WARNING
This page contains partial nudity and images that some viewers may find disturbing. Mature Audiences are recommended.

F A L T* | F A L T E R | F A L T E R I N G

KIRSTEN HUDSON (WA) | SARAH JANE PELL (VIC/WA)

Expositions | Creative Development | Coversations | Papers
 SexShow | Breadbox Gallery | Perth 2006
Revolution | Western Australian Maritime Museum | Fremantle | 2005
Supermarket | Breadbox Gallery | Perth | 2005
Bones of the Skin | Breadbox Gallery | Perth | 2005
BEAP Biennale of Electronic Arts, Perth | ECU Symposium | 2004
POAA | Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts | 2004
TERMINAL | The Space Between Conference | Fremantle | 2004

 Kirsten Hudson, is currently an artist-in-residence at SymbioticA: the art & science laboratory, School of Anatomy & Human Biology, University of Western Australia; PhD candidate Curtin University & Co-founder & Director of TANGENT Fashion Management, 2006. I met Hudson when she was Director and Co-founder of Little Girl INTERNATIONAL Inc. (2000 - 2005) producing TERMINAL: a multi-art carnivale held at the Fremantle Passenger Terminal, Victoria Quay. The intention of TERMINAL was to blur the boundaries between spectators and performers as the closing Gala of The Space Between Conference, 2004. I proposed an ambitious project to fit the bill: Trans>Port a performance inside a 17,000 cubic litre seawater filled ‘Super Tank’. The idea was that the tank was to be lit on both sides so that the spectator could look through to see the performance in front of a back drop of city lights, port activities and the night stars. The vessel was also linked with live vision feed and sound to be broadcast into the main arrival hall to the revellers inside and a projector beaming the dive cam over the portside balconies of the quay. Hudson embraced the idea and it became evident that we shared an interest in the psycho geographies of performance and behavioural limits (real | imagined | theoretical | actual | possible).


The Translation of BUTTERFLY…

PSYCHE (ancient Greek)
Also meant "soul", and "breath" (now "mind", of course).

FALTER (German)
Literally translates “folder” referencing the wing motion.

* I would have to be included if U were in Falt.

 We have explored these interests through various independent investigations, and conversational and studio-based exercises which we affectionately refer to as 'falterings'. Our verbatim is a strategy for interrogation on performance. To the outsider, our converstaions may seem superficial, occassionally naively self-reflexive, but at times, wickedly poignant. There is a certain poetic recalcitrance in our decision to choose the "butterfly" as a symbol of our conversations. The success and failure of our performances in this lived ontology are like little flutters that risk becoming larger cyclones for the sake of art. In truth, the butterfly analogy represents only one part of the story. Hudson is a Deleuze and Guattari fan and I often think that they explain the audience dilemma inherent in the woman-as-insect notion that we embrace: ‘…art might represent the fragility of human meaning and control; bound up with the animal pack, the human experience of ‘becoming animal’ will not necessarily be a comfortable or reassuring one, or go according to plan.’ [Baker 2000:149]. Audiences be warned about overlooking the ‘folding’ of our little ‘psyches’. One might look into our conversational swaying and hovering on subjects as a strategy for deliberate contemplation and evaluation on faltering. One might see it as a mechanism to lure, pacificate and hypnotise an audience, before striking like the cobra, with absolute commitment and zero hesitation with a profound idea. I remember the packaging of an aniseed tea called ‘Black Adder’ with a similar anecdote about taste, bite and confidence to describe a reptilian becoming. Don’t have fear, we mostly drink soy lattes.

Click picture for close up view


045-1 | FALTER | HUDSON | 2005
 Media Performance Still | SEXShow | Breadbox Gallery | Australia
Performed & Devised by Kirsten Hudson, Camera Sarah Jane Pell, Professional Cake Decorator Jackie, Perth 2004. Copyright Kirsten Hudson.


045-2 | FALTER | HUDSON | 2005
 Media Performance Still | SEXShow | Breadbox Gallery | Australia
Performed & Devised by Kirsten Hudson, Camera Sarah Jane Pell, Professional Cake Decorator Jackie, Perth 2004. Copyright Kirsten Hudson.


Conversations at the intersection of performance

BEAP04 | Creative Connections Symposium | 2004

 The pursuit of practice as research / practice-based research (PAR / PBR) has become increasingly important during the past ten years to the research cultures of the performing arts (drama, theatre, dance, music) and related disciplines involving performance media (film, video, television, radio) as the contribution of the arts and cultural industries to national health and prosperity has climbed up the political agenda. A growing number of performing arts / media departments in higher education are now offering higher degrees which place practice at the heart of their research programmes. This represents a major theoretical and methodological shift in the performance disciplines — traditional approaches to the study of these arts are complemented and extended by research pursued through the practice of them (quoted from PARIP website, www.bris.ac.uk/parip).

Drawing upon PARIP’s – Practice as Research in Performance - objectives to investigate creative-academic issues raised by practice as research, this paper engages in conversation as a tool for research in/for/as performance. We see this paper as a starting point for future performance collaborations and therefore, this paper seeks to use conversation, in particular, conversations conducted via email, as a point of and for departure.

In Conversation:
 Hey Kirsten,

Did you notice that our discussions often attempt to determine our individual "psycho geographies"? We seek out our relative positions and points of convergence or 'difference' in these apparent sites/states of being. What struck me today is that neither of us is fixed. We are in constant flux, trajectory or orbit and find any point of 'stasis' more unsettling than most. Therefore, perhaps it is pertinent to think about the "psychoreography" of our life journey and begin to explore our related practices and thoughts at this time. It is through our momentum, our actions and energies that we have synergies and a greater 'denial of difference'....

...Hey Sar,

I think I need sometime to think all of this through.
I believe we have very similar audience expectations in some instances, i.e. the sense of possibility and limitations and the liminal zones at the end/between/edge of boundaries, and where a body, our bodies become a point, a reference to leap, or to fall from. There is a sense of risk and thrills, in a way that makes a viewer hold his or her breath, not just in a spectatorship way, but in a way that requires a sense of connection maybe, no, more a too real fear for their own safety, or, a overwhelming want for the same experience, not just through the performer, but a want for themselves...

For recordings and trancripts of the conference proceedings please go to www.beap.org

SUGAR AND SPICE

Bones of the Skin | Performance Research Journal | Review | 2005
..."Falter, 2004 by Hudson consisted of stills from a private performance to camera. The artist’s naked body was shown frame-by-frame, getting coated in hot-pink sugar crystals. The artist looks away to her reflected image from a hand-held mirror. The stills were presented chronologically in small wall-mounted light boxes that the viewer could illuminate manually. On one hand the body was portrayed as being beautified through a ritualised process of adornment however as more of the narrative is revealed the sugar-coating process appears to attack, infect, colonise and corrupt her perfectly controlled body. The transgression is seemingly double-edged and the image of the artists’ body turns from passive victim to self-indulgent host. In the final few stills, as she is becoming completely consumed by the sweet coating; the artist looks to the camera and smiles. By this final poised gesture, Hudson presents herself as the queen bee: nearly completely coated and caked in sugariness: gazing back at the viewer to gloat with accusation at the audience for her narcissistic becoming." S.J.Pell, Performance Research Journel Vol. 7, 2006

The complete paper is available for download from the PDF Gallery

Click picture for close up view

045-3 | FALTER | HUDSON | 2004
 Media Still | Bones of the Skin | Breadbox Gallery | Perth
 Performed & Devised by Kirsten Hudson, Camera Sarah Jane Pell, Fremantle 2004. Image Copyright Kirsten Hudson. Used with Permission.


045-4 | LUMP: a self portrait | HUDSON | 2005
 Installation | Bones of the Skin | Breadbox Gallery | Perth
Mixed Media (64.7kg pink sugar) Installation by Kirsten Hudson, Assistant Byron Renfrey, 2005. Image Copyright Kirsten Hudson. Used with Permission.


045-5 | LUMP: a self portrait | HUDSON | 2005
 Installation | Bones of the Skin | Breadbox Gallery | Perth
Bones of the Skin Exhibition curated by Lia McKnight, foreground 'Lump: a self portrait 2005' by Kirsten Hudson, 2005. Image Copyright Kirsten Hudson. Used with Permission.
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