Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Roehampton University : B - Drama Theatre and Performance
Ghost Letters
Ghost Letters took the form of a fluid installation of miniature landscapes/scenarios on free-standing butler trays, constantly made and unmade throughout the performance, tracing through this process the imaginary history of Leibniz performance collective (http://leibnizlab.co.uk/). An ‘embedded’ photographer produced print images during the performance for instant exhibition. The project was governed by a metaphorical linkage to the accumulation and dissemination of dust, which is indestructible and subject to continuous ‘displacement’ and reformation. In effect, the work staged the impossibility of isolating a performance’s original or definitive version by taking the material and non-material traces of previous Leibniz performances, interspersing them with the performers’ personal memories, and re-assembling them into a ‘living archive’ that is infinitely expandable and/or changeable.
As with my other submission Allotment, Ghost Letters forms part of my ongoing research concern with querying the privileged position of the spoken word in knowledge transmission and, in particular, in performance documentation. In order to displace the privileged position of the spoken word as generator and embodier of meaning, Ghost Letters constructed a repertory or vocabulary of performance fragments that could be combined to form ever-new and differing narratives; thus challenging dominant models of archiving as fixed, or venue-based or necessitating re-enactment. Rather, the traces of any given performance are treated as the necessary building blocks of subsequent projects, each performance functioning as a crucible for the production and testing of future material.
The project generated its own photographic documentation through the activities of the embedded photographer, in this way enabling the audience to compare the performance itself with the efforts of a conventional documentary practice. A selection of these images is included in the portfolio alongside other more conventional video and photographic documentation, a programmers’ information pack, and various contextual materials and performance ephemera (programmes, posters, press notices etc).
