14 October 2009
Weather: Springtime, between bright sun and rain
In order to translate the logic of a studio practice in dance improvisation into the terrain of this artist book, we’ve remade the menus that set out the structure for the Camper show, this time in relation to sections of dance writing made through rehearsals and performances. We throw a coin to begin our first collaborative book. It lands on “tea, coffee, biscuit, milo”. This score limits the materials to be used to gesso, stitching, text, photographs from performances and a glue stick. The score dictates that Rachelle begins by attaching text, I respond with gesso or stitching, and may attach more text, then Rachelle responds with gesso or stitching, then I respond through gesso or stitching. We sit together in her studio, with the books in-between us, usually working for half-days at time. To make the best use of our time, we are usually working on two or three books in a day, passing them back and forth. It takes time for paints and varnishes to set, which is when we’ll begin working with a new book or section, so that the various books constantly cycle between us.
Rachelle’s starting point is the found book itself, the field of spaces created by 1960s typewritten submissions on the development of a new marina, held together by a simple cardboard and cloth glue binding. She looks at the layout of stamped letterheads, the spaces between paragraphs, the fields of empty page and lines of text and selects fragments of the dance-initiated writing. She grafts these fragments into the pages, sometimes cutting through numerous layers of pages so the text is framed by layers of empty space. When she’s done she gives the book to me.
Choreographically, Rachelle has created starting points for further work – spatial structures, motifs – and she has outlined ways in which the forms of pages and ideas from The Little peeling Cottage will bleed together. Her stitching, cutting, grafting, folding and drawing brings the flat space of pages into a three dimensional play, it brings texture and color to black and white surfaces, it emphasizes spatial fields within pages. I consider these actions choreographic – they emphasize a spatial thinking and open spaces of emergence within the site of the book. Rachelle saw the Camper performance a number of times, she has collaborated with me in past projects (see the Suture section of thekinesthetic archive book) and she is acutely aware of the relationship between dance and design in these books. Each time a particular text from The
Little peeling Cottage is selected in relation to a page space a continuation of a duet eventuates. It feels like a similar practice to when, in our performances, Val would dance and I would write in response. When Val began her solo dances, she began with a text from the last rehearsal, with our environment, with her interaction with the audience, and with the sensory
information available to her. I would then be writing from the world of her movement. Here, Rachelle, a textile artist, works with a text, with the given circumstances of page and material, and draws these together in developing spaces. I then work to bring these logics closer to each other.
I take the gesso and attend to an almost empty page. With a paintbrush I paint out almost every word on one of the pages, leaving only a few that hinge the page space between its original context and our duet work – words to do with ecology, space, community and
articulating ideas are brought to the surface through the use of texture. With each page in the section I apply the gesso in relation to the pages and the added texts, and I also add a couple of images, figures cut from photographs of Val performing phrases created in response to the texts Rachelle chose to fix upon this page.
I pass the book back to Rachelle. When later she hands it back to me it’s like receiving a Christmas present. What elements from the pages will she have heightened or developed? She had chosen to use stitching, and using red, green and black embroidery thread she’s created connections across pages, framing particular elements of pages, without erasing anything she has created dimensions of space, color and texture that extend the design and movement of the page.
It’s up to me to complete the section. As we both know the structure before we begin we have a clear sense of our responsibility in terms of initiation and response – it’s not up to either one of us to generate the aesthetic or design of pages, it’s in degrees of response, of working with what’s there that the vocabulary of the page is found. It seems clear to me that a couple of the pages are done, and do not need any more work, whereas some others are in need of finishing. This dialogic approach to collaboration requires that we are sensitive to leaving space around our ideas, space for the unexpected to arise between our different approaches. I complete the section by applying heavy layers of gesso to one of the pages, so that the thick, textured paint takes hours to dry. As I do so I’m imagining future readers running their fingers over the rise and fall of this texture. When I’m done it’s time to start the next section, so we write the various menu choices on a piece of paper, and hold a coin ready to fall on the next operations for our creative practice.
Pablo Picasso’s interest in “the metamorphoses of forms into new bodies” (Picasso, cited in Brisbane Public Art Gallery, 2008) gestures to the translation of concepts, materials, languages and movements that form a central point of development in, I think, any kind of artistic practice. Such metamorphosis is strongly emphasized in The Little peeling Cottage
project, wherein choreographic ideas moved between dance, written and spoken language, and mixed media art practice.
The Little peeling Cottage project is a project that aims to create space for artists and artistic modes (dance, writing, painting, drawing, sculpture) to respond to and extend each other. The particular methodology for movement-initiated writing that emerged in this process involves a kind of condensation of movement ideas through the reiteration of a duet score – from movement improvisation to performance writing, to highly structured call-and-response scores between two book artists. Site specific practice was also a defining aspect of this project as it moved between two sites – the caravan and the found geography book. The series of one- off artist books that form the research outcome of this project highlight physical actions of the book artist-as-performance-writer as she sculpts a dance of reading for future audiences. The book becomes a body, a tactile, lively, spatial form.
The final chapter of the Environment and Change book that became the first version of The Little peeling Cottage book was titled; “An Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth”
(Buckminster Fuller, 1968 p. 341). It brings to the foreground the following text; “Live meetings catalyze swift… interest… Live meetings often become pivotal in our lives”
(Buckminster Fuller, 1968 p. 341), which uncannily parallels the philosophy that underpins the ethics of rehearsals, performances and book design for TheLittle peeling Cottage.
You might read the artist book Camper: The Little peeling Cottage as a site specific performance. You might notice the slight smell of burning or paint that reaches beyond the closed object of the book to create a sensory, olfactory body. The pages of this book are collaged together from original pages, inserted pages, found materials and photographs. The pages merge into each other through methods of collage that retract certain facets of the book’s layout while manipulating, adding to and heightening others. Whereas the moving letters book (from the previous chapter) was designed with attention to specific logics perceived as being inherent to Forti’s work The Little peeling Cottage book translates the principles of site specific