Sarah Jane Pell | Second Nature: Second Skin

SECOND NATURE | SECOND SKIN *
Underwater Performance | Rottnest Island | Australia | 2002

Expositions
Freedman Awards | Stepps Gallery | Sydney | 2006
Hatched | Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts | Perth | 2006
Walking with Water | Western Australian Martime Museum | 2005
New Territories | The National Review of Live Art | Glasgow UK | 2003

Conditions for the Performance:
I attempted to ‘fly’ underwater using custom-made wings. The design replicated a sketch by da Vinci held at the Natural History Museum London. The first-edition wings were constructed from molded cane, chicken wire, nylon and rabbit-skin glue as described. They were scaled to my 185cm long body minus the yoke crossbar. After some preliminary testing the wings were modified. The second-edition wings made away with the chicken wire for a thin acrylic sheet which acted a transparent sail | fin | paddle for greater propulsion.

The media performance documents my attempt to fly with DaVinci's instruments in the ocean. Underwater cinematographer Paul "Wooly" Wolstenholm and Production assistant Marco Mona travalled to picturesque Rottnest Island with the wings, an ABC TV crew and me for one aftertoon of shooting. The result was akin to the poetry of ‘The Falls’ 1980 the bird film by Peter Greenaway in the sense that it is, as the title suggests, “something of Georges Bataille’s delight in the puncturing of those human pretensions which the fall of Icarus so concisely symbolises”. [Baker 2000: 32]

*Second Nature Second Skin pairs Revolution

Sarah Jane Pell, 'Blue Angel' Rehearsals Beatty Park 2002. Photo The West Australian.

Discussion:
“There shall be wings! If the accomplishment be not for me, ‘tis for some other. The spirit cannot die; and man, who shall know all and shall have wings…” Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519).

During the filming of Second Nature: Second Skin, I was painfully aware of the limitations of the winged prosthesis. The chicken wire cut into my skin. The “hi-tech cable ties” attached along my arms (replacing the glued nylon) did not have any elasticity so when I moved the wing from my ‘hinged-elbow’ it was the limb itself that had to accommodate the compression and extension and not the fixture. In a short time, I had very little feeling in my extremities. The temperature of the water was low and the vasso restrictive costume meant that I was getting very cold even though I was producing a lot of body heat by working hard. The scale of the ‘fin-like’ wing with its 3.85m span caused an immense drag and required considerable shoulder propulsion without any point of advantage for the body. The workload correlated to an increase in air consumption and, as my cylinder depleted, it became more buoyant. I had to address the issue by wearing an unsightly weight belt. The weight belt lowered my centre of balance waywardly and I found it difficult to propel the wings without folding my torso over in a butterfly motion to push and pull the wings through the drag of the water to emulate flying.

This being said, the movement investigation came from the desire to see if it is possible to loose all sense of navigational coordination and to disappear into a particular spatial orientation that comes with it and the gleeful abandonment of directionality. Can I loose sense of gravity momentarily to connect to and separate from the cosmos? Can I feel totally empowered and utterly inconsequential in one breath? This could not be achieved by emulating flying. Once I forgot about my self-imposed instruction to fly and let myself flounder and fall, I began to enage with the performance possibilities. Paul Wolstenholm, the underwater cinematographer, positioned himself nearly seven meters below me to make the best of the fading light. He captured my silhouetted movements from above against the sunlight beams cutting through the water particles and glistening behind my form. I remembered the birdman contraptions and gave myself the opportunity to laugh at the ridiculousness of my endeavors. The movements that followed this surrender to the sea were wonderfully poetic.

Brancusi explored examples of the human imagining-itself-other through animal motifs (usually the fish, the turtle and the bird). They, he suggested, represent the dream of unimpeded movement through air or water: a non-human, non-pedestrian movement in the strange imaginative spaces of the animal. [Baker 2000:21] He also suggested that ‘what is real is not in the exterior form but the idea, the essence of things’ . This sentiment reminded me to be true to the intentions of the work and to return repeatedly to the point of departure towards impulsiveness, 'liveness' and the ‘natural’ reflex that I was so interested in rather than the formal properties of filmmaking.

I breathed labouredly in the final sequence. I was cold and tired and my skin was smarting from the accumulating wire cuts on my unprotected skin. I untied myself and pushed the wings away before descending for a few minutes of free fall- free flow to cool myself down- release myself from the burden of the idea and just take a moment to enjoy the space before I left. It is the most interesting footage. Moreover, it was the only excerpt worth using. It was the only evidence of ascent, decent and an abandonment of directionality that seemed remotely ‘natural’ or compelling for a screen-based performance history.

I questioned the formal properties of the tasks and constraints that I had set for myself, and their effect in relation to the intentions I had to reveal (unconsciously predetermined) ‘natures’. Despite my nostalgia to fly as ably as I do in dreamscapes, I could ‘fly’ much better without the aide of the fabricated wings. In this sense, it seemed fitting that I was bound to select raw footage that had more to do with the natural Neuro-physiological reflexes of the body with the body of water rather than the ineffectual relationship with the technology. The Bill Viola-esq. deceleration heightened the drama through the liquid medium. The process raised some interesting questions about the integrity of Live art from a post performance position in the postproduction-editing suite too. Is the work a performance in its pre-live(d) or post-performance state? If not, can remote Aquabatics actually be new works of Live art? How does technicity alter performance?

The mediated presentation of Second Nature Second Skin as a post-performance media installation functions as a cacoon, or the concept of the chrysalis . This analogy not only references changing states and a protective coating for a passage of growth but it also evokes the potential for flight in the afterlife. The idea of a pupa inside also conjures a particular type of movement quality that is seen in the performance.

In relation to Greenways film, Alan Wood is quoted as saying, “Water, for Greenway, is what you drown in; air is what you fall out of”. [Baker 2000:32] Across all movements of Second Nature: Second Skin, the idea that ‘having no weight’ during a free fall descent through air is inversely related to ‘having no apparent weight’ during a free flow ascent through liquid and, ‘having weight’ was suggestive of being unable to ‘escape’. This performance undertaking revealed that I could drown, fall and indeed fly through all mediums.

Reference:

Steven Baker, (2000) The Postmodern Animal, London: Reaktion Books

Discussion notes taken from exegesis excerpts: S.J. Pell PhD, 'Aquabatics as new works of Live Art', Edith Cowan University 2005

Web Links:

httP://www.newmoves.co.uk/archives/newterritories2003/sarahjanepell

Television Reports:

Henschke, I., (2003) Underwater Opera, Nexus, ABC TV Asia Pacific June 20 http://abcasiapacific.com/englishbites/stories/s878115.htm
O’Donnell, M., (2003) Underwater Opera, Stateline, ABC TV Australia, Apr 11 http://www.abc.net.au/stateline/wa/content/2003/s808543.htm

Essays/ Reports:

Pell, S.J. (2003) NRLA Glasgow, New Territories Essay, New Moves International UK Archives 2003-4
Pell, S.J. (2003) Conference Attendance Report: Sarah Jane Pell at the NRLA Glasgow, Feb 2003, Australian Network for Art & Technology Newsletter, Jun – Aug 03, No 53, p 12-13 ISSN 1443-8569 http://www.anat.org.au/pages/documents/ANATCWRep_SarahJanePell.pdf

Print Press Citations:

Miller, S., (2003) In Repertoire: a guide to Australian new media art, Australia Council Resources, Nov 2003, p10
Mateer, J., Arts Alive in the West, the National Review of Live art, Midland, Perth, Art monthly Australia, No. 166 December 2003- February 2004, p42
Carr, E., (2003) Alphabet troupes, Sunday Herald (UK), Jan 30
Brennan, M., (2003) Open your mind to the new, The Herald (UK), Jan 30,
Brown, M., (2003) Small piece of genius, The Scotsman (UK), Jan 28

Radio Interviews:

Taylor, H., (2003) Arts In Focus, ABC Radio, Feb 13 Sharpe, R., (2003) Five Live, BBC London, Feb 12
Bennet-Jones, O., & Marshall, J., (2003) The World Today, BBC World Service ASIA, Feb 9
Bartlett, I., (2003) This Life Today, ABC 720FM, Jan 28

Click picture for close up view