Trace Elements/ Residual Effects 1997

27 Sep 1997 : The Performance Space, 199 Cleveland Street, Redfern, Sydney, Australia

(one-stop-shopping in the landscape)

This performance is one outcome of a collaboration between sound artist Rik Rue and performer Alan Schacher. In counterpoint to the very atmospheric urban landscapes usually activated for Gravity Feed performances the subject under investigation here was the regions of retrospective memory which somehow alter experience, creating a smooth space of the landscape of the mind. In terms of dance and the effects exposure to particular environments has on the performing body in space, Alan improvised a movement response to place. Whilst that in itself was a struggle: to be either “at one” or otherwise productively “at odds” with new surrounds experienced for very short periods of time; the task subsequently was to regain what is lost on many levels: a fading into invisibility, a longing: in the body for place and in place for the body - the lingering sensation of animal presences, the long history and often invisible influence of Aboriginal occupation; strangeness and discomfort, the feelings of openness and freedom.

In terms of the sound component of this project Rik Rue has had long experience in resourcing the Australian bush for inspiration and rejuvenation. He takes pleasure in revisiting and re-experiencing landscapes and his sound work develops a catalogue of seasons, zones and changes. For this collaboration he was interested in the ritual of setting. Working with a dancer for him includes spatial conception with body and sound intrusions; sound itself as movement; the act of a sonic penetration of the familiar through the phases of discomfort, dislocation and displacement that travel and movement bring about.

As composition, both artists were concerned with perceived rapid change in the landscape, its dispossession over the alarmingly short period of time that has elapsed since white colonisation and settlement. In terms of the degradation and commercialisation that has occurred within the short timeframes of lived experience it was perhaps appropriate that the visits this project entailed were similarly fleeting.

Regions visited within NSW over two journeys include sub-tropical rainforest areas: the Border Ranges National Park in late 1995; southern coastal regions of the Jervis Bay area, Pebbly Beach and Honeymoon Bay; arid regions of Central NSW: Cobar, Mt Grenfell Historic Site, Kinchega, Willandra and Mungo National Parks - all in late 1996.