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Sita Pierracini

Sita Iona Pieraccini is an artist based in Scotland. Sita’s background in acting, music, directing and clown informs her work as author/performer. Recent works explore moments of upheaval and change through a magical realist narrative, which allows the extremes of inner and outer experiences to be presented alongside the everyday and mundane. Inspired by true stories, memories and real events as much as fables, folk-lore and fantasy, Sita uses elements from both non-fiction and fiction in the creation of performances which offer an examination and interpretation of humanity. The outcome are often short, anecdotal and highly visual pieces of theatre, physical performance, video or installation. They are a mixture of the poetic and absurd, humorous and tragic.

Sita has trained with Angela De Castro, Theatre Ad Infinitum and Simon Edwards (Kneehigh Theatre) in theatre clown, mime and physical storytelling. She has a BA(Hons) in Sculpture from Edinburgh College of Art (2007) and a Diploma in Physical Theatre Practice from the Adam Smith College (2009). Recognised for her inventive approach to theatre making and her fine acting skills, Sita has received support through esteemed awards and opportunities to develop her practice – Scope Award from Conflux 2012 , Professional Development Award from Creative Scotland 2011, UPstarts Program with National Theatre of Scotland 2009. Sita has performed her work at festivals throughout Scotland, England and Barcelona and continues to develop her practice through residencies and collaborations with artists from differing disciplines who share a passion for performance.

 

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Mark Vernon Audio Diary

Sound artist Mark Vernon is keeping a sound diary during his residency at Sura Medura. During his stay he will be travelling around Sri Lanka, collecting sights and sounds for a composed soundscape work.  The sounds Mark has collected so far can be heard as set on Mark’s Soundcloud page and form an audio record of Mark’s first couple of weeks exploring Sura Medura, Hikkaduwa and the surrounding area.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/119718225″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

The crossing is manned 24 hours a day by a man in a small hut decorated with painted panels. The times that trains are due to pass through are written on a small chalkboard. At the side of the hut, near the canal, they have created a small garden which they tend to keep themselves occupied between trains.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/119720478″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

As part of the preperations for making the traditional meal of rice with curry for lunch Dulani uses a coconut scraper to scrape out the coconut flesh. The device is clamped to the table and holds the half coconut in place whilst a blade, turned by a handle scrapes round the insides.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/119721658″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Frogs at night following a monsoon. Recorded in the garden at Sura Medura. The frog and insect chorus is a nightly occurrence, particularly after heavy rain.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/119734444″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

At the fishery harbour in Hikkaduwa moored fishing boats push against the rubber tyres that line the harbour walls making a loud creaking sound.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/119722982″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Lal S.K. Upul invited me onto his boat and showed me the cramped crews quarters in which they live together for up to a month at sea. He also demonstrated the ships radio set for me. Recorded at Hikkaduwa fishery harbour.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/119737873″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Fishing boat engine being revved up and restarted with lots of sputtering and clouds of thick blue petrol fumes.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/119738673″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

Motorbikes, trucks and tuktuks wait impatiently for the barrier to lift at the busy intersection of Baddegama road. When the alarm bell stops and the barriers rise there is a sudden surge of crisscrossing traffic mixed with train passengers leaving the platform of nearby Hikkaduwa train station.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/119734875″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

The typewriter clatters away as the typists at the Notary’s office hand type copies of documents, working their way through seemingly endless reams of paper. The hustle and bustle of traffic and car horns in the town centre can be heard quite clearly in the background.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/119739576″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

At the busy Hikkaduwa bus station a conductor hanging off an idling bus calls out to passengers that the Galle bus is about to leave, “Galle, Galle, Galle…”. At the same time a mobile lottery ticket salesman on a motorbike is attracting customers with a megaphone attached to his bike.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/119740052″ width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

When chatting to a local tuktuk driver about my interest in local sound marks he pointed me in the direction of the bank. Here, each evening from around 6pm noisy Myna birds flock to the trees either side of Galle Road. Their activity rises and falls in crescendoes, seemingly in relation to the traffic noise.

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Mark Vernon

Mark Vernon is a sound artist and radio producer based in Glasgow. His arts practice encompasses live performance, soundtracks, installations and radio broadcasts – often blurring the boundaries between art, music and broadcasting. His key areas of interest are the human voice, field recording and soundscape composition, musique concrète and the radiophonic combination of these elements in works for broadcast and live performance.

Mark has produced programmes and features internationally for radio stations including WFMU, RADIA, Resonance FM, CKUT, VPRO and the BBC. He has also been instrumental in setting up a number of temporary RSL (Restricted Service License) art radio stations in the UK including Hair Waves, Radio Tuesday and Nowhere Island Radio.

Together with Monica Brown he runs the ‘Lights Out Listening Group’ – a monthly listening event focused on creative uses of sound and radio that takes place in complete darkness. He also records and performs solo and in a variety of collaborative music projects including Vernon & Burns and Hassle Hound with record releases on Staalplaat, Ultra Eczema, Entr’acte, Staubgold and Gagarin Records.

Currently he is approaching completion of a two year period as digital artist in residence at Forth Valley Royal Hospital where he has been developing new audio works for the context of hospital radio.

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Sura Medura Winter Residency Artists for 2013 / 2014 Announced

UZ Arts are delighted to announce that the artists for the winter residencies have been selected.

The six artists who will be taking part in the international residency programme from October 2013 to January 2014 are:

Hannah Brackston
Jo Hodges and Robbie Coleman
Sita Pieraccini
Tom Pritchard
Lindsay Sekulowicz
Mark Vernon

Each of the artists will undertake a 6 week residency at the Sura Medura International Artist Residency Centre in Hikkaduwa. The centre was established in 2011 by UZ Arts and offers opportunities for all artists from all disciplines to create work that is enhanced by being developed in Sri Lanka.  The work developed and produced by artists during their residency will be exhibited at the Briggait in February 2014.

The Sura Medura residency programme is part of Creative Futures, a Creative Scotland talent development programme which aims to promote the professional development, capabilities, connectivity and ambitions of Scotland’s creative practitioners and organisations.

www.creativescotland.com
www.creativefutureshq.com

CS logo web size

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The Other Kwai at the MCF 2013

Congratulations to Kit Mead, previous Sura Medura artist in residence, on the presentation of his film The Other Kwai at the Merchant City Festival 2013, Glasgow, as part of the Pop Up Events programme by the Glasgow Film Theatre.

Mr & Mrs Perera
Mr & Mrs Perera – Samuel Perera was “Jungle boy” in “The Bridge on the River Kwai”

Kit’s film returns to the location of the 1957 film, The Bridge on the River Kwai in Kitulgala in Sri Lanka. He made this work as part of his residency in Sura Medura in early 2013. Kit ventured in to the Sri Lankan countryside to see what he could find and by sheer chance, serendipity, he found Samuel Perera, one of the many locals who were employed to work on the film either as actors or craftsmen, still living close to the the bridge site. Using found footage and relaxed interviewing Kit’s film gently tells the story of how the the “River Kwai” and its famous bridge came about.

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Kit Mead – The Other Kwai – Merchant City Festival 2013

Kit Mead, our recent artist in residence at Sura Medura, will be showing his film  “The Other Kwai” at this year’s Merchant City Festival in Glasgow on the 26th July. It will be shown in South Block in the Merchant City in association with Glasgow Film Theatre and their Pop Up events programmers. More information about event can be found here.

You can also follow Kit’s progress in Sri Lanka making his film by reading his blog posts in the News section of the Sura Medura website.

Photo from the set of The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957
Photo from the set of The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957
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Kit’s Blog – The Other Kwai Featurette

On Saturday the 23rd I presented ‘The Other Kwai’ a film I have developed during my time at the Sura Medura Art Centre. Set within the linearity of a single day with a narrative structure reflective of ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ (1957), broken by images from the Hollywood film and the weaving of chair caning, ‘The Other Kwai’ takes in the echoes of the impact when fiction collided with reality, creating a new history which continues to affect and reverberate through the rainforest canyons of the Kelani River at Kitulgala.  My previous film work has consistently been intended to be exhibited within installation spaces and I have found that while the focus of the audience is the projection of moving images, the space where it is presented can act as a crucial element to the work as a whole; helping to create an immersive environment for an audience, while also referencing components or the structure of the films presented, causing the spaces to become constituent components of the installations. This has continued with the presentation of my latest work in Sri Lanka. Using the grounds of Sunbeach Hotel in Hikkaduwa I set up an outdoor cinema for the audience to sit and experience the work. Previously many of my moving image installations have been structured in a non-linear way, in part due to the particular qualities and contexts of exhibiting in gallery spaces. This piece was presented in an unconventional art environment and needed certain criteria to be put in place to create an installation space that continued to feed information involved within the work to the audience.

Installation view of 'The Other Kwai' 2013

When confronted by moving image art in the cavernous spaces of contemporary visual art galleries and museums the work has regularly been place on a continuous loop, forcing the actions to repeat once completed and without break. This is a way of making the work viewable to as many people wondering around the building throughout the day as possible but (unless the films are incredibly short or focus on repetition) can destroy the narrative structure of many of these works, leaving the audience to be more concerned with wondering where in the film they have stumbled into (Beginning middle or end) then the actual content they are viewing. This has seen a rise in artists films either being non-linear where the audience participate within an environment where they edit their own film from the images and sequences projected or by having set times for the films to start, giving that control of accessing the work in the correct linear order the artists intended it to be viewed (This curatorial decision making was heavily visible in the exhibiting dynamics of last year’s Turner Prize). The outdoor cinema area I constructed acted as a formal space for viewing cinematic work and rather than be a space that was open to the coming and going of various people, was rigidly structured in reference to conventional cinema spaces by applying a start time for the film with a single showing to reinforce the linear composition of the work.

Still from Bridge on the River Kwai

In an earlier blog post I mentioned my fascination at watching and filming a local man fixing the caning on a chair. This footage has become an important part of my film and weaves throughout its duration, creating associations with the intricate design of the bridge, transient qualities of the material and laying of new histories within the story of the Kitulgala. These chair cane seats also seem part of the very fabric of Sri Lankan society, appearing in local villager’s homes, hotels, museums, as well as during the Sri Lankan scenes of ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ (1957) and I thought it was crucial that seats featuring chair caning where used for the outdoor cinema space. A subtle reference that made the images on the screen tangible and helped to create an immersive viewing environment.

Still from Bridge on The River Kwai (1957)

I thought I’d end this post with a link to mini featurette on the making of ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai’ made in 1957. An interesting but brief insight into the production of the set.

The Bridge on the River Kwai Mini Featurette 1957

Enjoy!

Kit

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Kit’s Blog – The Other Kwai

I’m into my final week of my residency here at the Sura Medura and wow has it gone by fast! These past few weeks particularly have been spent combing through all the footage I have recorded to produce a narrative that takes in the echo’s of the original Bridge on the River Kwai film which still resonate around Kitulagla and the whole of Sri Lanka 60 years after the film crew left.

The Other Kwai

This Saturday the 23rd of February I will be presenting my film ‘The Other Kwai’, 2013, in a purpose built outdoor cinema space at the Sunbeach Hotel in Hikkaduwa. ‘The Other Kwai’ will be presented at 9pm followed by a short Q&A discussion.

The Other Kwai Poster

 

If you happen to be in Hikkaduwa come on over!

 

Kit