing like how he desired them to be – a japonist Victorian iron parabola spanned the river, conquering the fast flowing water beneath, tidily channelling the chthonic tumult. He mounted the bridge and his eyes darted along the path on the other side until it appeared to end, suspended in mid air. It turned and fell sharply into an impenetrable screen of pine trees, where he stood, watching.
Tear your clothes and follow,
for their faces are made-up in black, white and grey.
How sad, how sad - the dying flowers of fourteen days.
I watch him emerge from the scrubland, his head darting and bobbing, the shadow of a white heron that I barely recognise as him. He is wearing a black mourning coat; his chest is covered in black cotton that parts the heavy wool covering, his legs wrapped in charcoal canvas. He cannot see me here. I watch him for half an hour as he paces back and forward over the bridge, unsure, lifting his head and tilting it back to look into the distance. Before he leaves he kneels on the bridge, facing away from me, and bends forward or leans back, I cannot tell, black folding into black, a ritual with no point. I see a white ball fall from his hand into the river; it hits the water and expands, a sheet of blank paper moving through the chaos. A poem for the river.
Voice-Over Ideas
Going to work on this - mapping the flow of the research narrative through ebay, etc. It's based on the tone of some of Conal's text and spoken word pieces for his films. Me being him being me, I suppose. Means I can avoid 'expression', which I like. (AK)
She says she suffers from Yoko Syndrome.
It’s when French people go to Tokyo-old-Edo and start fainting.
Just fall to pieces.
I turned around and said to her – I thought that was Kristeva Syndrome.
No, she said.
No, that’s when rich French melancholic academics go to China in the 80s and have a China Crisis.
I just didn’t know what to say to her after that.
I mean.
Mmm.
No.
That’s a Glasgow Crisis.
Marry one of the Pastels.
Yip.
No the other one.
Big in Japan apparently.
She saw Bowie in Ziggie in a Kemp thing in the Citz in the 70s in drag in a Yamamoto Hikinuki Kimono dress, no, in the Barrowlands.
Neither either nor or Ono.
Yip.
Think Kemp’s ‘Onnagata’.
Whose elongated vowels?
Hmmm.
Yip.
She says she suffers from Yoko Syndrome.
It’s when French people go to Tokyo-old-Edo and start fainting.
Just fall to pieces.
I turned around and said to her – I thought that was Kristeva Syndrome.
No, she said.
No, that’s when rich French melancholic academics go to China in the 80s and have a China Crisis.
I just didn’t know what to say to her after that.
I mean.
Mmm.
No.
That’s a Glasgow Crisis.
Marry one of the Pastels.
Yip.
No the other one.
Big in Japan apparently.
She saw Bowie in Ziggie in a Kemp thing in the Citz in the 70s in drag in a Yamamoto Hikinuki Kimono dress, no, in the Barrowlands.
Neither either nor or Ono.
Yip.
Think Kemp’s ‘Onnagata’.
Whose elongated vowels?
Hmmm.
Yip.
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