artist – Page 3 – wraptheworld

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.

12 November 2013

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.

13 August 2013

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

29 July 2013

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 – 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.