Sarah Jane Pell | Raw Spaces

R A W S P A C E
MEDIA PERFORMANCE

Expositions | Creative Development
Telepresence in Performance | Workshop facilitated by Johannes Birringer | The Performance Space | Sydney | 2006
River Festival | Director's Party | Brisbane | 2005
Media Performance | Judith Wright Centre | Brisbane | 2005
RAWSpace | New Media Residency | Brisbane | 2005

CONDITIONS FOR THE PERFORMANCE
I stood alone in a room with a camera propped on a round, chest height, drinks table. I dressed in a neutral suit and flesh-toned skull cap. My body was lit with two direct beams from chrome birdies. The camera was within arm’s reach of me.

I covered the camera lens with petrified samples of water collected from various water-holes, baths and fountains across Brisbane. Each sample had been set in a small round dish with gelatine. I pressed the small water jellies between coloured lighting gels and hung them in front of the camera lens. Manipulating areas of distortion and clarity I moved my body to alter the moving screen-based painting.

RAW BLUES
Listening to ‘Dolphin Ascension’ (2001) by Steven Page [www.aquavisionmusic.co.uk] I performed in front of the blue gels. My choreography is repetitive, whimsical and light – mimicking gestures associated with underwater performance.

RAW RUSHES
By contrast the second movement choreographies are much more violent and passionate. They are performed in front of the red gel. I listened to ‘Kyrie 1’ (14th century) by Guillaume de Machaut, arranged and performed by the Kronos Quartet [LP 7559-79457-2]. I explored rhythmic extremes and inner emotional turbulences. I felt like I was sliding sideways between control and chaos, lust and love, loss and longing, fighting and pacifying, caressing and distorting, gestures of inversion and extroversion, gestures to the self and gestures to the camera/audience. The work has qualities of a dialogue between a self and other; man and woman; individual and state and so on. The end product has a mix of confessional, retribution and sinner qualities flowing on with loving, tender and very reverent virtues. In the last movement I placed an anatomical model heart in front of the camera showing only my hands holding and turning it.

DICSUSSION OF THE TELEPRESENCE LINK UP
More information to follow.

WEB LINKS
www.rawspace.org
www.performancespace.org/telepresence

ARTIST SYMPOSIUM
Hydro-artists Sarah Jane Pell & Caroline Locke, IMA Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, October 2005

Click picture for close up view