The Gratitude of Monsters

Photos from Manchester

2008-05-12T15:09:00.003+01:00

The first showings

2008-05-11T11:12:00.001+01:00

So the first performances a Leeds and Machester have happened! So here is where I'll put some reflections when I have them, and feedback when I get it!

If you have any thoughts on the show please email them to us at info@strangenamescollective.co.uk

Phil

Work in Progress Photos

2008-04-27T15:17:00.003+01:00

Post 17: Awards Ceremonies

2008-04-16T15:18:00.004+01:00

What occurs at an awards ceremony is that you win twice.

The first sucess is a repetition or resurgence of the sucess you have already achieved through the act that resulted in your nomination. For example you win a race, perform an act of heroism, make a work of art. This act is deemed worthy and validated as a success by the ceremony.

The second sucess comes with the prize and your speech: The prize stands in for and replaces the validated status attributed by the ceremony. Then an acceptance speech is given, which in line with convention, redistributes that success to others involved and to those in the immediate community.

Thus an award winner wins twice, but the success is replaced by an object, and redistributed amongst those complicit in original the event.

Post 16: Week 3 of Rehearsals

2008-04-04T12:04:00.002+01:00

1: The team arrived.
2: Video footage was introduced into the final section.
3: A work in progress showing was presented to an invited audience.
4: Feedback on the performance leads to structural and visual simplification of Nominees.
5: A discussion occcurs over what Nominees is intended to do; this results in final script ammendments focusing the intent of the section and linking it more clearly into structure of triptych.
6: The team departs.

Post 15: Week 2 of Rehearsals

2008-04-04T12:02:00.002+01:00

1: The team arrived
2: Time was spent working on the physical space required to perform the nominees are.
3: Time was spent working on the structure of the nominees are.
4: Time was spent trying different performers in different roles within the piece.
5: Music was introduced and experiemented with.

6: Gestures in repeat after me, were repeated in the improvisation of Nominees, then isolated and turned into the dance sequence.

7: The data from the survey was updated and analysed.
8: The team departed.

Post 14: Week 1 of Rehearsals

2008-03-23T18:38:00.001Z

The sections on rehearsal are going to be built up gradually. What will first occur is a basic outline of what the pattern of the week was, with more specific information being inputted when time allows. Keep watching:

1: The team arrived.
2: The team discussed the project as a whole, material sent to them, and initial ideas.
3: The team familiarised themselves with the material of the first two parts of the triptych, and were given sections to work on.

4: We worked on developing text for the final section, the nominees are.

5: An attempt at running all the material was performed.
6: The team relfected and discussed what the successes and failures of the material were.
7: The team departed with some tasks allocated over the weekend for the following week.

Post 13: Temporal Ecology

2008-03-23T10:32:00.012Z

The performance has three separate temporal ecologies: These are some notes on each part, the quality of the specific ecology, and what features might usefully determine structuring principles.

Appreciation: Cloud (A series of pockets).

1: An Approach.

2: An Outline.

3: An Identification of Drift.

4: An Enveloping.

5: A sudden exit.

Repeat After Me: Path.

1: A linear movement.

2: Points of departure and arrival.

3: A capacity to return to itself.

4: A fixed course determined by Landmarks.

5: To open onto/into a landscape/plane.

Nominees: Landscape/Plane.

1: A Horizon.

2: Landmarks.

3: Contours and Textures.

4: A Velocity.

Alternatively consider these three columns:

Clouds Roots Landscapes

Particles Strings Branes

Organs Bones/Nerves/Veins Skin

Pockets Paths Planes

Concepts Narratives Fields of Knowledge

Post 12: Frankenstein

2008-03-21T13:04:00.004Z

We are about to have a public government endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion - Cardinal Keith O'Brien

Taken from BBC Online and I just heard someone on the radio saying 'We are not making monsters'

Cardinal O'Brien has written to Gordon Brown with his concerns. The leader of the Catholic church in Scotland has urged Gordon Brown to rethink "monstrous" plans to allow hybrid human-animal embryos. Cardinal Keith O'Brien will use his Easter Sunday sermon to launch a scathing attack on over the government's controversial proposals.
He will also call on the prime minister to allow Labour MPs a free vote on the issue at Westminster. Mr Brown has said the bill would improve research into many illnesses.

Supporters of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill believe hybrid embryos could lead to cures for diseases including multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. Speaking at Prime Minister's Questions on Wednesday, Mr Brown said: "This is an important Bill that improves the facilities for research and is vital for dealing with life-threatening diseases."

But in his sermon, which was released on Friday, Cardinal O'Brien claims that the Bill would lead to the endorsement of experiments of "Frankenstein proportion". He will say: "This Bill represents a monstrous attack on human rights, human dignity and human life. "In some European countries one could be jailed for doing what we intend to make legal.

"I can say that the government has no mandate for these changes: they were not in any election manifesto, nor do they enjoy widespread public support."

The Cardinal will describe the practice as "grotesque" and "hideous". He will add: "One might say that in our country we are about to have a public government endorsement of experiments of Frankenstein proportion - without many people really being aware of what is going on."

Cardinal O'Brien goes on to call for the establishment of a "single permanent national bioethics commission". He has written to Mr Brown to tell him that this would be the only way in which the issue can be "adequately discussed". A proposed amendment to the bill which would have prohibited the creation of inter-species embryos, known as human admixed embryos, was defeated by 268 votes to 96 in the House of Lords in January.

Labour peers were instructed to follow the party whip by voting against the proposed amendment. Conservative leader David Cameron has called on Mr Brown to allow Labour MPs to have a free vote on the bill when it returns to the House of Commons later in the year. Free votes allow MPs to vote according to their own beliefs rather than following the party whip. Mr Brown has said a decision on whether a free vote will be held would be taken "in due course".

Post 11: Yesterday and Today

2008-03-21T12:37:00.015Z

I have been thinking about the first week and reflecting on how I feel about working with material that sits on the knife edge. There are times when we become something other than ourselves and oscillate from a presence to a threat, onstage to offstage, self to alter ego e.g. Mr Bateman etc. I have been thinking about the beautiful phrase 'The promise of violence' which somebody said to me recently and how someone else said to me that a female writer for Mills and Boon always imagined the romantic hero might be possible of rape and that is how she made him so attractive to millions of readers. This promise of violence crops up a lot with Phil's stage directions and asides e.g. 'Later I'm going to cave your skull in' and I wonder where our complicity or rivalry or camaraderie comes from. If it is there in the first place. Who are our allies? Who are our enemies? If we are guardians of the encyclopedia or the agents of the sponsors then Quis custodiet ipsos custodes (Who guards the guards?). Not necessarily seeking character motivation here just a sense of why we are presenting our findings. In a theatre. To an audience. This is The Beatles album cover I mentioned. I remember more blood. I will bring a book with more images from the photo shoot. Look at them smiling. Look at them holding hands. Look at their teeth.

Post 10: Audience Participation/Contribution/Interaction

2008-03-09T14:59:00.002Z

This section will be used to record thoughts on the role of the audience in the project.

First thoughts: The Gratitude of Monsters is very concerned with the notion and process of complicity. This manifests itself in a number of different modes of audience participation and contribution.

However, work with audience participation can be extremely problematic, as the means by which an audience can engage with a piece of live performance are often ill defined, or the contract established determines that failure to participate hampers the performance and embarrasses the audience. So for the Gratitude of Monsters the terms are very clear: Answer this question/Repeat after me/Watch us. Moreover, there are no wrong answers or bad replies, and not participating neither causes problems for the performance or the audience. In fact refusals, mistakes and errors continue to further the piece.

Post 9: Deleuze/Bacon.

2008-03-09T14:58:00.009Z

This section will be used to record thoughts on the work of Francis Bacon and Giles Deleuze's work on Bacon which are of relevance to the project.

The project was partially inspired by Francis Bacon's painting 'Study for Three Figures at the Base of the Crucifixion'.

Images so unreleivedly awful that the mind shut with a snap at the sight of them. Their anatomy was half-human, half-animal, and they were confined in a low-ceilinged, windowless and oddly proportioned space. They could bite, probe, and suck, and they had very long eel-like necks, but their functioning in other respects was mysterious. Ears and mouths they had, but two at least of them were sightless. (John Russell)

The painting has been very important in a number of ways:

Providing a logic for the structure of the piece.

Ideas for body positioning and movement.

Set, lighting, and costume ideas.

It also referred me to some reading:

Deleuze, Gilles (2005) Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, London:Continuum.

Russell, John (1993) Francis Bacon, London:Thames and Hudson.

These two texts have been essential in developing the ideas of the figure, contour, rhythm and attendant.

Post 8: Flicker/Oscillate

2008-03-09T14:55:00.004Z

This section will be used to record thoughts on the issue of Flickering and Oscillation in the project.

First thoughts:

There are a number of flickers/oscillations:

1: Slide projector.

2: Repeating echo.

3: Between nominee and recipient.

4: Between agent and attendant.

5: Presence/absence of attendants.

6: Presence absence of the Sponsors.

These constitute one of the rhythms of the piece that moves across the triptych, just as the Monstrous/Parasitic does.

Te following is a really lovely quote, however I do not accept its premise, at least not for our world, but maybe the world of the piece:

Being is not a steady state but an occulting one: we are all of us a succession of stillnesses blurring into motion on the wheel of action, and it is those spaces of black between the the pictures that we find the heart of the mystery in which we are never allowed to rest. (Fremder by Russell Hoban 8-9)

Post 7: The Attendant.

2008-03-09T14:44:00.003Z

This Section of the Blog will be used to record thoughts on the subject of the Attendant.

First thoughts:

If the flicker/oscillation is our first, primary or holding rhythm then the attendant/agent is our second rhythm.

1: In Appreciation, the attendants are not to be noticed, only present at the need of the agent, and not needing to be summoned.

2: In Repeat After Me attendants are activated in the space and become autonomous in the space, while still at the beck and call of the Agents. Their focus also turns to include the audience.

3: In Nominees an Attendants play 'Host' and while serving, gain far more authority and stability than before, then differentiating features are indistinct.

Post 6: We are the Ticks, and they are the Squid.

2008-03-09T14:41:00.006Z

This Section of the Blog will be used to record notes on two key notions, the Parasitic and the Monstrous.

The third rhythm of the piece is the Monstrous and the Parasitic. In shorthand the idea of the monstrous in the piece is tied to the Sponsors initially. But this is an error, the Monstrous is merely attached to the sponsors by the Agents, the actual Monsters are the Agents.

The parasitic follows the monstrous closely, but speaks to the relationship of the agents with their surroundings. The piece establishes a set of parasitic encounters with the audience, the one way use of data in Appreciation (The contributors being the host to the agents parasites), the mutual (interchangeable host/parasite) feeding in Repeat After Me, and (This occurs to me only now) the audience as parasitical in Nominees, to the Agent's Hosts.

An ancient rule of the law of England states the following: “a [human] monster in any part evidently bearing the resemblance of the brute creation, has no heritable blood and cannot be heir to any land, because it is not capable of inheriting.” The law circa 1930 defines a human monster as a person without external “human shape of mankind”, regardless of internal conformation. (Matthew Goulish)

Post 5: Music

2007-11-23T15:57:00.000Z

Questions for the team:

What did you think of the music I sent you? Helpful? Any suggestions?

Notes:

The team were sent a mix CD of various Artist's music, including: Pacabel, Philip Glass, Radiohead and Thom Yorke.

Best,

Phil.

Post 4: Encyclopaedia

2007-11-23T15:46:00.000Z

A question for the team: How have you responded to the Encyclopaedia?

Notes:

The Encyclopaedia is a working document created to introduce the team to the ideas behind the project, and the history of its development. It explains: Some of the inclusions in the Atlas, the structure and content of the piece, its themes, what it might look like, some very loose strange ideas, and some concrete ones. It contains anecdotes, ideas, explanations, speculations, images and diagrams.

Its purpose is also to inspire to team to have ideas, to begin to take ownership of the project, find a language to describe and develop the piece, and to articulate and test some thoughts on paper. Like the Atlas the Encyclopedia is constantly being updated.

Best,

Phil.

Post 3: Atlas

2007-11-23T15:36:00.002Z

A question for the team: How have you responded to the Atlas?

Notes:

The Atlas is a list of sources that have, and continue to influence the creation of the show. It includes many different inputs; books, music, films, art, locations, events. As such, calling it a bibliography or a list of sources would not suffice. The list maps out the field of cultural influences, therefore, Atlas.

The Atlas, like any good map, is constantly being redrawn to include new items, a second draft is being composed at this very moment.

The Atlas, is also named after the 'Atlas Room' produced by Societas Raffaello Sanzio, to accompany the London performance of Tragedia Endogonidia.

I include here the first draft of the Atlas:

Gratitude of Monsters: Atlas.

All recommended, none essential, discussion and additions welcome.

Book list. (All books can be requested and posted to you.)

*JG Ballard: Crystal Forest, Supercannes, Drowned World, Crash, The Atrocity Exhibition.

Gilles Deleuze: Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation.

*John Gray: Straw Dogs.

Peter Handke: Offending the Audience.

John Russell: Francis Bacon.

Carl Sagan: The Dragons of Eden.

Record list. (Sample CD to follow.)

*Philip Glass: Facades.

Pacabel: Cannon in D.

*Radiohead: Kid A, Hail to the Thief, In Rainbows.

Thom York: Eraser.

Film list. (Screenings to follow in rehearsals.)

*David Cronenberg: Crash. The re-enactment of James Dean’s death.

Michael Lesy: Wisconsin Death Trip.

*Chris Marker: La Jette.

Bella Tarr: The Werckmeister Harmonies. Opening scene.

James Whale: Frankenstein: Introduction/warning.

Richard Kelly: Donnie Darko. The Rabbit.

Art list. (Please search internet for images .)

*Francis Bacon: Study for three figures at the base of the crucifixion (a triptych which is central to the piece, also see all other works by Bacon).

Jake and Dinos Chapman: Insult to Injury.

Francisco Goya: Saturn devouring his Children.

Event list. (Merging corporate/military/governmental consultants with celebrity)

Think tanks, conferences, award shows, product launches.

Location List.

Bunkers.

---

Phil.

Post 2: FIrst Steps

2007-11-21T11:03:00.001Z

Hi all,

So where did the project come from and where does it stand at the moment? The initial idea for the show cropped up in 1999 but then really came to the fore in 2003. Since then I've been thinking about it, and in 2005 I started to practically develop it.

The piece is a triptych of three pieces: Appreciation, Repeat After Me, The Nominees Are. The project had originally been conceived as a single piece, but soon split into the three parts, for reasons of structure, content, and development.

The parts were then tested out in work-in-progress form at various venues. Appreciation has been tested twice at Leeds Met Studio theatre on heir scratch nights. Repeat After Me was tested as a solo at the 'Performing Literatures' conference in Leeds and then as a duet at Emergency in Manchester. The Nominees Are was tested as a piece called There are a few people I'd like to mention at Perambulator in Bradford.

I then put out an open call for collaborators, which attracted a really strong response and I asked the following people to become involved in the project: Kevin Egan, Rachel Gomme, Suzy Harvey, Gillian Lees, and Michael Pinchbeck.

A number of documents had then been supplied to the team including:

Atlas (List of books, films, music, fine art, and other influences on the project.)
Encyclopaedia (Document explaining where the ideas for the project came from and how they developed.)
Script for Appreciation (Part 1)
Script for Repeat After Me (Part 2)
Draft funding application.
DVD of works in progresses of Appreciation and Repeat After Me.
CD of music.

So now the project is seeking funding and partners, and the creative team are looking at the material sent to them in their spare time.

Best,

Phil.

Post 1: The Gratitude of Monsters

2007-11-21T10:53:00.001Z

Welcome all,

The Gratitude of Monsters is the new project from the Strange Names Collective.

This blog has been set up to allow the creative team to talk through ideas connected to the project in advance of rehearsals, record our thoughts on the rehearsal process as it happens, and our reflections on the project as a whole when it is completed.

However, it is also a public blog, accessible for anyone who might be interested in the generation of a new contemporary performance piece.

As such, it is a bit of an experiment, in writing and publishing our thoughts in the generation of new work.

Hopefully the blog will be useful to us as a team, and interesting to those who read it.

Yours,

Phil.