VERSE, 2023
Perpetual actions of vain hope drive the durational live performance VERSE. A passage in an anthem, a ‘verse’ articulates one part of a greater whole. The poem 'Go to the limits of your longing' by German poet Rainer Maria Rilke, is arranged here in responsorial format; I con/verse/ with Rilke. I tra/verse/ space. I re/verse/ memory. The performative act of repetitious circumambulation (the act of walking around a sacred object) and spoken word enact the idea that textual recall, combined with action, can revise emotional associations to memory; reminding us, in Rilke’s words: no feeling is final.
During the 6 hour performance I circumambulated a series of 9 sharply angled, long triangular sculptures. Each had a large candle (approximately 50cm long) on the end. Each sculpture pointed to the centre. I circled, lighting the candles and then circled back around to extinguish them. In a meditative atmosphere, the following revised Rilke text was spoken. The Call (℣) was prerecorded and played into the space against an ambient synthesised sound landscape by sound artist Joseph James Francis. I responded in real time (℟) to the prerecorded calls.
℣ You, sent out beyond your recall.
℟ I go to the limits of my longing.
℣ Embody me.
℟ I flare up like a flame.
℣ Make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you
℟ Beauty and terror
℣ Just keep going
℟ No feeling is final
℣ Don't let yourself lose me
Nearby is the country they call life.
℟ I will know it by its seriousness
℣ Give me your hand
℟ I take the hand that is given
This work discusses how we obsessively behave in service to our vain hopes; how we do things even when we know our actions will not change the current situation nor the past. It invites a reckoning through conversing, traversing and reversing our negative associations to issues in order to revise our present and future encounters with them. The the ritualistic format combined with the ‘call and response’ structure are found in religious settings. My use of them echoes my early childhood aesthetic and personal experiences in the church and my vain hopes of reclaiming my Father’s favouritism after he had dedicated himself to Religion. Despite knowing I was not religious, I performed diligently as if I was.
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6 Hour durational Performance
Sculptural relics: Sizes varied, MDF, fixings, Resin, Wax.
VERSE was presented by Post Office Projects as part of their 2023 Performance Series at Adelaide contemporary Experimental (ACE), Adelaide August 1st 2023.
This work wouldn't be possible without collaborators Joseph James Francis who created a live ambient composition for the duration of 6 hours, accompanied by Sonya Mellor on Cello. Daniel Gibson and Kristy Johnson were integral to the making of the sculptural elements and sound of this work.
VERSE was developed within and was performed on Kaurna country. I acknowledge the elders, past present and emerging; as well as the waters, land and the history of art making that has occurred here for thousands of years. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.
Photographed by Thomas McCammon.
