The Presence Project

The Presence Project Collaboratory now incorporates more than a dozen extensive discussions with contributing artists now available through the Collaboratory, including:

Marianne Weems http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/831

Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1120

Fiona Templeton http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1101

Phillip Zarrilli http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1143

A full directory of these discussions of presence, performance and visual art is available at our Presence research grouping, available on the Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/493

Our most recent posted discussion is with Tim Etchells:

I don’t know if there is such a thing as simply ‘being there,’ just being present. Being present is always a kind of construction. Perhaps we could think of presence as something that happens when one attempts to do something, and whilst attempting to do that thing you become visible; visible in not quite succeeding in doing it, visible through the cracks or the gaps. (Tim Etchells, Presence Project Interview)

Our interview with Tim is now avaliable online through the Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/646

Recorded by Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye following Tim's Presence Project workshop, 'Presence and Absence Intertwined,' our discussion ranges over Forced Entertainment's live performance, digital and installation work, as well as the company's collaborations with the photographer Hugo Glendinning.

Throughout, Tim considers the constructions of performer presence that animate the company's work, as well as the work of other influential artists including The Wooster Group and Peter Handke.

courtesy Tim Etchells

Reflecting on the impact of new technologies on the construction and performance of presence, Tim notes:

One of the things we do as readers of signs and situations - and of all things - is that we respond to absences - and we fill absence. So, you know, the way the telephone makes us imagine the whole person, the way that in text chatting - instant messaging - in writing, you sort of spend time with other people but you are not in the same room as them. And because it’s purely in that sense, because it’s purely language, there is a huge role for you in mentally unpacking what’s written or, in the phone, unpacking what’s said, to create people.

As we look forward toward beginning year 3 of the project, we will be significantly extending the Collaboratory resource, incorporating video documentation, publishing a wide range of interviews and significantly developing our core investigations.

We welcome contributions and enquiries - details of contributing to the Presence Project Forum are at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1095

Posted by Nick Kaye at 3:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

On 8th March Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes will conduct the second of our Presence workshops in Drama's newly opened Alexander Building at Exeter.

Pearson/Brookes/Thomas:who are you looking at?

Since 1997, Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes have created a series of
productions that proposed new strategies within the form, function and
placement of performance in work employing a variety of media, from radio broadcast to
surveillance CCTV.

In this workshop, which includes audio and video material
from several of their recent multi-site works, they examine the implications
of these strategies for notions of presence and absence, for both performers
and spectators alike. They reflect upon their working practices, new forms
of dramaturgy, the shifting role of audience, reorientations in the
technique of the performer, and questions of documentation. Pearson and
Brookes will show previously little seen material including graphic
representations of their performance scenarios, footage from projects in
Germany and west Wales, and the experimental DVD-ROM of their performance
work Carrying Lyn. The presentation will be informal, with an opportunity
for discussion.

Pearson/Brookes/Thomas:who are you looking at?

Pearson and Brookes have worked together since 1997. In 2002 they began a
long-term though irregular relationship with Welsh playwright Ed Thomas.
Their regular performer/collaborators include John Rowley, now working with
Forced Entertainment, and Richard Morgan and Paul Jeff of Good Cop Bad Cop.


Pearson/Brookes: polis

Mike Pearson is Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of
Theatre, Film and Television Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He
was a director of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre (1973-80) and Brith Gof
(1981-97). His main interests are in devised performance and site specific
work. He is the author with Michael Shanks of Theatre/Archaeology (2001,
Routledge), and of ŒIn Comes I¹: Performance, Location and Landscape
(University of Exeter Press, forthcoming)

Pearson/Brookes: polis

Mike Brookes is an artist and designer, working primarily as a painter and
performance maker. His design work has engaged both graphic and time-based
media; and his collaborations with performance companies such as Brith Gof,
The Magdalena Project, Earthfall, and Quarantine, have resulted in a wide
spread reputation for his activities as a lighting and production designer.

Audience places at the workshop are free of charge and can be reserved by contacting Linda Dowsett at l.m.dowsett@exeter.ac.uk

Further information on work by Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes is available through the Performing Presence Collaboratory here http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/343 and in our earlier weblog entry at http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/presence/2005/11/pearsonbrookes_presence_worksh.html

Mike Brookes' website is at http://www.mikebrookes.com/

Images from who are you looking at? Pearson/Brookes/Thomas.
Images of polis Gerald Tyler.
Images courtesy Mike Brookes.

Future presence workshops at Exeter will be conducted by:

Vayu Naidu: 22 March
Phillip Zarrilli and Klaus Seewald: 10 May
Fiona Templeton: 24 May
Bella Merlin: 21 June

Posted by Nick Kaye at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes will be offering the second of our Presence Workshops in Exeter on 8 March.

In a series of performances since 1999, Pearson/Brookes have explored studio-based practice as a mediation of specific sites and events.

who are you looking at? – performed in Cardiff, Wales over three nights in February 2004, formed the second part of their collaboration with writer and director Ed Thomas.

The piece proposes strategies for re-imagining the city in a revelation of personal material and experience.

Mike Brookes describes the piece:

An installation and performance presentation built on core material produced in collaboration with five young female performers - each documenting 3mins within a particular public city centre location, on the same evening: producing footage, of each location, from three simultaneous and expanding points of view.

The event was performed by Brookes, Pearson and Thomas - working around a large central table, on which was arranged all the necessary equipment and material [...] to structure the progression and juxtaposition of this material live within the room of the developing installation.

In their work, documentation acts as an axis to explore the presence/absence of objects, images and experiences transposed into performance.

Mike Pearson trained as an archaeologist. Between 1972 and 1997 Mike was involved in a series of key performance companies based in Wales and working across Europe, including RAT Theatre, Cardiff Laboratory Theatre and, from 1981, Brith Gof.

A major documentation of Brith Gof’s performances is being developed at Stanford as part of Michael (Shanks)’ Metamedia Lab at http://metamedia.stanford.edu:3455/BrithGof/Home. Michael was a company director of Brith Gof from 1997 until the company closed in 2004.

Mike Brookes is an artist and designer whose performance work focuses upon 'the production of durational objects and interventions, holistic ambients, radical structures of presentation, and context specific performance works.'

An earlier Pearson/Brookes performance, polis, realised over three consecutive evenings in September 2001, comprised twenty-five performance fragments, realised in five phases of five simultaneous acts, across the centre of the city.

Small groups of spectators produced documentary traces of these events, along with personal material.

Simultaneously, within the developing structure of an installation, Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes effected a re-presentation of these traces, producing

An installation that combined multiple projection and video monitoring; with maps of routes and locations; texts; polaroid photographs; an evolving and complex sound ambient; and the accumulation of artifacts and traces resulting from the performers' processes and activities, and the spectators encounters with them.

Pearson/Brookes explore the material and immaterial traces of action and place in the performance of events just-passed and the re-presentation of one site through another.

Their work is concerned with the mechanisms in which the presence of actions and events are mapped and re-enacted.

Mike Brookes website and documentation of Pearson/Brookes work is at http://www.mikebrookes.com

Images from who are you looking at? Pearson/Brookes/Thomas.
Images of polis Gerald Tyler.
Images courtesy Mike Brookes.

Posted by Nick Kaye at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)