Transnational Terrain

interdisciplinary strategy: 'media line'

From skype conversation
[13/06/2009 5:30:53 PM]

Surface Tensions intensive will focus on

MICRO-KINETIC SENSITIVITY WORK - blood bone lymphatics vessels. eg Thoracic area. Opening up arms from spine. Creating space. Accessing property transference capacities.

AVAILABLE BODY- to its own systems of movement and other bodies. Now move into a space working on eg. bag of bones - eagle wings - an extension of this work. rather than elemental states eg. wind - anatomical images.

HOLDING AGENCY of pure complete awareness of supporting upper body through upper body, with holding wings. holding shape. rather than specific form, but still form based.

Another body in there. Internal working - operating with its own frame of reference and rules of engagement. How does that body stay open and able to be effected by its environment.

DEVELOP IMPROVISATION PROTOCOL

(Inluenced by Joao Fiasdeiro's method - Real Time Composition)

critical creative thought - not reactive but responsive.

Inhibit desire to perform. This creates clarity and trust for audince.

Practice the preconditions to work - no reflex and no expectations.

SURRENDER PHYSIOLOGICAL STATE TO THE SPACE/TIME MOMENT

Employ

- decision making tasks - points of consideration - Point A to B to C etc.

- external locus of control mechanism

- task: pressure on arm and then it will float by itself when you let go.

moving without tension. from butoh. It's being done to you - external control, working with resistance.

- ways of not disturbing the place

PRACTICE SUSPENDING TIME

(Developing in parallel through Rachel's performance work with Ellen and Marnie's workshopping with Fiadeiro)

Identify the central throughline of the moment, and stay with that moment until just before it is about to change. Do this by:

Reading the Land (Paddy Roe reference) or Joao says read the scenario.

Wait for the throughline to emerge.

Name / Describe the throughline (added bonus)

GO - do the act required as you are needed. If you are not needed, don't go.

FIND THE MOMENTS WHEN READY TO SPEAK/ACT

THIS IS FINDING OUR OWN AGENCY WITHIN THE SPACE/TIME MOMENT

THROUGH AUTONOMY AND IMPLICITNESS

The scenes of decisions become apparent. rather than being reactive, you are creating a set of possibilities to become self-evidenced in the space.

Stay in relation to own process.

RADICAL GIFT ECONOMY - SUSTAINABLE EXCHANGE PHILOSOPHY

IDENTIFY MODE OF SELF OPERATION

Questions around changing that sense of what the environment needs, working with community decision - more than this. what is it that activates community?

This time is for ourselves

HONOUR THIS TIME

Image taken during Camera|Body|Place workshop intensive 2009. Body: Rachel Sweeney. Camera: Marnie Orr.

Body: Rachel Sweeney. Camera: Marnie Orr. Taken 17 April 2010, Barmouth, Snowdonia, Wales UK. Plaes Caerdeon based reflective period post- Adaptation intensive, Dartmoor.

Perception can be driven by the frame we allow. The eye of the onlooker can be drawn away from the body's form per se, and to the environment - by body placement and inquiry (dancer), and visual frame choice (photographer) during the live event. Here, as a viewer after the event I see the texture and shape of the rock, as well as imagining how the body is behind the rock.

The shift in focus during the live event from form to body placement here provides infinite possibilities in the viewer's interpretation in seeing the image. An aim could be to empower the viewer in experiencing the image for themselves through the artists' live descriptive process, rather than artists dictating a particular response from the image viewer by relying on past knowledge (eg of a dance form etc).

Nature's choreography - time - is a navigational strategy. The passage of time guides change, as is shown here when this liquid water had turned to ice. External conditions have altered the physical state of the water, transforming it to no longer shape to Bruce Lee's teacup. Rather now, it holds it's own shape, momentarily, as I watch the front end of this frozen river drip back to flowing. Loch of Lintrathen, Scotland. 12 December 2007.

Image [ABOVE] and video [BELOW] taken April 2010 in Dartmoor National Park during Adaptation, Artist Research Intensive. Willem Montagne speaks with Llewyn Maire, Michelle Outram, Lisa Newman, Manuel Vason, Carla Vendramin, Katie Etheridge, Rachel Sweeney and Marnie Orr. Ongoing discussions of Willem Montagne with Orr and Sweeney charts the changes in cultural understandings of land management over time, and how that has affected policy.

paint, coca-cola cans, plastic pipes, tennis balls, trainers, rubber bungs, plastic coving over car engines, car hub caps, sanitary ware, paper, plastic moulding, porcelain, rubber mats, car bumpers, white road lines, sparking plugs

ash soda skin
kaolin smoothed
waste deposit slowly bedding down
gravity sifts through porous layers
a silt secret kept below

this is cloth worn over broken surfaces
caked through impact and attrition
blended, pressed, noodled, dried

her tongue finds fissures
through ancestral scree paths

eyes scan the chalk periphery
where ponies flick damselflies
around gravestones
stone laid over crevassed hand and sedminent lung

The formation of china clay

http://www.dartmoorsociety.com/files/debates/chinaclay.html

Granite is one of the commonest igneous rocks, but varies considerably in its composition from place to place. While the quartz is never anything but quartz, the feldspar can be a silicate of alumina with potash, soda or lime and the mica can be the potash-rich muscovite or the iron-rich biotite.
In some parts of the South West, the feldspar in the granite is higher in its soda content than its potash content and these places are where china clay is found today. It came into being through a complex sequence of events. While the molten rock was still cooling, it was attacked successively by steam, boron, fluorine and tin vapour, these acting on the alkali content of the feldspar and converting it into china clay.

The South Western granite has been converted into china clay only in those areas where the feldspar contained a sufficiently high soda content.
China clay, or kaolin, is believed to have been formed through two processes:-
Hydrothermal activity (hot gases combined with high pressures) caused the granite (feldspars) to decompose.

Surface precipitation combined with humic acids from the bogs that were present, or by deep tropical weathering.

Sustainable Development
Policies for sustainable development have been laid down by government. Sustainable development is concerned with ensuring a better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come. The Government's Strategy for Sustainable Development published in 1999 set out four key objectives, which the clay companies aim to achieve:-

a) social progress which recognises the needs of everyone.
b) maintenance of high and stable levels of economic growth and employment.
c) effective protection of the environment.
d) prudent use of natural resources.

Summary
The industry has been an important part of Dartmoor life for over 170 years and intends to continue for many more. Although it has a long history, it has a modern outlook, fully understanding its environmental and social responsibilities to the communities affected and influenced by the winning of this nationally important mineral and aggregates.

Piesse Brook, Kalamunda Western Australia - I am so small in this place.

Body Land composition

Rachel to Marnie email June 2008
some reciprocal thoughts ...i love the images- so much softer that anything i imagined ...here's my immedite thoughts on the body-land composition: thinking about body topographies and rock as skin surface, also an exchange of properties,

Marnie to Rachel
Dear Rach
I just finished speaking with you in the phone. I thought I would just jot something down ready for our conversation. I am on the choreography as cartography line.
I am also thinking now to look at setting up a tripod and leave the camera running. But I will definitely continue to embrace a triangulation of body-camera-country through a solo investigation, working as subject-photographer simultaneously | working the camera on the body.
BRAINWAVE - I need to find a geographer or similar! I am on it!.

I keep envisaging different costumes. So I was thinking I might work daily towards an OBA through the use of a costume | or not. This is starting to sound like being production-value-heavy. But it will be one person – so it won’t be much.
I have this similar image in my head from what I described to you in an email last year – at pixieville – floating down the river. Remember?

There is not nearly half as much water as at Dartmoor. Not even a tenth! But there is water presently! It rained!

I am good actually. Just a little hiccup with having (felt) overexposed to my yoga teacher. But I did ask for it. All good but. However, I have since been out of my ‘soulskin’. I am working on getting it back!

The place where I am looking at at the moment is Piesse Brooke in Kalamunda National Park. Attached are some photos. I have been doing loads of mapping and re-mapping. The surveys are shit over here. You have to search for bits and pieces to get a good geographical map.

I will be getting more poetic soon! I just want to set down a couple of ground parameters with you. Because I think we should formalise our process here (now). This will strengthen our practice, and I can then use this to form part of my MA independent project (which is another conversation really!)

In the image titles –
LF = Lesmurdie Falls National Park – another site quite interesting but riddled with tourists and their footprints and smell.
PB = Peisse Brooke, Kalamunda National Park – as described above.
The S1 / S2 etc stands for the site number (site 1, etc), and their reference name.
Tell me what your thoughts are.

Love Marnie