|
The House Opposite
Lead artist/researcher: Helen Spackman
Video and Photography: Lisa Cazzato Vieyra and Manuel Vason
Costume: Yara Burkhalter
The House Opposite: (1) perdita/contrada is a performance-installation
integrating live and recorded performance, the raw material of
which was generated by a 3 day period of physical improvisation
in the loft and bedroom of the performer's flat in Clapham,
during the Easter vacation, 2004. The piece explores themes of
alienation, displacement and entrapment, juxtaposed with the
drive to create, grow and nurture, and the quest for sanctuary.
In process
and presentation, we aim to challenge conventional distinctions
of presence and absence, the animate and inanimate, the 'real' and
representational, and by foregrounding the primal site of shelter,
the female body, to raise issues relating to body politics and
patriarchy's traditionally oppressive restriction of women's
creative potential to that of biological reproduction.
The piece
aims to:
- arouse the spectator's interest and sustain her/
his attention?
- open the text on what was initially intensely
personal raw material?
- challenge conventional perceptions of
live and recorded performance, of presence and absence, of
the 'real' and the representational?
- create multi-valent
imagery that both exposes and subverts patriarchal representations
of the female body & femininity?
- explore
the effectiveness of the staging & juxtaposition of
live & recorded imagery in terms of conveying key themes
of alienation & displacement, growth & sanctuary?
|
