Compression Post: ArtCouple
Since the Decompressed Time Frames installation and performance in April this year, we have been quietly developing the performance possibilities of the work and trying to address the issue of archiving the impossible.
One of the pieces we performed at the closing event was ‘This Side That Side’, based on a dream by Simon, providing ample scope for our shared concerns with borders, boundaries, walls and bifurcations. The bicameral nature of the Basement leant itself well to this kind of exploration and experiment, and enabled us to begin to see the potential of the piece. Our movie/documentary pushes this further down the line and we will be incorporating in our next performance piece at Somerset Art Weeks Festival, down in Highbridge near Bristol, on the 2nd October.
For This Side That Side, there were two sets of performance footage: one from Bruce, and one from Ursula. Ursula’s ‘Bag-Cam’ is an old, transparent bathroom bag in which she has placed her mobile dangling from her shoulders on an old pice of found fishing rope. Simon then constructed the combined footage into the movie: 'This Side That Side’. Ursula’s film bag expanded and contracted rhythmically like a heartbeat, or maybe a carnivorous plant!
Alongside that, Simon has been resurrecting pieces from his Suite Six Dream that saw the light of day in the early 2000s. Noiseflower hails from that period, and was performed in 2004 at Leeds Met Scratch Theatre . ArtCouple will also be taking this down to Somerset where words, sounds and dance will be re-combined. One aspect of Noiseflower highlights a common thread (or shred) of a notion that Simon has been working with for a while now, the shred, strip or cut-up.
Here is a ‘skewed shred’ from an early drawing board. Bringing us right up to date, a new star has been born combining the thoughts, prayers and wishes from the attendees of our closing performance at BasementArtsProject where they were cast into the Peace Bucket and stirred by The Hand of God (those who were there will vouch for this!). From those beginnings came our latest member: PULPIT, affectionately known as ‘Pulpy’. The rest of Pulpit is contructed with pulped paper from shredded documents too sensitive to be shown in public. We noticed how Pulpy is beginning to resemble our beloved ‘Bing of Crosby’, a local spoil heap we discussed at last year’s 4th World Congress of Psychogeography. The revised movie ‘Bing Oh!’ is due to be released soon.
Decompressed Time Frames was the culimation-point and the starting point of many things: so a compressed junction! One of the many fruitful experiences of Decompressed Time Frames was its hybrid state —or perhaps its multiple state—hybrid in the sense that it was both an exhibition and a performance.
The wool (or yarn) component of the show, that Ursula worked with, has also found its way into another piece: 'Reverse Osmosis’—a phrase taken from the act of purifying polluted water—which she found served as a good metaphor for 'what is to be done’, or the kind of change we want to see. This will be premiered at Emergency 22, in Manchester.
Compressed Time Frames will also pop up on rhe 9th November, at Hadrian's Wall, for the 1900-year festival. The date is significant, being the 33rd anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall—wall to wall, time to time, one compression to another. For this we will pour some of the contents of our show into the subect of walls. Title: Don't mention the Wall!
https://1900.hadrianswallcountry.co.uk/
In times of crisis, it is always good to consult Eno and Schmidt’s ‘Oblique Strategies’. Alongside the geo-political meltdown we find ourselves within, we have also been undergoing various personal transformations, both good and bad. We thought we’d like to share the latest oblique advice we drew. Highly appropriate, we thought.
ArtCouple are Simon Bradley & Ursula Troche
September 2022
previously at BasementArtsProject Decompressed Time Frames