Work on the field:
Two different pieces. Add some element of colour… perhaps it is already there, or maybe it is a focal point. Introduce something to the field which shouldn’t necessarily be there.
Kalila, Matthew, Kat, Gionna, Billie and Henrik-
Kalila has a bright multi-coloured umbrella, it is always in view. Tempting your eye. Stealing your focus. Adoring your attention. It is the distance, the foreground…it disappears over a hill.
Matthew and Gionna step like giants, with human bodies. Slowly. Slowly. From either side, a slow and yet missable encounter if your attention is drawn elsewhere.
Kat has a phone. She uses it to talk to Kalila, an odd experience when they are stood next to one another. She passes us, and disappears across the field.
Billie and Henrik are an odd duo. They chase one another, until Henrik cannot run anymore. He recites her path, through stifled breaths. He is interrupted by a call, a call echoing throughout the piece. He pauses to reply, before continuing talking to us. Billie sits on a bench.
Every few moments, or maybe minutes this call echoes throughout the field. Like a bird call. It takes me a while to realise that it is the group, and not passers by. It is contagious, you just want to join in…to see what is feels like.
Our group:
Face the other way, wait. Hear a buzz, a whistle, and read the phone. It says look toward the fence. You look, and slowly figures begin to appear. The paths are not the same, they do not appear at the same time, they are not taken the same way. Hankerchiefs begin to wave, and they are waving toward you. Each individual reaches the group one by one, although some collide. They talk to you, give you a hankerchief with an instruction, then pass on by. Watching.
Respond to the group you saw with your duet partner.
Use the path through the garden as a visual path through your mind. Go through it several times for around five minutes. Notice the details. Pick out three landmarks, the places that stick in your mind, three places that are special to you. Name them. Choose three memories, ideas or thoughts that you never want to forget and place them in each of the spots.
Use the path as meditation. A brain training activity, away from technology and pen and paper.
“[…][W]e are so down to the earth pinning our minds to the concrete only to prison ourselves.”
Harriet Couzens
Contributions coming soon from JoJo, & Henrik
photo by Benjamin Thompson
photo by Benjamin Thompson
The Dove, the Ghost, the Handkerchief Tree 