Eleanor Duffin
‘Starting Points for Moving’
Eleanor and I are both studio artists at Spike Island, Bristol, and have been exploring our interest in movement and the body within our practices.
It started with a day-long ‘studio visit’ with dancer and choreographer Kit Hall. Kit creates choreographic works that involve the bringing together of questions, imaginations, observations, play and feeling in different forms of live performance, workshops and writing. We shared our distinct and overlapping interests with Kit, and approached the day with a mix of clarity and uncertainty.
I was trying to find playful ways to explore embodied practice through expanded notions of self-portraiture while thinking about the place of visual and emotional scores in my practice. This offered a direct connection with Eleanor’s interest in translation.
Throughout the day we found individual ways to explore our areas of enquiry and document the process of working together. Otter recordings were made and some months later we worked with the transcripts from these recordings, taking snippets to form written scores. We then sent each other an audio ‘score’ with the invitation to respond through a series of gestures.
At a later point we invited a small group of artists to join us for a workshop, teaching them these gestural scores and inviting them to recreate them in their own way alongside us. For me the magic happened in the ensemble pieces where we offered our own interpretation of these gestures. It was like watching a group of people speaking the same language but using their own individual dialects, making a direct connection with the concept of translation.
I feel like we are at the beginning of an experiment, an exploration. The opening sentences of a conversation. I’m not sure where it might take us?
Script for Eleanor
that was the first of all I am.
it's like there's, there's a lot
I am deeply uncomfortable
There's nothing being said.
like the echo of the one that came before
I'm trying to it's like I'm trying to
to speak if you like
Oh, and about that letting go.
how do you, how do you hold
I say, I'm trying to say I don't know.
Do you know your position?
Script for Kamina
And when it comes to it, I couldn’t.
The woman who was holding the crisps said to me
What would happen if you slow that right down?
I’ll just be quiet.
How many times can I repeat that?
I’m really conscious that you know
I’m quite interested in that idea of repetition
and, what happens if you keep repeating something?
Repeat names, like to use it differently,
some kind of snippet in your awesome part.
Will you return to the beginning,
incorporate that slippage?
Because I’m watching it, now,
I’m trying to hold it in my head, that memory.
Sitting there with my eyes lowered.
Is there a gesture that they remember?