RMKN emails LKN on 12/18/17
Been thinking about the performance, the performance style, a way that we could show some work in progress without having you present March 11. I might be able to recruit a mover-substitute in the area if need be for that date, too.
Below is a rough rough outline of a possible condensed three act thing, wherein instead of a return to the world, it's more like a trade-out for a character from the dream world.
I think the point is to wonder at what the inside of another, digital world would be like to live in as your physical self (aka, what was it like in the bag horse for LKN? Why is RMKN headed in there, what is he looking for?) and also to cope with the experience of fear about mysterious bags and mysterious movers.
I GIVE YOU ISADORA
ACT I
0:00 RMKN offstage dragging/carrying an actual bag with an actual human body inside. Not making sounds for a felt amount of time, but also not important totally that audience be quieted yet. RMKN is worker with bag, though actions might not appear workmanlike in the traditional manners imagined. The bag also has inside it all the wires aka phone cords, old chargers, etc.
It's a horse, the horse, made into a zipperable object. If it is a horse, it is a horse made to the rough pattern as the drawn horse of recent fascination. Other horses that might be thought of could be Trixie, could be Hull Life Saving Horse. But is not critical that it actually be a horse.
The bag is a horse. If it is a bag it is a large large black duffle-bag, likely one that I already have, but which may need internal sewn reinforcement if it is to reliably and safely hold a person.
The entrails of the horse are made up of wires. If there are really hard parts on the wires, like plugs, those should probably be cut off, since the bag horse will for some portion of the show contain a human body, and/or human bodies.
2:00 RMKN has entered with bag, or entered and forgotten bag and returned with bag, or brought bag on and off stage many times, but at 2:00 or so bag and RMKN are on stage, over to the left. How much left might change iteration to iteration.
RMKN begins some kind of stretching pacing routine, might appear to be rehearsing movements for a purpose, but what it is, we and he might not know. He occasionally senses on-or-off-stage variables and responds to them
3:00
4:00
5:00
ACT II
6:00 LKN emerges bag
7:00
8:00
9:00
10:00
ACT III
11:00 RMKN enters bag
12:00
13:00
14:00
15:00 LKN removes bag
Questions:
What does artist think is going on here?
DANCE
WORK
COMMUNICATION
PURPOSE
Great question. I think I've had a lot of images like these rolling around in my brain for a long time now. They can be sometimes disquieting. I think they come from different places and experiences I've had. Like for example I've spent most of the past 5 years working jobs that require shifting around objects of various sizes, often held in large bags or boxes, light loads too, but also heavier objects, 70# bags of sand, 80# bags of cement, 120# sacks of coffee, 100# boxes of baitfish, contractor bags stuffed with disgusting, wet, fecal contents near to bursting. To me it seems natural that some of my first impulses for moving around on stage these days would consist of the movements required by that kind of thing.
Mysterious bags and boxes on the side of the road. In theory, I think we modern people are supposed to be frightened, kind of unequivocally of these things. And for good reason! There could be, and often enough are bombs or body parts in them, and most of us don't want any part of that. It probably is best practice to stay far away from suspicious looking packages, as we've been repeatedly warned.
But I think some, maybe most, of us exist on kind a spectrum of interest in odd boxes and their possible contents. Pandora? My life has been made richer, if sometimes more complicated, and risky, by some objects I have found in trash cans, dumpsters, and on the sides of roads. And more often than not I did not reveal a whole torrent of disease on the world, I don't think.
Also, I've been interested in the past few years in the common story of people hiding in animals to escape captors, and how it might relate to the hiding in a wooden horse and jumping out, and how that image has been adopted in the world of computer hacking, and our wireless, digital world is actually deeply physical and connected by miles and miles of wire.
On that front, maybe that's what I'm poking at. A while ago when a computer I had broke and the cursor wandered off screen and then back on from the other side, and I wondered where did it go. Poking at a presentation of what it looks like in my brain when I think about those kinds of questions.