at Performance Dept, University of Plymouth. I enjoyed his presentation style. It felt like seemingly dispirit threads were brought together but the pattern emerging through the examples cited did not become clear, at least to me, until almost the end of the talk though he had stated at the beginning what he was going to do, so some security/trust was established and I realise again how willing an audience is to follow where the speaker takes them.
The absence or lacauna can help you see what is actually there and opens up a space; look for the slipperiness/ambiguities/tensions/contradictions/paradoxes, rather than try to explain the examples show where do you chose to place your energies? Where are the most interesting ambiguities? What compels us? Find a way of seeing what one can’t see, excess is a fact of life. he referred to Bateson’s compulsion diagram.
The practice examples of immersive performance blurring what we know/don’t know were inspiring – bicycle repair shop/meadow path – walking the globe/walking a meadow path What happens to sense of space if we don’t know it’s representation? invitation to walk/dance it. Same path different site meadow in a graveyard. for conference in Leeds. Re-creation of the shape of arriver on dry land/opens up ambiguity. The meander seems to collapse global and local and seems to blur and overlap different forms of time.
Davina Kirkpatrick- presence of absence 