our final challenge, June, 2011

Our final challenge together was visiting Karuna, where we met Annie Lovejoy, who "runs the show".  We sat for over an hour, talking about death, joy, life, Buddha, the Dali Lama...

"we are a symbolic group, she says
we hold the values of compassion, care, life itself.
if you get out of your own way, she says, things might happen, and even more quickly
if you step back and watch it, she says
everything falls away, she says,
falling away"

and in response, I wrote this story, that was read out aloud at our showing on 10th June, 2011, in FreeRange, Metro Arts.

Brian Lucus, Nikki Heywood and Margi Brown Ash at Process Project Aquittal and sharing...over the finishing line

here we are

10th June, 2011. My mothers birthday.
we come to the studio this morning. after having a cup of coffee on the footpath talking about the hospice we visited yesterday. the at home hospice whose clients want to die peacefully at home. "if i ever die" i say and everyone gaffaws
if i ever die, i repeat, this time with a grin, and make it to the finish line, i want to be with Karuna, and then we talk about the richness of our visit the stories we heard like the old monk holding a dying woman's hand, whispering the Hail Mary.  and we are in the studio and Brian is creating his story of circles and Nikki is on her computer reading the blog (this one--she points to the screen) and I am feeling reasonably lost not really sure how we do this, and how we communicate to you all about the times that we three artists, over a period of 12 months, met with each other, with six meet ups, and ten days and 79 cups of coffee and the occasional red wine...if you had met us back then, when this idea was birthed, you would have seen 3 very different people: i was taller than Brian back then, and we were very very young.

This is not a stand alone project. it is one of multiple dimensions...and she/he/she are dreaming with open eyes...and they remember the story that their mother told them when they were 5.

"once upon a time", their mother said to them "a long long time ago, and only this morning, a little bird sat on your shoulders and whispered into your tiny ears "is this the day you're going to die"

and the children looked into their mother's eyes that had filled with tears and they reached over and hugged their mother and said with a tenderness beyond their years
"mother, lets have an adventure, just in case"

and so the four of them set off to explore the landscapes ahead...they witnessed a large and beautiful lake, with huge birds skimming the surface of the water, they heard 3 kookaburras laughing at them.  they sat in the talking circle and shared stories of loss and grief and joy.  they saw a sculpture of an aeroplane that looked like a bird, with wings as wide as the path it sat next to.
they saw the white statue of Buddha covered in beautiful flags of yellow and red and blue and green.
sometimes the four of them would stop and look into each other's eyes and smile they didn't have to say anything precisely because their open look said so much.

they decided it was time for tea, so they journeyed towards the house of the spirits, that sat in the valley of the Glass Mountains, and walked windy circular paths towards the small kitchen.

"I will remember this" they all thought. as they witnessed the tables beautifully laid out around the lake and the bamboo stretching high.

"i will remember this" they whispered, when the tasting plate arrived, filled iwth tofu and vegetables and pork and seafood and sauces fit for the gods.

as they drank monk pear tea, the three children looked at the lake and saw the fountain shooting as high as the surrounding bamboo, an enormous spurt of energy...an energy that they could also feel on the inside, particularly when they were together.

finishing their last cup of tea, they continued to follow the circular paths that continued to move them forward.

as they continued to walk, they heard whisperings...they heard
"just get out of your won way. it happens more quickly"
and
"if you step back and watch it, it is easier to manage"

and the message from the little bird continued to sing inside their heads,
"is this the day your going to die"
and after hearing it many times, they realized the freedom that came from it: the way it removed the unnecessary pressure of creating something of importance.  Rather, they knew right in that moment, that all they needed was to open their eyes, their ears and their hearts, and watch themselves read.

"its time to go home" says the Buddha, " you can take all of your experiences,with you, to your own homes, and so they journeyd back to where they had started and began to see their own HOME as they have never seen it before.... HOME with bamboo shoots, vegetable gardens and white cane chairs.
HOME with monk pear tea and raisin cake.
Home that is a nest high above the city where he stares out the window and works.

"say my name" we whisper into each other's ears..."say my name, give me tea and raisin cake. and i shall live for as long as you live.  i shall be with you always"

and the children noticed that the sky was turning black, and the stars were out beckoning all three of them in different directions...

"good bye" one said, as she stepped ontot he plane to see her other family and continue her list of questions.
"goodbye" one said as he stepped into his white platform shoes, ready to perform
"goodby" one said as she headed to her home, that place of imagination and peace.

And as their mother waved goodbye she knew that she had done something right.

Challenge 3...the 'no' challenge

Schedule Outline  as it unfolded: We decided to venture out. We wanted to find a stimuli to dream on the ideas that seem to be emerging today out of our conversations.

1. Shingle Inn. Coffee and check in. Steve Gilligan discussion (village/wasteland/journeyman); 'Sluts Walk' discussion (the social and cultural implications of dress code); Butoh (the inner landscape and the external landscape);

2. GOMA: the sustainable garden; Ideas Festival Program; lunch at Tognini's discussing potential value in gallery crawl and speakers in festival.

3. QAG and GOMA adventure: a sharing of images by Brian and Nikki. Margi attended an IDEAS talk about IPADs in education.

its time to meet up again, and we all agree to be at metroarts at 10am, saturday morning on 20th May. i meet brian in the street. he is standing waiting, and we begin to talk while we wait for nikki whose plane is late (isn't that a rule. planes are always late).

We talk about presence and how do we help artists find a presence on stage (I am here. this is where i am. this is who i am. this is what i am doing. what if?). brian talks about a simple yet profound exercise that he uses in his classes to help dances feel capable of continuing class.  to help them journey through the awkward moments into more confident flow he asks them to gently and simply outline their bodies, starting at the crown of the head. using the fingers, coming down the sides of the head, to neck. crossing at the back of the neck. going down the back to buttock, down the back of leg around the toe back up the front of the leg, front of torso, head and top of head again. he asks them to continue to repeat that until it is habit. then they can be in the space, engaged with the space and time. this is an internal landscape, which interests me because i like to play in the external landscape. i think that as westerners we live in our head too much, and to move into the relational space quite deliberately is what i want my actors to practice. however i am thinking this would be a valuable exercise to employ first up...then moving into the relational space.

we talked about the construct that i had just read by steve gilligan  (http://stephengilligan.com/blog/blog-4/ ) taking me back to the Heroes Journey, and the  idea that there are three ways of being: we are either villagers, wastelanders or journeymen.  we dreamed this idea on, and brian was thinking that he  shifts through all of these states at different times, he observes the villagers, he then moves into the wasteland, journeying to different places, meeting different people, and returns again with stories of the villagers, and the cycle continues

i found this a beautifuil dreaming on of the constuct proposed by steve gilligan: the beaten path of the village/the falling in on despair/the transformational life of the hero.  Brian saw how the three sat with each other. We saw an image at the artgallery that seemed to reveal this idea of layers:

sculpture at QAG that seemed to resonate the construct of village/wasteland/journeyman

THREE ACTIVITIES TO STIMULATE THOUGHT:
1. Nikki built on the morning's discussion about the Male Gaze. She found in QAG a sculptural exhibition that seemed to sum up what we were talking about:
  Figure, Form and Allegory: Sculpture from the Collection

Installation view of 'Figure, Form and Allegory: Sculpture from the Collection' | Photograph: Natasha Harth

Figure, Form and Allegory: Sculpture from the Collection

This display explores the Gallery’s holdings of figurative sculptures from the late nineteenth century to the modern era and illustrates the evolution of sculptural approaches to form and space throughout a period of great change.
Sculptural works up to the late nineteenth century often drew on neo-classical and academic traditions, echoing the poetry, myth and aesthetics of ancient Greece and Rome and the Italian Renaissance. Developments exploring a more impressionistic portrayal of form began to emerge at the beginning of the twentieth century, with volumetric mass seen in terms of space and light, through the simplification and sometimes even the disintegration of form. Despite these later radical developments, figurative sculpture has endured as a robust and well-loved tradition at the same time as having undergone changes in artistic approaches and materials and methods of exhibition, as well as public reception.

looking from the male to female form 

Nikki and Brian examine the outward energy of the male form

2. The Fragmented Body: Nikki was particularly interested in this exhibition that was in the hall as we entered the space. I have cut and pasted this from GOMA site:

Ah Xian | China/Australia b.1960 | (Disembodied hand, bandaged in lower register) 1993 | Synthetic polymer paint, ink, oil on wooden board | Gift of Nicholas Jose and Claire Roberts through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2008 | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Lee Bul | South Korea b.1964 | Untitled (Cyborg hand) 2000 | Hard-paste porcelain, slip-cast, fired to 1555 degrees Celsius and with clear glaze | Purchased 2002. Queensland Art Gallery Foundation Grant | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery
Ah Xian | China/Australia b.1960 | (Disembodied hand, bandaged in lower register) 1993 | Synthetic polymer paint, ink, oil on wooden board | Gift of Nicholas Jose and Claire Roberts through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2008 | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

7 May to 8 October 2011 | Foyer Cabinet, Gallery of Modern Art

This display presents diverse artistic expressions of ideas about the human body, drawn from the Gallery’s Collection to complement the Gallery’s exhibition ‘Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams’ (11 June – 2 October 2011). These works consider the human form physically, culturally and scientifically, providing insights into history, knowledge, and memory.
Works by Eko Nugroho, Liu Jianhua and Wang Zhiyuan offer a critical take on social and popular cultural issues, while Fiona Hall and Greg Semu locate fetishism and sexuality as embedded in culturally located practices. An assemblage by Rosalie Gascoigne and collages by Gary Brotmeyer address the fragmentation used by Cubist, Dada and surrealist artists in the early twentieth century; and Sara Tse, Anne Ferran and Justine Cooper each visualise the body as ephemeral, a trace of existence.

3.  Video installation: in the Hall of GOMA is a huge video installation. I found it disturbing, while the others found it interesting.  it was UTube excerpts of popular moments in our culture ( http://youtu.be/_OBlgSz8sSM "charlie bit my finger" video).  Nikki talked about the family in this particular clip had to move because their privacy was compromised).

4. A disturbing image that i have seen several times previously, and is now haunting me is the image by Sydney Nolan:

mrs fraser by sidney nolan

This image disturbed me (and is still) because of the juxtaposition of this with our morning conversation about The Slut Walk (http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2721208.html ).  The idea that women become carcasses. the Male Gaze. http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/08/26/faq-what-is-the-%E2%80%9Cmale-gaze%E2%80%9D/

5. Lloyd Rees:

Lloyd Rees | Exterior, St. Brigid’s Church, Red Hill 1916 | Pen and ink and watercolour wash over pencil on wove paper | Gift of John Brackenreg 1965 | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | © Queensland Art Gallery
Lloyd Rees | Self portraits c.1912-17 | Pencil on paper | Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 1999 | Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | © Lloyd Rees, c.1912–17. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney, 2011

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http://qag.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/current/lloyd_rees_life_and_light

A major gift of early works from the family of Lloyd Rees, one of Australia’s most accomplished draughtsmen and an awarded landscape painter, will be celebrated with an exhibition at the Queensland Art Gallery from March 12 to June 13, 2011.

Queensland Art Gallery Director Tony Ellwood said ‘Lloyd Rees: Life and Light’ would show in the Xstrata Coal Queensland Artists’ Gallery and feature more than 100 works created throughout the artist’s distinguished career, including a strong focus on his early drawings of Brisbane.

‘Incorporating portraits, landscapes and street scenes made in Australia and abroad and several of his late mature landscape paintings, ‘Life and Light’ traces the evolution of this important Queensland-born artist’s talent for depicting light and its effects.

‘The exhibition, drawn primarily from the Gallery’s holdings, includes an extensive set of Rees’s early Brisbane drawings recently gifted to the Gallery’s Collection from the artist’s son and daughter-in-law, Alan and Jan Rees.’

Mr Ellwood said Lloyd Rees received the Wynne Prize for landscape painting in 1950 and again in 1982 for his work, which often focused on the effects of light in its varying forms.

‘The exhibition charts Rees’s career both chronologically and by subject matter. Included are early selfportraits and figure studies, some of which appear to have been made from sculptures now in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection.

‘Brisbane interiors, street scenes and river views feature prominently, along with landscapes and other observations of nature and a series of watercolours, oils and etchings inspired by his time in Spain, Italy, France and Greece.

‘Later works include a suite of lithographs from 1980 depicting Caloola, Rees’s beloved beach house retreat in coastal New South Wales and the stunning Manton Prize-winning The sunlit tower 1986, described by the artist as a “visionary” work, on account of his failing eyesight at the time he executed it,’ Mr Ellwood said.

Lloyd Rees was born in Brisbane in 1895. He died in Tasmania in 1988.

Accompanying the exhibition is a sketchbook-style publication which will be the only book on Rees’s work in print, Lloyd Rees: Early Brisbane Drawings, available from the Gallery Store and australianartbooks.com.au

For more information on ‘Lloyd Rees: Life and Light’ visit www.qag.qld.gov.au

This was my favourite image: it was the last in the exhibition and it communicated spiritual purpose to me...a journey towards the light.

The sunlit tower 1986
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Oil on canvas 107 x 122cm Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 1996 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

The coast near Kiama 1952-55
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Oil on canvas 89.8 x 118.7cm Purchased 1955 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

The fields of Burrawang 1939
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Oil on canvas 60.8 x 76.4cm Gift of the Godfrey Rivers Trust 1941 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Hill of the south coast, NSW 1936-38
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pen, ink and ink wash, over pencil on wove paper 32.9 x 44.1cm Purchased 1941 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney 1920
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pen, ink, watercolour wash over pencil on wove paper 56.7 x 51.2cm Purchased 1922 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Treasury buildings 1920
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pen, ink and pencil on wove paper 26.3 x 23cm Purchased 1922 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Exterior, St. Brigid’s Church, Red Hill 1916
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pen and ink and watercolour wash over pencil on wove paper Gift of John Brackenreg 1965 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Self portrait c.1912-17
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pencil 13.5 x 13cm Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 1998 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Moreton Bay Fig at Milton, figure under tree c.1912-17
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pencil 11 x 17cm Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 1999 Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

River bank at Yeerongpilly c.1912-17
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pencil on paper 19.5 x 14.5cm (irregular) Proposed gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation.

Brisbane building under construction c.1912-17
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pencil on paper 33.8 x 25.1cm Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2010. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Corner of Albert and Elizabeth Streets, looking east towards St Stephen’s Cathedral c.1912-17
© All rights reserved Lloyd Rees 2011 Australia
Pencil on paper 34.1 x 25.1cm Gift of Alan and Jan Rees through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2010. Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program Collection: Queensland Art Gallery

Themes emerging:
1. what is dress and how does that represent 'who i am becoming'. Very interested in expanding this construct, to see the line between our dress, and our home. Are they are reflection of each other? This makes me think of Nepal, and how we saw young men emerging from small huts with little comfort, yet they were emerging in a suit with a white shirt: the juxtaposition of the poverty of home, and the apparent prosperous nature of the working man image still sits inside my head. That schism interests me.
2. the journeyman, the villager and the desperateness of the wasteland, and how we journey from one to another depending.
3. after reflecting on our day i am realizing that the Lloyd Ree exhibition could be seen as a summing up of the artist's life. beginning small, with little steps, Rees grew his art superbly. in a few minutes the myth of the artist is revealed...and the culmination of the tower left me feeling very satisfied.

We finished with the agreement of meeting at State Library Sunday morning 10am to attend some more of the ideas festival and then moving on to work in the studios.

rehearsals...so much fun

 

 

a bowl of coffee in rehearsal

I am in rehearsal, cooking.
cooking in the kitchen
what recipes do i follow
do i model finding the recipes and then creative changes?
i can fit 14 people in my kitchen
we will cook together as we tell stories.
how will this work?

a record of our conversations saturday, at eumundi

...and I talk to my colleagues, Nikki and Brian, and our facilitator Dan. We are in Eumundi for the  weekend, having an experience to challenge our way of thinking...as well we  talk about how we work.

Brian: i will watch people, i will shuffle my ipod, i will listen to music. i will stare out the windown. i will let my mind go travelling. i will walk around in circles. i will allow myself to imagine, reflect, travel rather than reflect on my body movement. i make work as a way of understanding the world, and me as well. i am morally obliged to attempt to understand why i perform.  everytime you start you start with nothing.  there are no answers just the questions for them.  as soon as you don't have to do it, it starts to happen.

Nikki: i will listen to music. i will be alone. i will free my imagination..Music becomes like wallpaper. i like the space to attend to it...different every time. maybe on the studio floor or then follow something, like a scent.  i will lie for half an hour. i will walk for half an hour. i will read for half an hour. i will write for half an hour. i  make sense of work. if i really understood what i was doing...i know what i have, now. intention is movement.

Dan: i am in trance from the music
i need someone to listen
i articulate waht i am imagining.
my draft 1 is draft 8. its already been edited.

Margi: i need people to work. sand inbetween people can be a light.  we need to get out of our own way so that we can work

we then talk about improvisation, and one suggestion is:
Improvisation: can you remember the first meal you ever cooked? what was it? who was it for?
i cooked for my family. patty cakes. butter and sugar, flour, milk, patty cake tins...
Brian remembers anzac biscuits. Metal tray, quite heavy, rectangular tray squishing dough on the fork. whne hot and soft scoop them off...tea towel to let them cool.  the smell of anzac biscuits.
Nikki remembers sausage rolls and puff pastry.
Dan remembers chocolate dipped strawberries.

I wonder if our first cooking experience influences where we end up in relation to food?

We then go to dinner in Eumundi at the Fig Tree. we have tapas. very nice.
the things that emerged from this weekend include
1. preparation and prepping
2. hosting: quote from the cards:

At C and A. morning tea is at our big red table everyday at 11. Anyone who is around, customers included, join us. The conversation centres on the cake and biscuit plate (often made by one of us), what's for dinner, and the lateset taste sensation.  food is always an important topic although of course we also rise to loftier topics  (Amanda Blair)

And i am reminded of pumpkin scones, something that i may cook in the show:

250 gms of Queensland Blue
2 cups self raising flour
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
75gms pure icing sugar sifted
40 gms butter
1 egg yolk
milk for brushing.

steam pumpkin.
15 minutes
bake 10 minutes
sieve when cool. and now this is different to regular scone recipes.

Flo Bjelke-Peterson says cook the pumpkin the night before and chill it in the fridge. Ring Kingaroy 0741627046 for more information

beat the icing sugar and the butter and then add the eggs. stir in the pumpkin. and flour or half of the flour. use rest of the flour on the board. 2cms thick. don't twist!

did you know that the scone originates from Scotland? the earliest reference to the bread was in a scottish poem called Aeneid, in 1513.

cooking...cooking a world...cooking the word...here we are...cooking the world.

I reach for the New Yorker, its in this little B and B in Eumundi. and i read about Marina Abramovic's Performance Art:

the body is her subject, time is her medium, and birthdays mark the moment that the performance of living officially begins

 this broke my heart:

on March 30, 1988, they embarked on their last performance. she started walking the Great Wall of China from the east, where it rises in the mountains, and Ulay set off from the West, where it ends in the desert. After three months, and thousands of miles, they met in the middle, and said goodby (pg 25-26 of The New Yorker. Mar 8 2010)

 She did an exhibition called "The Artist is Present"...

The sense of purpose I feel to do something heroic, legendary and transformative; to elevate viewer's spirits and give them courage. if i can go through the door of pain to embrace life or the other side, they can to (p 24 in The New Yorker)

Rituals of Practice:
how do i protect myself
what are my performative rituals
very private thing.
between me and myself
private rituals nurture
we cannot stop the cycle
all we can do is disrupt it.
transitions...no endings
meetings and transition points.....

and we host.
we have 14 ingredients (the 14 chairs representing the body of Osiris)
we give them something that they can take away.
the ritual of food

brian was saying that this weekend was a reflection of the last one we experienced together: the landscape of families sitting around  picnicing...we walked around the lake.
and this week, there was a lake and the whole of the restaurant situated itself around the lake.

i will finish on a haiku
the theatre of home, bright colours
sunshine green bamboo shoots

well not quite
relating and growing
moving from bounded to relational
reaching for pork ribs and coriander.

if we were to perform at pullenvale
we enter the Egyptian room (lounge room)
then into kitchen
then into bedroom
then into garden

excitement in the kitchen

Two days ago, i decided it was time to step up to the plate so to speak. having spent the previous weekend at The Spirit House as part of this Process Project, I think two days ago: well if Mohammad wont come to the mountain, the mountain will come to Mohammad!
And I add another Self to my relational being: i am now a gourmet cook. No longer do i go by the label of 'comfort food' cook, or basic cook. i have stepped into the world of the gourmet. This world is full of people, of that i am very much aware...and every time you turn on a commercial channel there is another cookery competition. that does not phase me, no, not in the least. Always i could not be bothered with recipes. i would just create whatever. i may look at the recipe but that was all...the last two days has seen my table strewn with recipe books. i have purchased a beautiful Maggie Beer book with embroidery on the cover. it is a work of art, and the recipes are easy and delicious. a recipe such as fig and rocket salad (wash your greens (rocket, spinach and kale); cut your figs (ripe and beautiful...this is the autumn or winter fruit) loads of them; grate a fabulous cheese (like parmesan but nicer); mix balsamic vinegar and oil; and top it with Prosciutto...and it is a salad to die for. Tomato soup? onions galore, garlic, white wine, red tomatoes, pinch of sugar (to bring out the flavour of the tomatoes), salt, pepper, stock, and i added some balsamic vinegar, topped with grated parmesan. squeeze of lemon...herbs parsley, thyme, mint, basil...i added a couple more. love a lot of herbs...and zucchini fritters...grated zucchini, onions, cheese (I used goat fetta because of Bill's dairy allergy), gluten free flour, garlic...fabulous. And today i tried, for the first time Mushroom Risotto.  Never have i cooked risotto but i did, and it was delicious: rice, stock, white wine, mushrooms, onions, grated cheese (Romano? like a parmesan)...topped with hard Italian cheese and a squeeze of lemon. Delicious.  As i cook i am thinking which dishes can i cook in my show. so far i think the tomato soup is good...will try a few recipes, and also the risotto is good...it is easy (i was so surprised) just labour intensive, and that is probably good for theatre.  so i may make my guests, my audience of 14 a tomato soup and risotto...and so now i have to practice making bread, scones, anzac biscuits, and apple/berry pie?  mmmm i am in training  and instead of hitting the road, i am hitting the mixing bowl. thank goodness my stove is fixed!!!! wish the dishwasher worked!

and what else am I to glean?

We are working with very different people over these three experiential weekends. The first being the landscape architect, the second being a manager of The Spirit House, a place where food and atmosphere are the selling points. 

The fact that The Spirit House has adjusted the way they serve food to increase revenue and to increase the punter's experience is innovative, and i think worth stealing...how do we create a show that brings in revenue so the artists can get paid, and at the same time create an experience that is optimal experience for our audience?

and i am thinking of Home, the project i am working on presently (that could very well be my last, because I have decided it has a five year time line)...how do i glean from the Spirit House, creating an experience for my audience that is unforgettable and still viable as an economic commodity? That is a big question, and one i am not sure how to answer.

I think there is a change in our community, and it is a good one. I think younger artists have to be producers at the same time as artists, something that we were never expected to be. As a consequence the younger artists seem very aware of their material, what they can and can't do...i so admire this.

I shall continue thinking, and when Nikki and Brian enter the conversation we can build some more. Over and out.

Images of our experimental day at Spirit House

Daniel loyally journeys with us, drinking a thimble full of Reisling to complement the food

the lake is beautiful, all of the tables are situated around the lake with a little water feature...

another image of an eating pavilion and the lake

Images of the weekend

largest stock pot i have ever seen. this has in it a stock that has been going for many years...

these prawns were astonishing...flavours going everywhere

another wondrous experience, and how beautifully presented

A huge verandah in our Eumundi B and B

Dan, our administrator, and Eklen, the manager/owner of spirit house, and Brian contemplating the lake

Beautiful statues guide us as we journey on the path to the restaurant

some dreamings from eumundi, spirit house and pj party, first weekend of April, 2011

i still pinch myself that i have this amazing opportunity to do ordinary things with two of Australia's finest artists, and i wonder how that happened, and what it is that i am to glean from this unique and exquisite experience. Is it just to absorb their process? Or is there a deeper reason that I am yet to unfold? We talked about how we work, and Brian and Nikki have unique ways of being in the studio. What I remember are things like the following (passed through my own imagination):

I can stay for hours in a studio, lying on the floor; walking around and around; going out for  coffee and returning; reading articles and then lying on the floor; walking around and around; finally around 3pm i may be ready to move something on the floor...but it is a culmination of the day. i have built up to this...reading, resting, thinking, moving, thinking, reading, resting...

It is cyclical, and so i dream this on more:

the creative cycle after talking with Brian and Nikki when working solo, and dreaming it on:

•Checking in: where am I on a scale of 1-10? 10 being “My Perfect Rehearsal”…Lying on the floor absorbing the space saying hello to the world of the studio; walking around and around in the studio allowing the body to find answers to questions that I don't even know I am asking

 

•Reading a relevant article or book, or looking at images, or doing a collage, or making an artists book, or…some physical activity that awakens the artist: multimodal depiction

 

•Coffee break and absorbing the environment and finding links between the world outside and the world within

 

•Selecting music that motivates, stimulates and moves me forward.  Gently physical warming into the kinesthetic channel…ImpulseTraining. Every cell is alive. Moving for ½ hour before moving onto the material that has been brewing…

 

•Integrating reading, art making, moving, sensing, intuiting, by presenting idea on the floor to self and other

 

•Check out, time to re enter the world

Our Weekend in Eumundi

Overnight pajama parties are a source of deep exchange of ideas, a hoot, and the dreaming keeps evolving...
We worked Saturday at The Spirit House, a place of meditation, connection and food. It took a while to find the place, and we had a few hilarious wrong turns, finally ending up in the right place at the right time...kitchen talk: watching Ben cut with lightning fingers, seeing the largest vat of stock I have ever seen, the dance of the kitchen, where many people worked in the smallest of spaces. The sweet cook was 'banished' to the back room, where he made the desserts free from garlic and coriander. We sat on small benches and were fed several taste plates: I remember the multiple flavours exploding...glorious..."And what wine would you drink with this"... Reisling! Voila!
We wandered the gardens, bamboo thick, small lake with ducks, all the seating is outdoors, with tin roof, no walls...very Balinese. Peaceful.
We talked for a long time with the manager of the house.  His parents began the project in the early 90's. We learned the history of the place, how it has developed and what were the dreams...if only they could.
So are dreams possible? Apparently not now, due to council regulations. Is this a little like theatre these days, with workplace health and safety?
As we watched this family create an astonishing environment, with a restaurant and a cooking school, i think about how we create theatre companies.  Because theatre is not usually a money spinner, any investment is for love, and we do not have luscious environments within which to create our work but more often little black boxes and over used studios.  We love them just the same. I sometimes feel more at home standing in a black box than at home standing in the garden.  It brings back the years of work before I moved to Brisbane, where not a week went by that I was not standing in some black box somewhere in the world.
Is our black box possibility? A way of dreaming with open eyes? Is our black box freedom from the everyday relentless rhythm of what we have created? 
Perhaps.

letter from Nikki

Hello up there,

Thanks for this Margi, I love the idea of 'outside rooms' and enlarging the spaces in which we conceive ourselves performing, to embrace the environment.

I have spent quite some time working outside responding to, working with (and sometimes ignoring) landscape,
yet of course whilst  it is familiar - it is also still vastly unknown, and my relationship to these various concepts of 'body in landscape' is always changing and evolving.
Like any relationship really.

Peter's Berrinba Wetlands project impressed me in these ways:
the many dimensions and multi planar thinking involved :: layers of earth/ under and over :: vegetation and rates of growth :: mulch to protect the ground :: water as an environment and as a resource ::
fauna and wildlife corridors within and without the parkland :: transactions with human stakeholders :: the support of local community and consideration of their needs :: the fluid relationship with council :: the wishes of the
land endowment people ::  the architects and engineers and labour force ::  aesthetic considerations :: artwork and video :: the industrial corridors ::  the ongoing maintenance and upkeep ::

And then : from our perspective as users :
time and what grows and what dies away :: what returns? ::  the path itself and the time of our journey ::  the intersecting circularites of time and space
light and shade/ heat and cool :: pausing at bridges :: transition zones ::  the hidden places underneath where trolls hide
the ways we see and are seen :: the landscape is looking back at us

And then : the tiny pocket of Kemp Place
another reclamation :: a tiny haven amidst concrete flyovers :: a series of red poles planted in the ground/ another claiming
exclaiming :: declaiming

THE MORE YOU THINK ABOUT IT THE BIGGER IT GETS

Thinking back simply about the studio time (on Sun 20th)...  my experience of working in the room and conceiving a 'sensory experience' for Margi and Brian was as much about what was outside the room as the space inside.
I was drawn to the windows as frames for the many layers of texture and movement, colour and reflection happening outside.
In response to the qualities that had emerged for me on our saturday excursion, I wanted to draw your attention to as many ways to perceive that space (inside and outside) as possible.
one thing i wanted to do but didn't/couldn't were :
creating light reflections on the ceiling (eg with a bowl of water , but you need direct sunlight for that i think)... or creating subtle changes of light
(there was more to say, but this is where i paused...)

28th March.. to resume in another place...
In mid March I spent 7 days on a Body/Landscape workshop in Central Victoria with (Amsterdam based) Body Weather practitioner Frank van der Ven.
Lots of walking (our walking became slower and quieter as the week went on) and some wonderful ways of looking and changing perception - not just of the outside environment, but also of the inside spaces of the body.
I thought about our reflections on landscape architecture and the dramatic impact of light and shade and our relationship to the path... strongly sensing gravity and how the variations in ground surface affect stability...
reading the landscape at the same time as 'falling' into it... sensing trees and rocks 'in place' and the time that they occupy stretching forward and backward... sensing my own place in that time, my specific weight and density,
the layers of me, stretching back and forward in time and space... remembering that i am also formed and shaped by the forces of gravity, of heat, of light, wind, water...
sometimes when i move these days i am aware of all this geological and cultural history, like the earth's strata, playing itself out through this weathered body...

n x

changes, progressions, process: what has emerged as a result of our weekend of landscaping

This weekend was my first ImpulseTraining workshop for the year. ImpulseTraining is a postmodern acting/life training that I have devised over the last ten years. This year I  teach on Sundays at Pullenvale, a leafy acreage suburb in Brisbane.  We work 10am  till 1pm, followed by lunch and then a 'by-invitation'  complimentary generative writing/performance session 1-5pm for emerging writers/contemporary performers.

Yesterday, as a direct result of our (PP) generative session last weekend,  we used the garden to perform.  This was something we had talked about, however because of heat, rain etc had always remained inside (except some evenings).

Each participant was invited to find a space anywhere on the 4.5 acres, either inside or out, to perform their improvisation, based on scores created earlier in the day.  They were invited to allow the space to impact on the work.  They had 30 minutes to create the work.

The results were very strong and made clear to me how important space is, and how space can actually dictate hugely the content as well as process of the work.  I think that this was deeply emphasized in the Process Project when the three of us went to three different spaces to create a reflection on the day with Peter (landscape gardener) and we came up with such different products.  Space influenced us enormously.

Because of this, i was encouraged to commit to a changed emphasis on space in ImpulseTraining.  This idea has been growing for several years, yet it obviously needed a stimuli to get it going. We have been talking about open performance spaces here in Pullenvale, yet this was the first time we had actually used the various 'outside rooms'.  Jung would call this syncronicity.

We will continue to develop these ideas, and we are now planning to have a Pullenvale Performance in June.  I want to deeply thank all four of you: Liz, Dan, Nikki and Brian for being such a vibrant team.  The Process Project is having a direct impact on my work.

Reflections on February 20, 2011, our second day for Intensive No. 1.

Sunday was a rich and challenging day, with things happening for all of us.
10 am we meet at Metro Arts.  Dan goes to sit in the meeting room ready to move us into the studios. We suggest the Board Room (air conditioning its 34 degrees and its only morning) so we plonk ourselves in the Board Room and drink water and 'check in'.  We reflect on yesterday, our time with Peter, and what stood out for us today. We all retained different images, different experiences, and all of us will be blogging individually, but to get the ball rolling I will reflect on what I recalled...it was the paths. they were built up, so they were there to last. I call the park "The Park of Paths".  The other thing that sticks out for me is the talking circle, the stones too far away to really talk (unlike the talking circle at the State Library) but it is a shrine, rather than a practical place to sit...and it is a shrine because i call it a shrine.  For Nikki (and she will talk about this I am sure) it was the body of water, which reminded her of the insides of the body...and for Brian, it was that moment of disappearance.  You are there, and then you are gone.  These primary responses came across quite strongly in our three performative pieces that we pulled together in 1 hour or so...Brian inhabited the Basement, Nikki went to 4.2 on the fourth floor, and I stayed in the Board Room.

I decided to pull out my things that i had brought (books that i had put in my trolley, art supplies and my large black book) and allow them to talk to me.  I wrote (no planning, no thinking as such, just writing.  This is what I wrote:

TALKING PIECE ABOUT MBA'S EXPERIENCE.

This piece is called 

"The Park of Paths".  

Throughout the delivery MBA moves through the landscape of Performative Character to Pedestrian Character.  She is playing with Breath, her relationship to breath, her breath's relationship to audience, the audience's breath. This is her new direction in research: what is her relationship to breath in her work, her life?''

SHE BEGINS:

"We're finding energy for the future in the strangest place" (source from SMH Magazine. 19th Feb. 2011)

we are sitting in a talking circle

and the table is too large

and we are spread out, 

spreading out

and

we are  almost white blank sheets

fill-me-up blank sheets

our comfort zones are large

around this table of glassness

it swims around us

cushions of billowing white Egyptian cotton

cover our limbs and our torsos

protecting us from the Australian Sun

that knocks on the glass windows

the beast of plenty

that gives and takes according to its whim

and its relationship with Cloud and Wind.

We are white blank sheets

fill-me-up almost white blank sheets

and we are dreaming

and we am not

SHIFT of breath

There are many dreams and many paths to becoming a writer

i could keep a diary

i could keep a blog

i could write poems

i could hold fast to a cause and want to write about it

i could do all these things.

one think is certain.

writer's write. 

and so i reach for my pen. its blue. 

I need black

"Dan, do you have a black felt pen?"

"I don't like writing with blue"

"i don't either" says Dan "amaze"

and I start to write despite the lack of pen supplies, 

for i am a writer and i should be able to write

anywhere

anytime

anyhow

but i need to tell you this: i do not know how to write. 

the words they do not spill from my tongue, or through my fingertips. 

they do not.

who shall tell the stories

and what stories shall we tell

and i gently place my first finger and thumb into my mouth and remove a small book "How to Write on the Path to Somewhere"

and I gently, and oh so quietly place on my thickening glasses that can read everything

and i begin to read my book about the path to somewhere, for without instruction I do not know which path to take:

It says.

1.  Look deeply into the faces that sit before you...

(move towards Nikki. look into her face for 1 and 1/2 minutes, or until there is a shift in perception. then move to Brian. look into Brian's eyes and stay until there is a shift in perception. Keep one hand on Nikki's shoulder as I do this)

and I do.

i look.

i see

i feel

i tumble 

like Alice

into her tunnel. 

I tumble into their storied levels...I find the story of love, of mothers holding their children, year after year and singing 

I love you forever i love you for always as long as I'm living my baby you'll be

when the child is young and putting watches down the toilet, 

when the adolescent and rude and playing loud music and slamming doors, 

when the independent youth lives out of home, independent at last...

this last development requires a ladder.  She waits and waits, and when he is asleep she creeps up the ladder into his flat, holds her child and rocks him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth and sings 

I love you forever i love you for always as long as I'm living my baby you'll be

Until the time comes when the son is called to his mother's bedside.  

He bends down over his dying mother, holds her for a long time, and sings softly 

I love you forever I love you for always as long as I'm living my mummy you'll be  (source children's book "I love you forever)

some stories are so rich and thick and

I am tumbling so fast

there is no time

and there is time

2. go and collect any item you find in abundance. and i do. i collect books upon books.  My house is made up of stalactites of books from floor to ceiling.  They are my walls. Books other people have written. Books like "What we may be. Techniques for Psychological and Spiritual Growth through Psychosynthesis by Piero Ferrucci. 

And in these books are pathways to follow.

1. take time

2. prepare

3 persist

4 connect

5. work in silence

6. keep a workbook

7. write

[adapted from What we May be. by Piero Ferrucci)

Go and collect any item you find in abundance.  

"Earth Angels: Engaging the Sacred in Everyday Things by Shaun McNiff. Shambhala: Boston. 1995.

and I learn another pathway. 

I read:

"the path[way] of the creative spirit is not clearly marked.  When it does appear, it emanates in instants, fragments and insights". (page 7). 

"yet somehow the pieces find a way to form a whole..."

"the creator follows the unchartered [path] of the angel, always a step ahead of the reflecting mind" (7?).

and i am thinking of the pathway to the talking circle we walked...it seemed so large...in that park of paths...it seemed too large and too far apart to chat...

yet it is a shrine

it has made itself into a shrine

just because we have labeled it as such.

I reach for Peggy Rubin's book "To be and How to Be" (Quest Books. Inninois. 2010).

Message One:

to be fully in the body

Message Two:

discern what you are here to do

Message Three:

stay open to greater possibilities

And I decide to write about three sacred paths of being and doing.

I write "Spanish Fire" (source SMH Magazine. Feb. 19, 2011) and I find myself holding A Diary of Fire...

(source Fire Diary by Mark Tredinnick. N.S.W.:Puncher & Wattmann. 2010)

and i read:

"you've had moments like these, too.  I envy

the hens the steady circle of their days

but this is not how mine go; i am strung from stars

that once were gods and cannot seem to forget" (p29)

the hens steady circle throws me to the steady circle in the path of parks 

the steady circle of the talking circle here in the Board Room at Metro Arts

the steady circle of thoughts that move into and out of my head at a steady rate

the weather is about to change. 

i can smell it

i can feel it

it falls on my skin so softly so unobtrusively that if i did not stop i would not know it was there

i can hear it

just as i hear my breathing,

"breathe out"

"breathe out"

"breathe out".

and i open my eyes and there is no one here

they have left me

to explore their own stars that once were gods.

The Tree of Stars

Landscape architect + four artists= a day in city of Logan/Brisbane

Yesterday all four of us (Nikki, Brian, Dan and Margi) met up with Peter to journey with him through two of his projects. We hired a red bullet, piled in and tore down to Logan, to a wetland/parkland that had been planned and built by Peter's landscape company. some of the photos are below.  we walked these walks, crossed these bridges, heat rising, children's voices, silver eagle keeping a safe eye over the theatrical space, neat, tidy and new. but not so new: "how did you find out about this park" I say to one of the little girls playing on the path "i've come here since i was a baby" was the reply...it has always been and always will be it seems:

wide paths took us through the wet lands 

The paths were wide, enough to accommodate multiple users (bikes, prams, skateboards, joggers) and they wound around, very organic, reflecting the round edge of the body of water (is it called a lake, a pond, a dam, a river...)

we stop and look below on each bridge we cross, and looked below. brian insisted it was cooler standing on the bridge

Peter was very happy to talk about everything, and we noticed he liked to weed along the pathway when the weeds were of an outrageous size...what impacted me on this show and tell was the paths, so wide and solid made of concrete...Peter added that 1km of path had to be dug up and re done because the workers messed up...1km of track is a long way, and there are about 8.5km of paths throughout this place...it is almost a study of paths, and i am thrown to Robert Frost's poem:

Two roads diverge in a yellow wood
and sorry i could not travel both
and be one traveller, long i stood
and looked down one as far as i could
to where it bent in the undergrowth.

the tree that heals itself

Paths, healing...lead me to Buddhist philosophy...paths lead to choices...paths lead to adventure and not knowing. as we walked the paths, we did not know where they would take us but we did know that such an expensive path could not take us too many places!

we are working together again today at Metroarts...