David Arkell Reflects

Some thoughts on the watery journey towards and into The Great Rinsing.

Where did it start? Up in the clouds of a few heads, maybe. Passing into and down mountains streams, brains searching for the sparks to ignite the flows of energy. Light rain falling on distant mountain slopes, new ideas building, some soaked into the hillside and forgotten, some taken on downstream, growing. A widening array of creative forces throwing ideas and images and thoughts and themes and sounds and pictures and music and movement and wonder into the rising river torrent, some changing course, some going against the flow, some channelling in new directions, challenging, all ever onwards closer to the frame.

We all are a big crew, we’re onboard, sometimes floating, sometimes forging, sometimes fretting, fighting, flying, fantasising in faith following the flow. Nobody really seemed to know where we were, whither we were going when we started, wandering, wondering where it would end, where we’d go – we seemed to be staying faithful to the reality of the water cycle in nature, as if each droplet or atom of water has either its own mind or is powerless to be driven round a diagram.
We grow into a semblance of order, sporadic showers ganging up into a single front. Disciplined, directed, destinies decided, directing the dream, steering the stream, harnessing help, co-ordinating crew, tweaking and tinkering and twisting. Dates. Script. Cast ...

The die is cast, the cast is set, the set is prepared, preparations in progress, progress seems slow, the show is upon us. There’s electricity in the air. A storm could break. Nervous energy builds up within and between. All is set, yet all agitates.
I feel hot, I feel cold, butterflies abound, thirsty, need the loo, feel sick, want to hide, but we are strong together, we have power, we give to and feed off each other, and suddenly we are amongst dozens of arrivers, and they become part of us, we are all together.

There’s a lull. I fight a wave of panic. I force my eyes shut. I am at the sea. I am in the water. I become the water. I am calm, I am calmed. I am strong. We are together. We work together. We work.

Puddles on the pavement.
Tears on the tarmac.
Mischief in the mist.
Calm in the cooling.
Closure under the clouds.
Pleasure in the process.
Pride in the production.
Mystery in the mist.
Meaning in the madness.
Memories magnificent.

We try to improve, make little changes, nothing is quite set, nothing’s perfect. And as we move on we hope we have touched some people - like we’ve been touched ourselves - made them think, made them smile, and take a look at their world, it’s our world. Living the dream of a better, cleaner, safer world, fearing the nightmare the dream won’t come, clinging to the rainbow of hope, goading each other to think globally by acting locally – is this it?

4 hours and counting

Due to the magic of an internet dongle I'm writing while sitting on the floor in an empty Room 1, four hours before our first public performance. Let me describe it. There's a background hum of machinery, fifteen red lights glow from the very important looking water company "dashboard". And below the victorian walls and vaulted roof sits a compact arrangement of pipes and pumps. This all takes up about 15% of the volume of the room. We will occupy much of the rest. Above me dangles a fish. I think it's a carp, but it's made from plastic, bottles, corks, blue piping and bubble wrap. It takes light beautifully. Around the room are podia and display tables. On the tables are objects of domestic water use - sponges, toothbrushes, a rubber duck. On the podia - in 3 hours and 40 minutes time will be "holograms" of people from the old twentieth century, demonstrating washing techniques. The room will also be occupied by a the children of Allenborne school, tranported into the mid 21st Century, searching for the now scarce resource that is water. Films will flicker on the wall. The choir will wait in the borehole area one floor down, and Dan our film-maker and cameraman will wait in his wet suit to film live, the journey of the Girl through the tunnels and shrines below. Searching for what happened to the water.

Olivia comments on making her Shrine

Thank you too for giving me the opportunity to contribute to a community project in a quiet but purposeful way. It was good to be invited to make work with unfamiliar materials, in a different way, in an unusual environment - stretching myself but within the supportive structure you devised (workshop, shrine brief and physically being there to unlock doors etc.).

In retrospect I think my installation

• is heavily influenced by Stanley Spencer's Resurrection paintings. . . the gradation of colours, figures helping one another out,

• uses an empty skin glove as a symbol for the spirit of the dead . . .the body no longer there (a notion that arose initially during the workshop session)

• reflects upon the bewilderment of those who have just died who take a little while to realise they are no longer earthbound and can take flight

Installing the Tunnel Shrines

5.30, Monday evening, and it’s drizzling outside and I’m bent over, moving along the passageway under the Pump House towards the lights Olivia and Caroline have brought to help them work on their shrines. No other sounds except the echoing chink of Caroline’s hammer and feet shuffling in the grit and dust. There’s a kind of peace in the bricked tunnels cut off from the aboveground evening, and I feel a slowing down of the day as we concentrate on the ideas for our spaces. I swing the torch round the area I’ve chosen, and my hand and hair brush against cobwebs - not thin paltry ones but well matured growths with a real presence of their own!

Alone in the subterranean architecture of vacant brick openings and rusting pipework we’re thinking about the idea of loss. The openings of the mammoth pipes, empty & silent, stretch further back underground than we can ever go – it’s easy to think of them as opening into the past. If I could crawl through where would I end up?

I’m thinking how to convey a sense of this with no need for explanations, playing with an idea until the idea says what we want it to say. And then we’ll leave it alone in the dark where no-one will see it, no visitors will come up close and make something of their own out of it. Just the objects being there in their own right will be enough.

Video Update

FISHERMAN

Last week I spent an interesting evening with local fisherman Rob Doyle down on the river where it runs past the Pump House. I was filming him for the video which will accompany the angler's speech in Room Two.

We spent an hour stalking fish up river and much meditative pondering in silence before Rob finally felt the bite of a fish upon the tiny insect costumed hook. As he called for me to come and film his triumphant moment I lept to my feet and performed the classic trick of pressing the record button without realising, thus stopping the tape rolling. I didn't realise till the next day when watching it back... the footage cuts just after the fish bites and starts again moments after the fish has been thrown back. Then Rob says:

"I guess you've got all you need now?"
"Yeah definitely, that's great"




Luckily actual footage of a fish being caught wasn't in my plans for the film so it's not such a great loss although I'm sure Rob will be disappointed not to see it when he comes to the performance.

The shots above are straight from the tape I recorded and haven't been treated yet. I will probably use only a few moments from the evening so I hope no one is expecting an instructive fishing film...


MUSEUM PROJECTIONS

Developing the video projections for the Museum in Room one. Although I'll now be projecting on to the off-white partition wall in the middle of the room I intend to maintain the cropping which made the video clips fit to the rectangular panels of the green control panel wall. Hopefully it should echo the patterns and lines of the control panel whilst acting as the museum video wall.

A rainy Sunday

So the plan was for an outdoor rehearsal of the water dance. But the word Water provoked the rain gods and the session took place in the main room.

Tony at Allenbourn 2

WCT The Great Rinsing
Blog Entry Friday 13 May 2011
Tony Horitz

Two good sessions again this Thursday (12th). The 26 Allenbourn young people are as keen as ever – some have been thinking up ‘futuristic’ names for their ensemble characters. Other suggestion was ‘Bottle Top’, based on the details they’ve been given about their costumes by the AUCB Costume Design students last week. Show what they take in!

We worked on ‘flocking’ this week – I began with an idea I got from reading the Bubble Teachers’ Notes from the script of their Dockland Blitz project, Blackbirds, which some of us went to see in Southwark Park last Tuesday – and really enjoyed.

We made a circle and thought of luxury items we would not have if we were living on the streets searching for water and food to survive in the future. One by one we had to discard these items – speaking their name and putting them into the circle. Very interesting. Several tried to ‘act’ the emotion of having to give up precious items – such as Play Stations or parents. I suggested they did it very simply and tried not to play it for laughs. Gradually they got the hang of this. A particularly moving moment was when one boy (11 or 12?) said ‘My true soul’. I asked him afterwards what he’d meant by this. He said if things got really bad in the future, and you had to fight for water, you would have to lose some of your humanity to survive. I was quite gobsmacked by this profound level of thinking.

Overall, I think the ritual form of this ‘discarding’ exercise created a strong atmosphere of concentration and commitment in the group. Afterwards they worked alone, searching the empty room for water or food. Though some of the work was little OTT, they took it seriously. I asked them to get into their same groups as last week and select the kind of movements they had felt worked best when working alone. Then they numbered themselves 1-7 and took turns to lead the group in ‘flocking’ – kind of follow my leader, where each takes turn to lead everyone in different movement – crawling, creeping, running, stretching up, etc. They did this well, once they’d worked out a way of sharing the leadership fairly – though on or two said they didn’t want to be leaders at all. I persuaded them to have a go, which I think they did!

Then I asked them to repeat the activity, but incorporating the new water related nursery rhymes they devised with Karen and me the previous week. I thought this might be too hard for them. But no, they did it almost straightaway. I suggested a time tension – that they were now doing this after many hours of work. It slowed them down and looked great. We shared it all at once – and the fact that the nursery rhymes came and went at different times and the groups used all the space in the hall – with no specific audience points was somehow more effective. It was quite scary, in fact – especially when one group approached me (as an ‘audience member’) and sniffed at me! Like being surrounded by a pack of wild dogs!

I can kind of see this happening in the Pump House – maybe when they first appear to speak to Charlie and Laura. Thoughts? Anyway, I was very pleased with the group’s work – as was Suzy, their teacher, who is completely supportive. Very refreshing to have teachers who give such commitment. Teaching Assistant also great.

Next week I hope to introduce the words from Scene 1 and work on those. Peth has suggested approaching this as if the children are in a ‘narcoleptic’ state – I googled this up and found (“Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS), even after adequate night time sleep. A person with narcolepsy is likely to become drowsy or fall asleep or just be very tired throughout the day, often at inappropriate times and place”). I have to confess I felt a bit like this in the Steering Group meeting after the Allenbourn session! Sorry for the yawns, guys! But seriously, I think it will make for interesting work with the young people next week.

I’m looking forward to our next session.

Design Gets Going

On Thursday I visited Arts University College Bournemouth to meet up with the costume design students, Lois, Lorna, Daisy and Louisa, who are going to be working on the Pumphouse Project, designing and making elements of the costumes and maybe other visual aspects of the performance. I am really excited about their involvement and I think they now have a bit of a grasp of the scenario, which didn't seem to phase them at all! It certainly helped that they had come to the imaging workshop back in December as they know the space (and the challenge), and contributed to some of the ideas that have come through to the story that we now have. I am confident that they will bring a really exciting visual element to the production, and cant wait to see their ideas take shape.

Just to clarify - the design of the piece will have an overall feel to it, to tie in with the themes of a future without water, with the design students taking responsibility for certain sections or groups within it, and sourcing and creating the costumes for their chosen section. Hopefully we will be able to bring visual ideas so far to one of the rehearsals coming up for feedback. It may well be that we will be asking group members to donate bits and pieces of clothing for artful transformation... so watch this space.

Also.. we are looking forward to two design and making workshops at that Caroline has organised; at Leigh Park Community Centre on May 15th for families, and at Walford Mill Craft Centre on May 17th and 18th for adults and older teens, where some of the scenic elements will be created.

If anyone has any design or making skills to contribute, or know of anyone who would like to make anything, please let us know.

Its a cold and wet February day today but I am thinking a lot about the long days of June when we will be putting all the elements together.

So, we are taking the audience into the future. Beyond the year that the water became precious, and poisoned. Into a museum of water.

Within the museum is a machine that has the capability to extract memories from what water is left. Memories of fish and falls, drownings and droplets.

Yesterday was spent imagining these memories, and placing the memories around the building.



Once I was the moisture in your allotment, you
Found me when you dug deep. Once
I was the table on which
Your food was grown.
Once.



Then working on a future museum of water. Creating holograms of how water - in the days it was plentiful - was used.