This project developed as both a performance and durational object work, that Mike Brookes and I created and first publicly performed in 2008. The work combines ideas about entropy, phase transitions between the different physical states of a material, and sustainability; and reflects on aspects of social behaviour and considerations of human progress.
The work is built around the construction and decay of a model forest made entirely of ice – a model comprising of 200 individual ice trees, in the centre of which stands a model village of 40 individual ice houses and a single ice church. This object work covers an area 3.5m in diameter, and is placed directly onto the floor of an open public space.
As the audience enters, encounters the ice forest, and then settles, I begin to softly voice a text that draws directly on elements of Philip Ball’s book Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another (2004) and Buckminster Fuller’s essay Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1969).
As the work develops, it quickly becomes apparent that heat being generated by the presence and activity of the performers and spectators only hastens the decay of the ice, while attempts can be made to sustain the model using an improvised cooling system powered by bicycles – the use of which, while noticeably cooling the specific area of the model, also inevitably adds further heat to the surrounding space.
Additional cycles can be used to generate the power needed to animate other aspects of the work; including located lighting within the model itself, and a number of digital thermometers that reveal the shifting temperature differences between the ice work and wider environment.
A performance co-created with Mike Brookes and the scientific advice of Julio Gómez.
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Only details of some wider reality
The following video is a montage of images captured during our performance of Some things happen all at once in Centro Torrente Ballester, Ferrol, Galicia in 2009. The text you can hear…
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The ecological image
Our friend and researcher Carl Lavery has often been concerned about how theatre and performance might produce and enable new forms of ecological perception and thought; and has, amongst other…
This work has been performed in Festival Theaterformen and Centro Párraga, in 2009; and Centro de Arte Torrente Ballester, Mladi Levi international Festival, Zadar Snova Festival, Festival PNRM, Feria de Teatro de Castilla-La Mancha, Festival Escena Contemporánea and Festival Escena Abierta, in 2008.
With the support of Escena Contemporánea 08 (Madrid), Arts Council of Wales Creative Wales Award 07/08, PANORAMA 08 (Olot), Escena Abierta 08 (Burgos), Centro Coreográfico Galego, the first Biennale Transfrontaliera dell’arte contemporanea TRASFORMA (Senigallia) and Nuovo Programma di Prossimità Adriatica INTER-REG-CARD – Projetto V.A.PA.R.T.E.C. Photos by Ovidio Aldegunde.