Ysgwydd :Gallery Notes

4 speakers, shoes, feathers, photos, text

Ysgwydd is about space [on the page, in time, in your head]. It is about dancing. It is about wondering about flying. It is probably about age, my current age. Also the body, my body, the whole work stems from the body, my body.

I chose a place in my head, described it and then miraculously I found the right room... replayed in a space in the gallery a little smaller - recorded and played back in surround sound

Five gestures to place between movements. Gestures of the body not actually articulated but imagined then drawn. The gesture of drawing itself made a new gesture, two gestures embedded. Each was in fact a gesture that moved to another – but every movement moves. Perhaps I should say they were the start and finish of each gesture. Of course there is something here of my synaesthesia of line, a mingling of writing, drawing and sewing.
Each gesture had text written for it – then it flowed into something longer. Articulation of an imagined body, the sensations of hand through air, subtle movements in space, breath.
Writing from the body, writing in the present. I would suggest that my influences are Gertrude Stein and Hélène Cixous. Somehow Stein and Cixous overlap yet are far from each other. I feel that there is immediacy in how they both write; in the now.
The script is part of the work, and can guide you through the sound should you wish it. The piece was recorded twice – once with microphones facing to the corners, once with them facing inwards.

In Ysgwydd, and minutely in In the Bag, there is a touch of Welsh/Cymraeg. Although Kristeva notes, ‘language is, from the start, translation,’[1] I see this as bilingualism. I have lived most of my life in an area where Welsh is widely spoken [particularly when I was younger] and my grandfather spoke Welsh. “Bilingualism, a form of internalised dialogue, highlights rather than smoothes over conflicts and contradictory feelings of both belonging and dislocation in the throat of the speaker.”[2] Although I am not bilingual, some of the Welsh that I know is very embedded. It seems natural to use it. When I participated in a two week residency in Quebec: Marcheur des Bois, I produced an illustrated diary: the words were in English, French and Welsh – none were translated. This is an old theme! In Ysgwydd [shoulder] you will hear mainly nouns in Welsh. As I change from one language to another I am aware of the change in gestures – the movement of the mouth and face being different in the two languages. 

Ysgwydd Script link
Ysgydd Duet link

Ysgwydd about short essay

Both Ysgwydd and In the Bag have a strong element of liveness. Ysgwydd was recorded in two parts and In the Bag in one, the video of In the Bag is of the event, live. my preference for making “real time” work. 

the first draft/recording

flofflach · Ysgwydd wing

---

[1] Kristeva, J 1989, p.41 Black Sun . (R. L., Trans.) New York: Colombia.
[2] Bergvall, C 2009 paragraph 8 A Cat in the Throat. (J. Tranter, Ed.) Retrieved june 3, 2011, from Jacket2: http://jacketmagazine.com/37/bergvall-cat-throat.shtml

In the Bag : Gallery Notes

All the text for this work comes from overheard conversations. Occasionally I wonder about the ethics of it – but these are conversations held in public. On the street and on public transport there are many one sided conversations to be heard as people talk into their phones.
I travel on buses and trains a lot; also many notes taken in cafes – the Arnolfini bar is prominent in this work! I have picked through and found lines relevant to my themes. The only words not overheard are the anagrams derived from: “A mincy writer absolutely.”
I sometimes employed intentional actions/systems that produce chance outcomes. One third of the way through is a chunk of conversation about death, and plots at the graveyard. Of proximity of relations. This chunk of text is presented three times: As one syllable words only, with one syllable words removed and the total text, read by a male voice in contrast to the two female voices throughout the performance. (The actual words were spoken by two women). It allows for something more intimate.
The chorus of “no no no no” and “yeah” were so commonly heard [especially from people on phones] and I wanted them to be a rhythm throughout. A hint at something musical; also the rhythms of travel.

In wondering about theories of the voice, it took a long time to dawn on me that we are constantly experiencing spoken language overlaid. Sitting on the train or bus of course there are many overlapping conversations as there are at many social situations. It is nothing curious or odd. Constantly people over talk in a group and in the background there are many other conversations. Scores are written for different voices, different melodies and sometimes different words overlap. In the Bag is much less like music than Ysgwydd, the overlaps are more about confusion, my creation of the confusion of walking into a room of conversations, enhanced by the live performance in a space with amazing echoes. The crypt at St.Paul’s, Bedminster was instantly obvious for performing this work in. The place has the added bonus of having been an air raid shelter in WWII – people, chatter. There is also something interesting about being underground in a city – life and sounds all above you.

Both Ysgwydd and In the Bag have a strong element of liveness. Ysgwydd was recorded in two parts and In the Bag in one, the video of In the Bag is of the event, live. my preference for making “real time” work.