Distortions

Early experiments for Mutations

Special effects make up - Satinder Chumber

Lighting - James Froment

Camera - Daniel Barella

Reflections on Beginnings (Dance City Lab Space Day 2)

My body is harsh and unforgiving, I do not understand it, it does not speak to me.

Oubliette

No bones - liquid gold - forming and re - forming - clinging

suspension

trying to force my body to slow down

control

disengage

turn off the alarm

float

umbilicus, connection, remembering, memories of the womb, asymmetry, embryonic, viscous

supine / prone

closed eye / artificial eye

falling down / staying focused

feeling out of body

heart beating like a bird

afraid

still

no-one is watching

eyes fixed

transfixed

leaving

rising

blood moving

exploding

tasting death

Embryonic Tail

I have had a couple of meetings with sculptor and prosthetics artist Satinder Chumber, we will be working together on early stages of the project. I am commissioning him to create prosthetics and make up for a series of images which will form source material for the work.

The images above are from one of his books, studying embryogenesis from first cleavage to birth. I was drawn to the quality of the skin in the images, its translucence and golden hue. The images look like models, there is something otherworldly about them, but they are actual images.

Satinder is going to make me a prosthetic tail, I have been looking at human vestigial tails and other evolutionary by-products - possible mutations of the human form caused by latency or genetic abnormality. Things that get left behind.