Cross-media artist producers Marnie Orr (South West Australia) and Rachel Sweeney (North West UK) present projects employing 'live research' methods to chart and perform the geological and choreological parallels in wild and remote regions around the globe.

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,
rather than a symbiosis.i spent a day up on dartmoor last week with Diana - remember from our CCANW project- she is really keen to take some film footage. there's no particular agenda other than to play and talk and walk. we found a new route up from norsworhty bridge (which, incidentally, is exactly 25 mins from my house....so wierd to spend a day in wilderness and be home before i've even brushed the moss off!!) it was really interesting to approach the landscape from a more visual perspective- think it might be a good challenge for us to use the scope of the (camera) frame to really interrogate what the rock/body/topography could be. not sure where this ties into tthe cartographic idea, as the relation of rock properties and skin/bone etc seems to be mostly a question of composition. i learnt a lot on friday from engaging my visual senses. like a palatte of movement textures and qualities which for me can then be translated into movement form. its a different way of interacting with the landscape- maybe less immersive/reactive and more to do with exchange/translation. within this dialogue there is more space for decision making and compositional strategies which i think just has to do with working in a slightly different time structure...either way it feels like a new direction!
you have got me thinking with the floating image. i've been looking back at some of the lumi properties of light and factal/dissipated textures. i would ike to create a lumi type character using lot of white refracting light and using the clay/red sandstone that you find on pixieville to make a full bodypaint. lkind of similar to the orange stuff i use for anonanon creatures.
I want to try and work with paper - the felt handmade stuff you find in posh stationary shops. will dig around for some ideas on form...
ok- that's just something to chew on before we talk tomorrow.
mark has started a cross continiental project with an artist in baltimore- its cale psychic tides and he just knocked up a blog really quickly. check it out...i think this is our way forward...
http://psychictides.blogspot.com/
ok- loveyou truly...
will speak properly very soon indeed- really hopethere's been some more take up for nav-lab. its so clear what you are offering...i just wonder if its a case of local artists not sharing this language around body/landscape...??? i dont know- just seems such a massive culture gap - maybe there is a completely differenet approach there and one which needs time to permeate. i forget sometimes how evolved our language has become - it is positive, but maybe it does need to open out again in order to facilitate at the widest level...
one thing i really want to do is to stay in the visual this year- maybe that does mean getting prodiuction heavy, its just an intuition that i'm having with all my work at the moment- writing through our ideas doesnt quite seem to give them justice . i think we are always dealing with the visual through language- its more sophisticated than image/sensation/movement, there is an articulation of space and texture and quality working in these differeent environs which i think we need to find ways to represent visually- through photography/animation/film...the blog seems like agood way to start to shift our register...and to stay accountable over the old geo-divide!
ok- over and out for the moment- xx