By the end of this week, I was feeling very frustrated with the process and the work I’d made with Emma for this project. I wondered if my own working process was just too chaotic and incoherent to ever be viable in a pairing or group with others. Thankfully, Emma was quite pragmatic and encouraging. And I am now much more comfortable with what we have prepared.
I had sent the WIP to people who were perplexed (as ever!) This helped in some ways but in others, I was reminded of a director who asked me on day one of rehearsal if I wanted to ditch doing the difficult Brummy accent the play was written in. I wanted to punch him in the face for his lack of faith! By the time we opened the audience assumed I had grown up in the area but it was hard work getting there – and I was cross with the director for not trusting the process. However, we are way beyond day one fo a rehearsal process here… and I was feeling pretty fraught.
Anyway, some of the feedback I received was indeed helpful (thank you!) And by Saturday, after some thought, I found a way to contain the ideas and work inside something more structured – up until that point, I had been thinking and experimenting but the ideas weren’t coherent and risked getting lost. I am sure it will still be incoherent for some people but I feel very much that Emma and I have reached a place that is viable now.
I won’t share the current edit until after our presentation day – not least of all because we hope to add some improvised voices to the work during the presentation and they’re not there yet. But here is the summary
Sirens
An eleven-minute tale
Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women is a 1967 film about a journey to Venus where a group of intrepid male astronauts encounter a host of dangers in the form of a crash, a range of monsters and a band of sirens. Despite being about a world inhabited by women lasting nearly one and a half hours, the film contains roughly eleven minutes of footage where the women appear alone. That increases to just under twenty minutes if you include scenes where the women carry a dead fishy creature or appear alongside impending disasters or monsters.
Sirens: an eleven-minute tale consists of three parts which amount to roughly the same time given to the women themselves in the original film.
Part 1 contains the original film, sped up.
Part 2 A version of the footage, containing the women only, is reversed and blended with a negative copy of itself.
Part 3 is a further representation of the women modified by a proprietary app and will be accompanied by a series of live vocal improvisations as we attempt to bring the sirens to life in the present.
This reimagined film is a journey through time and a sample of the visual representation of sirens.
Seeing and hearing it now, I feel my overriding intention – to explore the language material of the past and see what it looks like when transformed with language containers of today – is being achieved. I have taken old language material and, using modern easily accessible technology, along with other communicative forms, transformed the signification.
Thinking back to my research on genes and epigenetics – and applying that metaphor to signs and signification – I have placed epigenetic markers on the original genetic code of the word sirens. To explain – take the word apple – we know it means apple, a fruit that is easy to recognise. When we add cultural markers to the word apple we can conjure up a range of meanings – i.e. Eve and the serpent, Snow White, warm apple pie, Apple technology, detergent with the fresh smell of apple, etc. There is a range of additional layers of meaning we can apply which are specific, often cultural, and can change the meaning entirely even though the base meaning is the same. The base meaning has eons of history attached to it. Depending on what we highlight or negate in relation to the base meaning results in the present meaning.
In the re-imagined film, Emma and I have teased alternative meaning out of the original language material which was simple to manipulate using technology in the first instance – i.e. speeding it up, blending it with a negative and reversed version of itself, and applying the proprietary filter. Then the music and hopefully, eventually, the voices add yet further layers.
I am glad to say I am looking forward to next Saturday now. (I wasn’t before!)