Sura Medura – Page 4 – wraptheworld

12 March 2014

Lindsay Sekulowicz

Lindsay Sekulowicz is an artist based between London and Scotland.

She completed her Ba (Hons) at the Glasgow School of Art in the department of Environmental Art and attained a postgraduate diploma at the Prince’s Drawing School in London.

In her practice, Sekulowicz focuses on historical collections and biological studies. The consideration for material and form is fundamental to all of the works. Primarily, she works through drawing, painting and sculptural installations, utilising often basic and instinctive techniques, with time, study and looking being important factors in the making process.

In the past, Sekulowicz has worked with entomologists from the Museum of Natural History of Florence, Museo ‘LA SPECOLA’, travelling with them on two expeditions to jungles in Malaysia and Ecuador.

In 2012 she completed a residency at the D’Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum at the University of Dundee, where her research was focused on neuroscientific studies of space and memory.

Most recently, she has been working with botanist from the University of Addis Ababa and Kew Gardens, compiling a series of drawings of Ethiopian medicinal plants.

11 March 2014

Jo Hodges & Robbie Coleman Residency Blog 2

As we have spent more time here we have had some really interesting conversations about life in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka’s history, which encompasses amongst other things colonialism and more recently a 30 year civil war, has resulted in a complex socio political environment with ongoing divisions between the Tamil and Sinhalese populations. People often define themselves by their religion – Buddhist, Hindu, Christian or Muslim and political life is also bound up with religion. Even while we have been here in Hikkadua, we have seen demonstrations by right wing Buddhist monks against Christian churches, which they say are illegal. The monks entered 2 churches, destroying parts of the church, burning bibles and issuing death threats to the pastor while the police stood by – a reminder that certain factions of society here may have more protection than others.

Columbo Biennale

It was by chance that the residency period coincided with the Colombo Biennale 2014. We were invited to propose a piece of work that responded to the theme of ‘Making History’, very interesting to us in the context of some of the issues that we had been thinking about. Also a great opportunity to connect with new audiences and with Sri Lankan artists as well as other artists from around the world.

We took a trip to Colombo to look at spaces, as we were interested in responding to site as well as to theme. The journey was not as straightforward as it might in the UK. Getting up at dawn to spend 3 hours standing in a crowded train, arriving in Colombo for the first time and being hit by even more heat, dust, streets rammed full of hooting tuk tuks , cars, buses, trucks was a bit intense.

During a very long hot, dusty and sticky day we managed to see all the 5 spaces that were to be used during the Biennale. We met some of the other artists and curators and talked about the possible controversial side of some of the work being presented. We wondered if any of the work would be censored, as the current Sri Lankan government is very controlling of the press and other public voices. We were told that the work was going ahead although there was the possibility of a reaction afterwards. It was interesting to talk to the other artists about politics in Sri Lanka and their response to the war and it’s aftermath. They all seemed very open and keen to talk.

We really liked the veranda of the administration building of the University which is an old colonial building next to the main JDA gallery space. With this in mind we devised a one off installation / performance piece called ‘After Image’.

The process of getting permission to use the outside space was complicated as although it was in the same compound and next door to the JDA gallery, we had to get permission separately to use the space. Luckily Thenu Chandraguptha, head of the Visual Art Department and one of the Biennale curators, stepped in and negotiated with the Dean for us to use the veranda for our work.

We felt it would be interesting to explore how events are experienced and recorded. Each witness to an event will have a different reaction or perspective, but it is through witness accounts that a picture of an event can be built up. We developed the idea of asking people to be witnesses to a one off event and then to use their statements to form an installation in the gallery as the only record of the event. We were also interested in using the administration block in a site specific context, as a way of exploring the bureaucracy involved in collecting records and how the recording of history may be influenced by the keeping or discarding of witness accounts.

On the night the audience members were chosen at random by a bureaucrat (Jo) wearing a specially commissioned office sari, which was made of men’s suit material and had a shirt and tie.

Jo took a series of audience members from the gallery to the admin block where they were taken to a man sitting behind a desk , given a magnifying glass and led by the man through a series of battered, old photographs (found photographs as well as personal photographs – would narratives be found within the details of the sequence of seemingly random images?) They then were asked to recall and interpret their experience on a witness statement form punctuated by an audio track of typists.

The second part of the work, was a wall piece in the main exhibition called ‘Witness – Remember – Forget’. Here the witness statements were displayed allowing people to imagine the event, and due to the differences in interpretation, maybe an entirely different one than actually took place. All the witness statements will end up as bags used by street sellers to hold peanuts, spicy chick peas or wadi (fried lentil snacks) in the same way as other office records end on the street here.

We had some really positive feedback to the work and felt that there was enough in the piece to explore some of the techniques in more detail at a later date.

Back in the village in the jungle, it is a different world from that of Colombo. Seeing daily life of the village from close quarters is fascinating. People here are very engaged with their immediate environment. The daily sweeping of paths and surrounds and the burning of leaves and other detritus keeps the ever encroaching jungle at bay. People gather the abundant fruit and coconuts and sell them in local shops and at the market. Many people have several jobs, cooking in the tourist hotels, cleaning, working in cottage industries, running small scale workshops in makeshift buildings, running small shops selling a handful of goods. There is the daily letting off of firecrackers to scare off the monkeys who take the fruit, tending of vegetable plots, the daily routine of the children going to and fro from school, collecting the flowers for the temple, visiting family on holidays.

In the Sinhalese majority south, particularly in the rural areas where we are staying, there are complicated social rules based class and caste. Life here is very traditional; for example a man and a woman are not allowed to be alone in a room if they are not married. The complex social etiquette gives a feeling of density to life here, our time here being too short to really get an understanding that goes beneath the surface. All these factors have made us question what work we might make in response – we feel we want to make work that is relevant and not separate to life here, but contemporary art is not part of anyone’s experience.

With this in mind, our approach has been to make a series of experimental works that respond to different aspects of life as we have experienced it here.

Street Bags

We have continued developing work for our street bags project. We are creating designs for the bags that street food is sold in here which are made from waste paper, kids homework, exam papers and office records. Our investigations into who makes the bags here have led us on many wild but fun goose chases down dusty alleys with no results. Despite people telling us there was a place where all the bags were made, we never found it (it’s always somewhere ‘down there’) In the end it seems that some bags are made by the families of the street sellers and some are made as cottage industries and are sold in bundles to shops.

We have begun making our own bags and will soon be giving them out to shops and sellers.

Paper Shoes

Everybody wears flip flops (called slippers) here and leaves them at the door when they enter a house. Often there are many slippers outside a house if people are visiting.

We have been making flip flops out of sheets of handmade paper which have different plant materials from the area embedded in them such as grasses, banana leaves and rice. The paper is beautiful and is made at a small workshop nearby.

The paper sandals are very delicate and seem to have distinct personalities and we are coming to see them as representing distinct people.

We are experimenting with the shoes in different formations. We have made about twenty five pairs in all sizes. When the shoes are in a circle facing in, it feels like the invisible wearers are facing each other and there is a sense of community (and exclusion to outsiders) and when they are facing outwards there is a sense of protection or defensiveness.

We are looking at installing them (temporarily) in different formations at natural gathering places along the local tracks in the jungle as ephemeral installations marking public space.

Dogs

There are many dogs along the Welwelgoda Road where we live and we have come to know them all, as they have to be navigated as we walk to and from our house. Some are aggressive and can bite and how to deal with them has become a much-discussed subject amongst the Sura Medura artists.

Cataloging and presenting categories of ‘things’ is very much part of the education system here with hundreds of posters available in shops.

As a response we have produced our own educational poster entitled ‘Dogs of the Wewelgoda Road’ which we will give out to the children in the village. It will be interesting to see their reaction. We have also produced a map detailing all the hazardous dogs as an information document for the area. As always here in Sri Lanka, nothing is straightforward. We wanted to translate the poster but we couldn’t get a Sinhala font to work on our laptop. Getting an A3 print out has taken days, finding a print shop involving dusty bus rides, hot and sticky waits in small offices down back alleys and each print we now have, has lines running down it. Today we finally managed to find a printers with a working A3 printer and as the poster of the dogs emerged, it caused huge amusement with all 8 staff crowding round and laughing!

DJ in a Tuk Tuk

Dominda is the 18 year old son of one of our neighbours. His brother died in a tuk tuk accident last year and his family have been paying for the gradual repair of the tuk tuk ever since. It is still on HP and a considerable drain on resources but they want to keep it. Dominda drives at speed round the jungle roads but as yet has no licence to carry passengers. He has a massive sound system in the tuk tuk which keeps the neighbors awake, much to his mothers embarrassment. (sound familiar?)

We have recorded the sounds of our neighbourhood – the daily sweeping, bird calls, monkeys and his tuk tuk horn and engine, which we have sent back to Glasgow to musician and music producer, Anders Rigg. He has produced a fantastic reggae track incorporating these sounds, which we have given to Dominda to play in his tuk tuk. We are just waiting for the right day to film the results.

House Work

We are now working with our fellow artist and housemate, Hannah Braxton to create a public showing before we leave. Our house has been the centre of a fair bit of interest to our neighbours because of its position (and our activities) so we are going create an event in our garden one night this week.

Line-Frequency-Drift

We had an enjoyable early morning on the beach working with dance artist and writer, Tom Pritchard. Robbie made improvised marks and lines of travel in the sand, which were then overlaid by Tom improvising movements to them. Jo filmed the process.

There was an interesting discussion afterwards. Something to be explored further, maybe on a different type of beach, somewhere that has a more dynamic and unignorable contest between the land and the sea.

Other things

We are really enjoying the interactions with the other artists on the residency. There’s been quite a few of us here, all with wildly different practices and a generous, open, creative feeling has developed. It’s been so useful to share ideas and the everyday adventures and surreal moments that we have all have had working with the ever-stretching nature of time here, the heat and negotiating the sourcing and buying of materials.

We have been overwhelmed by the kindness and generosity of the people here, people have invited us into their homes for tea and cakes and for traditionally cooked meals – although guests eat separately and it is a bit disconcerting to sit at a table while everyone watches you eat!

We are also regularly brought gifts of fruit and often a huge breakfast will arrive by scooter from Manni, a friend from up the road who runs a small mushroom farm from his house.

It has been a real privilege to live and work here for a short while and we are looking forward to completing these pieces of work as we move into the final phase of the residency.

31 January 2014

Tom Pritchard Residency Blog

Two and a half days here and 3 and a half since leaving Glasgow I am settling to the task at hand. This residency poses a number of possibilities that are somewhat outside of ‘normal’ residency practice:

The place: a hot, sunny, beach side tourist mecca so while the tourist element does little for me, the idea of working facing an ocean in shorts evidently does.

The climate: a hot, sunny 12 hour sunshine kind of day where working between 11am and 4pm is of the static under a fan kind.

The Biennale: In the middle of my time here will be the Colombo Art Biennale, a great opportunity but gives a sense of target to many working here.

The material: I have come here, primarily, to write. So, joyously, I am. But this element of my practice is still new enough that it is and will take some negotiation as I dedicate these weeks to it.

My proposal to come here was so: I am interested in exploring how working with the Sinhala language might introduce elements of abstraction and sound-emphasis to my writing. This may come out in song, physical exploration but most of all I hope it will be largely in writing, as I think this will pose the strongest challenge to me creatively. Today I bought and English-Sinhala-Tamil dictionary and listened into numerous conversations on the bus and as friendly chaps chatting to me as I walked fielded phone calls in their native tongue.

However, arriving here, I also want to write through listening to the space, understanding how I can write with the ‘heat’ of performance throughout the day, carry the fire. Find a practice. Aim at poetry. Land wherever the experience takes us. I have begun this by devouring Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down The Bones as a way to ground myself into the idea of practice. If you haven’t read it, you really probably should as it’s very good!

And so I have been beginning to fill notebooks (I find it hard to settle to one at a time) and writing in different places. I am recording a lot of the sound in the environments where I’m writing, maybe there will be something emerge out of that in time as source material for the work…who knows, it’s all very open for me right now.

And for the Biennale I will be performing a couple of improvised solos at the opening nights as part of the ongoing As Yet Untitled series which began in 2011. this one, Making History will be part response to the space as I find it (full of art works so hardly bare of inspiration!) and part exploration of ideas of death as a part of positive history, the necessity for it and the rituals we place around it. There might be some local performers joining me too, which would be nice. Anyway, I am tracking my time through sunsets so here are the three thus far and a little scribble from yesterday…

A lone dog stalks the beach,
Sniffing, wearily, near sizzling bodies,
Burned brown by the tropical sun and
He thinks Stupid Bastards.

He thinks I am hungry,
I am ragged, I am hurt,
I know this because he limps and
As he does his head jolts.

The action misses the
Sharp intake of breath it deserves,
But maybe he’s braver than us or
Just accustomed to the pain.

His tail hangs of itself,
no great flag to his self-esteem,
It is behind him like his past and
Appears gladly forgotten.

Stalking the beach I wonder
What is he looking for?
Scraps discarded, a chunk of passed
Life presented by the future willing sea?

Or perhaps he’s on holiday too,
Enjoying the peaceful repetition
Of the water spilling but never quite
Reaching us until we’re ready.

There are many nearby on the road,
But here he is unique among all of us,
He stands out. He limps and
Disappears before the sun sets

30 January 2014

Tom Pritchard

Tom is an international performer of dance and theatre work, a facilitator of multidisciplinary improvisation and a published writer. He specialises in working with text in physical performance and collaborating across art forms, informed by his wide spread improvisation research On The Stage Of The Present. In this research, he approaches various multidisciplinary strands of process and performance inquiry through his improvisation practice.

He has performed with companies such as CoisCeìm Dance Theatre, Company of Wolves and Scottish Dance Theatre, touring internationally, including visits to China and New York as well as around Europe. He has also performed numerous times as an improviser with renowned artists such as Katy Duck, Kirstie Simpson and Adam Benjamin.

As an experienced dance maker Tom’s credits include Scottish Dance Theatre, IndepenDANCE Scottish School of Contemporary Dance graduation work, Royal Conservatoire of Scotland MA programme and Newcastle College. Tom has a wide experience of working in Disability arts and has collaborated with artists including Caroline Bowditch, Clare Cunningham and Janice Parker.

Tom also has a strong focus on education and holds its value as equal to that of performance. He runs regular workshops around the UK into his practice and has taught for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, University of Plymouth and the 4 Scottish dance agencies. In February 2013 he established @TheGlasgowJam, a regular multidisciplinary jam and workshop programme to encourage wider participation in improvisation as a part of leading healthy, creative lives!

For more information please visit www.onthestageofthepresent.com

28 January 2014

Sita Pieraccini: Beyond – Last Days at Sura Medura

Commercial camouflage, industry, hand made fakes, recycling and a culture of offering – processes of change, money making and everyday life. The last few days of the residency were spent realising two main projects – a photography/video documentary of costume pieces staged in everyday spaces and the creation of hilly structures in wood and paper.

Industrious Bodies

I’ve been using photography and film to document people at work. The abundance of materials and colours, both man made and natural, have been a constant inspiration to me visually. I’ve found myself wanting to work with a combination of found objects, man-made materials and organic material like wood and banana leaf.

I’ve been looking particularly at the different physicality’s of the people I’ve seen in both urban and rural environments. I’ve been interested to see how the person doing the craft or labour almost completely physically embodies what they are doing through the sheer repetition of the action.

This led to the creation of a series of staged images entitled ‘Keep Moving’ which incorporates costume. The images look at visual expressions of flights of the imagination and perhaps an insight into the more poetic world of day dream, imagination and play. Focus was given to the idea of the outdoors seeping into the everyday and the notion that if you stop moving, nature or society will catch up and consume you.

As documentary style snap shots or portrait shots, the photographs are an attempt to create and ‘capture’ a heightened expression of the physical experience of being in that place. I’m interested in people and their relationship to their surroundings, the materials and structures around them, as well as their individual personalities and how I can use a staged image to present both worlds as one. In another way, they are almost like alternative holiday snaps of the familiar places and faces I’d encountered during my time in Hikkaduwa.

Inspiration for one of the costume pieces – a large plastic rucksack – came from the industry of replicas and fakes I saw everywhere in both Hikkaduwa and Colombo. Garment making is the biggest industry in Sri Lanka but it was the much practiced process of copying designs of popular items to create fake or imitation pieces which I found most interesting. I bought a fake branded rucksack in Colombo and I was charmed by how ‘almost’ perfect it was – it was nearly the same thing, but not quite. It was familiar but as if it was something else in disguise. It became a popular piece for the youngest of those featured in the series who likened it to a large, colourful school bag.

Everyday routines, the environment, transformations, materials and the staged image, continually feed into my practice and play with performance. The opportunity to develop a new project using new mediums like costume and photography with people from the local area has aided a clear development in my work with narrative.

I’m interested in creating an open space for the poetic and absurd to coexist. For the photography/costume project I tried to maintain a minimalist approach to the materials I worked with, following my instincts and my own curiosity into the world surrounding me. I then worked with the people featured in the images to create compositions that were a mixture of their everyday routine as well as something more fantastical based on the theme of ‘Keep Moving’. In this way, each image was a communication, a play with the person featured in the work. The live staging of the shots with people wearing unusual attachments to the body was a fun and interesting process. Their staged presence within the image presented the live experience alongside the more cerebral or imagined body experience of what it is like to physically be in that space and what the environment means to that person in their everyday life and routine. All of them invested in the play of the work in their own way and I enjoyed seeing and hearing what they thought of it all. The first response to the images and the costume attachments was often ‘lasani’ which means ‘beautiful’. I liked that the strange costume pieces, which were often uncomfortable or restrictive to wear, were embraced by those who wore them in the pictures and that they felt they could take some ownership over them or relate to them in their own way.

From industrious bodies to industry itself.

I visited a tea factory just outside Galle which still uses old victorian machinery to process their famous ‘white tip’ or ‘silver tip’ tea. The visit left a big impression on me. The machines were old, with mechanisms showing and they were full of character. The female operators who fed the machines tea leaves and shifted processed tea to different parts of the factory were also interesting.

I was intrigued by the implication of physicality and the body in a duet of forms I saw being created by the factory. The tea mounds seem to sit back silently, born out of the continuous spewing out of rich, black product from the large, victorian machines. I instantly liked them and their character and began to create manifestations of their form and shape, translating their weight and texture in different medium.

They sit in a never-ending down pour

– an automised environmental catastrophe.

The weight of waste.

The guilt of too much.

The constant feeding,

blinding all the senses.

The machines produce,

and the people consume,

and we construct our lives

as dictated by those who

want more

and those who

can produce more.

All the while the thinning hands of the feeder of machines grow stiff like bark.

The work is still ongoing and I am currently collating all my visual and audio material to aid in the creation of a performance piece which will be presented at the end of February in Glasgow. More details to follow soon….

…On further reflection, I see that throughout my work I’ve been looking at ways to bring the body and person closer to an experience of something. Immersive in someway but I aim to capture the imagination, pausing it at the point where both worlds are in shot. Being escapist is freeing. Operating only in the imagination is dangerous and can sometimes aid in a masking of the world and self delusion. But when things are not fair and we don’t understand, where can we go to find something that is stronger, wiser and more comforting than anything else? I think it is in our connection to each other and to the earth. I realise that everyone I met on my residency already have a close connection with the environment and with their daily work and practice. There is a culture of offering which seems to influence a balance for many people – a balance between themselves and the world of abundance which surrounds them perhaps. People are very hard working and determined in lots of ways and sometimes being imaginative, creative and playful gets set aside as not as constructive. However, when creatively engaged, as were those in the photographs, there was a clear mindfulness and focus which I admired. It’s an honesty, which, as a artist I both crave and fear. All in all, I want to say Thank You to those who played with me, to those who showed me their beautiful country and to those who helped me on the residency. My imagination has been well and truly captured.

24 January 2014

Jo Hodges & Robbie Coleman: Residency Blog

New Years Day

We flew out of a monochrome ,rainy, cold, windswept South West Scotland into a full colour high definition Sri Lanka and were immediately knocked sideways by the humidity and temperature. It took a few days to recalibrate our bodies and our thought processes are still being worked on.

Our house is a bit further into the jungle than Sura Medura, the main residency house, and this location has become more and more valuable to us. As we have got to know the area a bit better we are realizing how great the divide is between our side of the train track and the beach side. The beach and the road that runs alongside it is a continuous strip of hotels, shops and bars that are servicing the surfing/tourist community. It provides a huge amount of employment for the village, which spreads into the jungle on the other side of the tracks.

This uneasy, though vital alliance provides us with much food for thought, especially as we are provided with food at one of the beach side hotels and so regularly dip into it. More and more we are drawn back into where we live and our lovely neighbours. Waking up at this house is a fabulous experience, the dawn chorus is a totally exotic mixture of monkey arguments and bizzare bird calls.

The heat and humidity have been a real challenge with the slightest exertion leading to being covered from head to toe in sweat. This affects our brains too and we feel that we are constantly thinking underwater, trying to get some clarity, if only the surface could be reached. The occasional time that we end up in an air conditioned place has immediate effect, we get lively, start chatting at high speed and feel an instant relief. The heat and the pace of life here have a knock on effect when trying to get anything done – everyone wants to help and will give you an answer, that often turns out to be some semi version of reality. By the time we have got on a crowded bus to the town down the road, negotiated the barrage of traffic, tuk tuks, trucks, buses and mopeds all belching out fumes, and have gone in and out of endless dusty shops, trying to locate a few materials, a whole day has passed. Making work here it seems, will require constant adaptation both in the form of the work and in the timescale it will take to make it.

A further impact of the climate is impact it has on our sleep. We are mapping these sweaty and disturbed sleeping patterns in a series of photos of our morning sheets.

We have become fascinated with the bags that the street food vendors use. These are home made, usually out of children’s homework or office paper waste, so you can be standing on the corner having a snack and reading some childs attempts at maths, though our favourite has been a list of spare parts for a Sri Lankan military jet.

This is leading us into developing a series of our own designs which we will copy and make into bags to give to vendors to use and become part of a new ephemeral communication system.

Other work we are developing includes a video piece, based on a local woman who runs an informal and unofficial Tsunami Museum in her own house. The house is on the coast and was mostly destroyed by the wave. She has moved back into part of it but uses the rest as the museum. It consists of hundreds of unframed and informal photographs, drawings, press clippings and personal testimony as well as her own philosophical musings. All pinned up on walls without any sense of design or order.

Kamani is there every day to talk to the visitors, telling her story and listening to theirs. Because she lives there too, she cannot leave and feels a powerful obligation to stay there as long as there is someone to listen. This open ended commitment to what she is doing is both moving and troubling, will she stay for ever, reliving and reinterpreting a catastrophe? Or will she somehow escape it and be free and let her house be a home again. She is very articulate about this side of her project, but has no easy answers. This strange sense of entrapment will be the focus of the work.

The vitality and optimism of the people here are a source of constant wonder and inspiration. It seem to us that in most parts of the UK we seem to have lost that sense of adaptability, resilience and ingenuity that runs through society here.

We stand, flat footed in wonder.

22 January 2014

Jo Hodges & Robbie Coleman

Our current practice focuses on explorations of the human relationship to environment and examinations of the complexities of place within an ecological and philosophical framework of global challenges and their local consequences.

Jointly, our work is multi-disciplinary and of a temporary nature combining forms such as performance, projected imagery, temporary installation and sound. We often create work by reimagining and reinventing existing processes.

Our practice is context and not media specific, being led by a research-based response to the physical, human and cultural environs. We are interested in developing new strategies for creating work in the public space and in exploring new ways of engaging audiences.

Robbie is a visual artist and designer. He has created and collaborated on local, national and international arts projects in a variety of media including live art, sculpture, installation and film.

Jo has a background in Human Ecology community development and social justice,

She has a diverse multi disciplinary practice, creating both permanent and temporary public works, site-specific interventions, time based pieces, exhibitions and performance. She has worked with The Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, The National Museum of Scotland and The National Portrait Gallery in London.

18 December 2013

Sita Pieraccini: Residency Blog

Last week of the residency at Sura Medura…

My coloured notepad is almost full. The studio looks like a children’s arts and crafts workshop. I’ve been making. Dilani’s children have been helping too.

Our final presentation is this week on Friday. I want to update my blog prior to this to keep a more formal record of beginning, middle and…beyond.

I’ve visited a lot of different places over the past few weeks. I’ve walked and talked, surfed and safaried, ridden on trains, tuk-tuks, jeeps and bikes – dripping sweat surprising new parts of the body. The heat and humidity can be oppressive but it’s not kept me down. I’ve been all about the intensive touristing.

Our expedition to Tissa for the Yala and Bundala Safaris was an incredible experience. It was trying physically, my body being bounced, projected and rattled by local transport as well as by the safari Jeeps over the course of our three day visit. However, to sit in and witness some wonderful small moments of wildlife was mesmerising. Yala is a vast park. You don’t see much apart from land and trees and maybe the odd bird at first glance, but with the tracker spotting a large variety of species throughout the day, your awareness becomes heightened and you start to notice more and more. The scene that unfolded in one murky puddle between a pair of terrapins, a stork and a frog was like an epic tale of life, death, love and survival – all encapsulated in the form of a well played game of hide and seek.

The past week I’ve stayed at Sura Medura, gathering materials to work and experiment with. It’s nice to be ‘home’, my being nurtured by Dilani’s wonderful food and her playful children with whom I’ve had the pleasure to create with. I’m working on a structure made from wood and paper which takes it’s inspiration from the tea factory experience and the heaps and mounds of tea I saw being created there by the old Victorian machines.

The mounds of tea at the factory made an impression on me. The continuous outpour of this textured, valuable product was a feast for the senses – rich, raw and somehow feminine. The smell, tactility and mass implied a simultaneous density and lightness, while worlds of process, environment and consumption were somehow manifest in these humble sitting heaps. In a similar way in which the man from Close Encounters can’t get the image of the mountain out of his head, the shape, form and texture of these mounds kept coming back to me and I’ve found myself creating my own models of the structures.

As I create more and research into potential materials for the piece I find some interesting crossovers highlighted by the locals I’ve shared my idea with. For example, it is a tradition in Sri Lanka for a new house to be blessed by a ceremony which is conducted inside a paper house, constructed by a local craftsmen. The decorative paper house sits inside the new house and is where the monk carries out the ceremony. I visited a paper factory near Hikkaduwa and discovered hand-made paper made from tea dust. Apart from being inspired by the stacks of hand-made paper created from recycled materials, including elephant dung! I felt immensely inspired to be in a working factory where the recycling and reusing of waste materials was being so passionately and industriously manufactured. The owner was very nice in showing me around and explaining where he gets his waste materials from and how he makes the paper. I find the recycling of materials and the initiative and energy of the people who do so very exciting and infectious. I’d love to see Sri Lanka becoming pioneers for sustainable living. It’s already incredibly inspirational on that front the way it is I think.

In between my work on ‘John & Yoko’ (my nickname for my tea mound structures because they resemble the image of the long haired couple from their bed in days), I’ve also a photography project on the go featuring pieces of costume I’ve created in response to the environment and stories both imagined and real. I’ve been inspired by the ever fading folk culture and traditions of folk songs and poetry amidst people from varying labours. Song is an important part of life and culture here it seems – many love to sing, and so do I. Kavi songs or song poetry can be heard online but there are not many english translations although I’m aware they are often about the land and work and the feelings of the worker etc. I find it interesting mainly for the area of voice and environment and how song is very much a way of connecting to the environment especially when also incorporating working with the land whether it be in the paddy fields or in mining for gems. I’ve yet to include song in to my work, but at the moment, I’ve been using imagery and costume to create a fantastical expression of an experience in a particular environment. I hope to take this out into the local community and stage such images featuring some local residents of Hikkaduwa.

I’ve also had a play with the sounds Mark has captured over the past few weeks. Real recorded sounds are great to work with. I also have memories of most of the sounds Mark recorded as I was often with him so it has been nice to listen back to these and recall experiences in my development of new performance work and narratives. Our first improvisation was two days ago and we created a sound score together then I used my own memories and associations with the sounds to generate movement sequences. It’s all happening.

27 November 2013

Mark Vernon Audio Diary – November

Sound artist Mark Vernon has been busy adding new sounds from Sri Lanka to his Audio Diary of his residency at Sura Medura. Among the sounds Mark has gathered are the sounds of the Southlands College Marching Band rehearsing, the sounds of a Kandy dance lesson and Mark’s fellow Artists in Residence, Sita Pieraccini, harmonising with a boat engine!

You can enjoy each individual recording below, or you can listen to the whole audio diary on Mark’s Soundcloud page. The sounds Mark collects will be used as the basis for an sound work that captures Mark’s experiences in and impressions of Sri Lanka.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120719856″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
The guide describes some of the 18 sicknesses represented by the museum’s collection of medicine masks. Ambalangoda Mask Museum.
Pictured: temporary madness

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120720378″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
In the workshop of the Ambalangoda Mask Museum the craftsmen use hammers and chisels to carve traditional masks from balsa wood.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120727390″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
Whizzing past in a tuktuk this children’s theatre production in a packed community centre caught my ear. The proceedings, with both Sinhala and English announcements were broadcast into the street over an outdoor P.A. system. Child actors dressed in a variety of animal costumes enacted dance moves that were characteristic of each creature. We were invited in to see the production but I preferred the sound coming over the P.A.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120728516″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
Komani, a survivor of the devastating 2004 Tsunami that hit the Sri Lankan coast describes the sound of the impact.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120729383″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
An unidentified creature, a frog or possibly a bird, stands out from the nightly chorus of frogs. Distant club music from the regular Friday ‘Vibration’ night drifts through the night air. Wewalgoda Road, Hikkaduwa.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120732452″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
A man laboriously turns the handle of a wooden buffing machine to polish moonstones. Galle Fort.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120731741″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
The girls of Southlands College in Fort Galle repeatedly rehearse the same song marching back and forth through the open courtyard of the school. There are regular breaks to sort out tuning and timing issues.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120733564″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
Sitting at her stool Seerani uses traditional techniques to hand make lace. The wooden bobbins clatter together as she weaves the threads at lightning speed. Galle Fort.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120734274″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
In one of the daily monsoons torrential rain bounces off the pavements, overflows gutters and pours down the streets. Fort Galle, Sri Lanka.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120735674″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
After the rain has stopped drips from the guttering patter on a corrugated tin roof. The regular splashes form a puddle beneath. The percussive rhythm of the drips has a musical quality.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/120736649″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
The thrumming engine of an idling train is interspersed with crackling electricity. Recorded on the platform of Galle rail station.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/122082457″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
Fruit and vegetable sellers shout out their prices to passing customers at the weekly market in Hikkaduwa. As you approach the noise sounds almost like a football crowd.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/122083144″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
At Eagle house local children are given lessons in the art of Kandy dancing. The teacher counts and beats out the rhythm on the drum. In this clip the children sing and use finger cymbols to accompany the main rhythm.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/122083674″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]
On a cruise of the Koggala Lagoon Sita accompanies the sound of the boat engine as we arrive at the Cinammon island.

13 November 2013

Sita Pierracini: Residency Blog

I arrived in Sri Lanka on the 28th of October, the heat and humidity, a warm welcome.

Sura Medura is the name of a very old house, at which I’m based, set in the ‘jungle side’ of Hikkaduwa – a smiling, sun, surf and sand tourist spot on the south west coast. To get to the beach I take a short five minute walk up the road, over the rail track – a wave, smile and ‘hello’ to the nice man at the crossing – a quick dodge through the Galle road traffic and oh, there’s the sea. The waves have calmed down quite a bit since I first arrived. They were tall and intimidating but have now settled and are more gentle and inviting. The weather so far has been consistently warm and bright every day then dramatically thunderous as darkness falls being as it is, still the monsoon season. Nearly every evening, thick, warm rain is released from a flashing sky of neon purple and blue, drenching the streets and flooding the dens and sleeping spots of the many street dogs.

I’m surrounded by nature at Sura Medura – some of the smaller beings sharing my bed on occasion, navigating there way through the cotton folds and crevasses of bed linen. Ants. Wee ones and big ones! Orange, black, transparent – always in teams, always in formation. I’ve a new family of them living in my computer, appearing alarmed from under the keys as I type! Thankfully it is only the very small, harmless ones which occasionally invade.

The first week has consisted of settling in, over coming jet lag and for me personally, to calm my mind and breathe deep. The other artist in residence is Mark Vernon who works with sound and audio recordings. He’s been documenting very often, inspired by the new and wonderful soundscape of this extraordinary environment. It’s been a pleasure to get to know him better and it’s very exciting to be here with him – the potential for collaboration is tantalising indeed. Neil and Maria, the two artists who are running and organising the residency, have been wonderful hosts so far and have been very supportive and informative in their helping us get into the swing of things. I’ll be sad to see them go next weekend. It’s been a reflective, healing and beautiful two weeks so far, filled with new experiences and glimpses into the way of life here.

So, the work. The work is to live in the moment as much as possible. I’ve the opportunity here to see what I do and what I’m inspired by from a new perspective. I also want to absorb as much of the culture and way of life. The first week was a heady but overwhelming journey through old thought processes and habits. I have stopped and listened more since being here. You have to and not just because of the heat. I am here to develop my work as an artist – to create, move, repeat, present and perform. I’m here to reflect on what I’ve done up to this point and to build on what I know as well as to learn anew. It’s very exciting.

Mark and I gave a presentation of our work to some students at the art school in Colombo on Tuesday last week with lecturer, Thenuwara Chandraguptra acting as interpreter. Thenu is a well renowned artist from Sri Lanka and lecturer at the Colombo School of Visual and Performing Arts. He has visited Glasgow before and has given talks and workshops at GSA.

Before I talked about my sculpture work from my time at Edinburgh College of Art, I spoke of my passion for theatre and acting from an early age and how this gave me an identity and a way of being in the world. I’ve been brought up surrounded by colour, curiosity and love and I’ve always been interested in different forms of expressing. Theatre, for me was a way to always connect to this and to question and build on my knowledge of the world and of life.

Something happened along the way which made me not want to pursue acting further – perhaps I was too stubborn or I thought I could do more, or that I had more to offer. Perhaps it had to do with my mum passing away. Maybe it was a bit to do with all of these things but also, I think I was satisfied with what I’d done with performing and theatre and I felt ready and eager to learn something new. I hadn’t anticipated the loss in confidence I’d experience from shifting into art and I wondered – ‘now that I’m at art school, can I ever go back to performance?’ Through the awkward, various ‘fitting in’ stages that followed in my years of study, I gradually accepted I was somehow changing and that the security of being ‘good’ at something was now all relative in the art world. This was a nice but difficult discovery.

At art school I was out of my element completely and felt as though it was a new language I had to learn. I wanted to learn – I needed to learn too to keep up – so I stuck in, meeting some very interesting people along the way. Being a performer at heart I looked into performance in art and where it ‘fitted in’. My experience of performance art was that it was either very confrontational and unresolving or it rarely followed any narrative and was difficult to read – in a way, it seemed like bad acting or bad theatre to me. I was put off because some of what I had researched felt too contrived so I remained unconvinced for quite some time. I found that working with materials and objects made more sense for me in the context of making work at art school – they had their own stories and implications which I wanted to explore. However, I persevered with my own examination of what performance meant in general for me, coming from a theatre background and what it meant in my own explorations at art school. After some researching of performance art I realised it would not bear the same fruits as what acting did for me and therefore I was not too concerned with it anymore. However, performance elements did seep into my work and I gravitated more towards the filmic, playful and elusive when it came to my own creations within video and live performance.

In some ways I was still torn as to where my passions really lay within it all – it gradually became less clear for me where I was headed in terms of a potential path or career. The move into physical theatre, particularly the course led by Al Seed and Simon Abbott, helped to provide me with some grounding in this grey area I suddenly found myself in. I thrived in the new environment of varying artists and my passion for theatre and performance was renewed. I was back in my body again and felt more like myself than I’d ever felt whilst living in Edinburgh studying sculpture. I realised I was a passionate performer and was inspired by the idea of the ‘creative’ actor as well as someone who liked to be on the outside and offer feedback, direct or provide accompaniment.

Back to the presentation – the students were a bit baffled I think. I’d shown them what they could easily identify as ‘art’, then I’d played them a showreel of some small shows and performances I’ve done since graduating from the physical theatre course. They were confused in a good way, or so I told myself – “but how do you doooo performance in art?”, “what is clown? Is it art?” “should theatre and art not just stay separate?” “who is your audience now?” etc etc. Maybe I should have been clearer but it was my first attempt at a presentation and after answering a few questions we seemed to be on the same page – a bit. I felt like they were asking similar questions I asked myself when I was at art school which was interesting to me. Of course the areas of theatre and visual art are separate in many ways but there is always going to be some crossover. As in clown and in the visual art world there is never really a right or wrong. Practitioners I know in the areas of dance, drama and physical theatre all create very interesting and different work. The line between director, performer and artist are always shifting in my practice and as much as I want to define further my own route through it, I have learned that more often than not you just have to do it, put it into action then it will start to imply it’s own form. I’m still pursuing acting as well but I tried to explain that the residency is serving as the first step in me trying to develop more of a voice for myself within my practice and that I realise that with some of the types of work I imagine creating or that I want to create, I will need to draw on what I know from within both performance and art to achieve this.

It should be mentioned that at art school I did discover a passion I knew I had in me somewhere for making and experimenting with materials and that my training in sculpture is one I’m grateful for. I was and still am inspired by visual art and work by artists working in various mediums. I identified a skill I have for composition and arrangement of objects in space. A three dimensional aesthetic which I found very interesting. In short, what I’ve taken from art school, including the things that were perhaps not so great, I consider to be very valuable and I’m grateful for the experience.

Now the presentation is done I feel I can make more of a start. The colours, politics, sense of humour and culture here are all very interesting and new. I’m drawing a lot of inspiration from the people I meet and their stories as well as the new environment in which I’m living and spending most of my time. I’ve had an amazing experience so far just being here. I’ve been to a tea plantation and factory – a fantastic place filled with wondrous machines built in the victorian times and still going strong, being used to this day. I’ve taken a surf lesson in the rain, raved in the rain and swam in a pool on top of a hotel overlooking the sea. I’ve hired a bike and explored the jungle, spotted my first black bodied monkey, got the train and sat at the door with my feet dangling out. I’ve argued with tuktuk drivers, bargained for goods in Colombo, purchased my first sari and bought a fake branded bag – special price! special discount! I’ve seen an iguana, a lizard and loads of birds. And I’ve been inspired by the smiles, the intelligence and the way of the people I’ve met here already. The visit to the art school and meeting the staff and Thenu have all helped to ground the residency experience for me so far for which I’m really grateful.

There was a very special, local celebration on last night. There were buddhist flags and banners everywhere. Twinkling fairy lights decorated the outdoor space where they were hosting a ceremony (more of a demonstration of a traditional ceremony) for the Commonwealth Games committee meeting taking place here and mainly in Colombo next week. It lasted from 6pm until the early hours but we stayed only until midnight. I witnessed traditional, South Indian dancing by a bunch of athletic, smiling gents in white outfits and bells on their ankles. It was joyous to watch. It was performance, ritual, dance, tribal, tradition, song, art, prayer, celebration all in one – it was continuous and I just felt so happy that something like this exists in the world. It was simply beautiful, expressive, inspiring, energetic and wonderful. On the way back we stopped so Mark could record the sound of a procession of people going to the temple in Hikkaduwa to offer gifts. There was drumming and everyone carried a gift for the temple – money, food, flowers arranged beautifully, clothes, unidentifiable things wrapped in white material or bags. As they walked passed our tuktuk driver stepped out and took part in the prayer and blessing of the goods being carried for the temple. I was encouraged to take part and had to touch each object with the palms of my hands then make a prayer pose with my hands then touch the next thing – saying “Sadu, sadu, sadu, sadu…” – “Amen, Amen, Amen…” It lasted a long time as there were so many people but it was so nice to all of a sudden take part in this peaceful local activity. The tuktuk driver said to me ‘you can do it too, it’s buddhist you see, no exclusion, you take part, it’s nice…’ There was a good vibe on the street with people of all ages joining in. It was very special indeed.