What a performance!
What, a performance?
I consider all my work to be a performance in some
sense – change is an important element in its process/structure/form.
Between the child-like excitement of the magical eruption of the Guinness
Clock (originally sited in Battersea Park, London) and the adrenaline
rush of stage fright, the works live or die. Reflecting on time and mortality,
the ‘art’ exists in my attempts to reduce uncertainty to
risk.
Personal statement of ecological arts practice :
Ecology: the study of organisms in relation to one
another and to their surroundings, derived from the Greek word, oikos,
meaning house, or dwelling
Art: rt from an Indo-Aryan noun/adjective
of the Rg Veda, meaning the dynamic process by which the whole
cosmos continues to be created - virtuously
Eco-art ‘…the most moral act
of all is the making of space for life to move onward’. – Robert
Pirsig, Lila: an inquiry in to morals.
I perceive our ability to survive climate change as the enactment of
an evolutionary narrative. My interdisciplinary research attempts
to integrate quantitative and qualitative methodologies into the creative
process. This informs my practice to generate poetic dialogues that resonate
as creative interventions in pursuit of aesthetic diversity to develop
communities of inquiry for an eco-centric culture.
Using water as a metaphor for life and understanding (memory), I consider
each work/project to be a tributary to the stream of practice – a
confluence of actions to engage others in a dynamic dialogue and experience
an embodied ecology – Shiva Nataraja.
Seeking an Unacceptable Profile: species
nova [to look anew] # 1 2000
Based on research into the microbial content in drinking water with
Professor Joanna Verran and two of her BSc students, the performed installation
also considered the language of science used to identify and categorise
new bacteria. Visitors to the installation had their feet washed by Haley
(dressed in a laboratory white coat) and were then invited to tour six,
back-lit water coolers to experience different uses of water – drinking,
washing, wasting, renouncing guilt, anointing, purifying.
Projected images of water-born bacteria filled a wall of the transformed
lecture theatre, while a voice-over narrated the students’ scientific
report with the understated authority of a BBC radio newscaster. Twelve
Haiku poems and other texts questioned our relationship with and experience
of ‘nature’.
In your blood I run,
A fugitive from your time.
Through tears you see me.
The work gave rise to the on-going, ‘species nova [to
look anew]’, programme of artworks that investigate the evolutionary
implications of climate change - dissolving the conflict between culture
and nature in water.
River Life 3000: a dialogue for the beginning of time 2001
and continuing
Commissioned as an on-going ecological arts residency by Shrewsbury
Museum and Art Gallery, the programme of projects considers creative
opportunities for the future of people living with climate change and
the River Severn. This was prompted by the ‘Great Millennium Floods’ of
2000/2001. Shrewsbury’s remediation strategy, designed by the Environment
Agency, aimed to reduced the risk of flooding from 1 in 50 years to 1
in 100 years. I posed the question, ‘what might happen in a 1 in
1,000 year scenario, given the accelerating effects of climate change’ (hence
River Life 3000)?
The ‘live gallery installation’ (2003) featured the enhanced
and amplified splash of water drips, marking the passage of time, as
they drained from a glass clepsydra (an ancient Greek water clock) to
potentially flood a glass font set below. The theatrical lighting and
placing of the elements, including poems written onto flood damaged doors,
further heightened the drama of this work.
The door poems:
- The future and other creation myths
- In the making
- Psalm for the Severn
- The drawing and the re-drawing of the littoral
- Come to pass
As a means of developing active local participation and international
awareness of the River Life 3000 dialogue, I have performed poetry from
this work at conferences, galleries and public meetings in the UK, Europe
and Japan. So, the poetic narrative, taken from conversations with floodplain
dwellers, environmental professionals, and local authority officers,
has touched different publics and thereby extended the diversity of the
programme’s aesthetic. This form owes much to my field research
of Indian folk performance - storytelling being the archetypical form
for all art – seamlessly vocal, visual and physical acts evoking
a shared experience.
Door Poem : Come to Pass
one drop of water
potential diversity
life as we know it
…come to pass…
and when love runs out
a re-futures aesthetic
time to see anew
…come to pass…
pyramids flooded
this ark of the covenant
castles made of sand
…come to pass…
spreading summer’s song
words fall in to the moment
Sabrina’s rhythm
…come to pass…
to witness, to see,
to know and to understand,
to love, you and me
…come to pass…
a futures toolkit
for all the drivers of change
the risk we take
…come to pass…
re-future trading
uncertain speculation
regeneration
…come to pass…
fugitive love song
a re-insurance culture
re-value, re-life
…All things come to pass…
species nova
See also the performance text by David Haley :
Creative
interventions: eco-culture and aesthetic diversity [PDF]
Species
Nova [To See Anew]: Art as Ecology [PDF]
Contact
w :
http://www.mmu.ac.uk/sea
http://greenmuseum.org/c/ecovention
http://www.ub.edu/escult/1.htm
http://search.freefind.com/find....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire...
e : d.haley at mmu.ac.uk
Events at which the poetic narrative from River Life 3000 has been performed
include:
River life: a meandering intervention 2001
Public Art Observatory international conference, University of Barcelona
The future and other creation myths 2002
Emotional Geographies international conference, Lancaster University,
Come to pass
ASLE international conference, University of Leeds, UK
Psalm for the Severn 2002
Shrewsbury Traders Association, River Group
Thank you / Towards a Kyoto Proposal / A Plea for Participation 2003
River Life 3000 private view, Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery
Honen-in Temple, 3rd World Water Forum/Crossover UK, Kyoto
Social Sculpture / Connective Aesthetics Methodologies Colloquium, Oxford
Brookes University
Crossover UK seminar (performed by David Harding), Whitechapel Art Gallery,
London
Public Parks: Keep Out conference, Sensory Trust/Green Spaces, Manchester
Town Hall
Biography
David Haley’s arts practice comes from a Fine Arts training, community
arts development and European touring theatre. His ecological direction
began as General Manager of the pioneering celebratory arts company,
Welfare State International and developed with his Barrow Environmental
Arts Unit (BEAU) regeneration project.
As a Research Fellow at MIRIAD, the Manchester Institute for Research
and Innovation in Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University,
Haley contributes to SEA (Social and Environmental Arts) Research Unit,
Arts for Health, A&E: art&ecology research centre and is the
MA Art As Environment Course Leader. He also sits on the University’s
Community Group and Faculty Equal Opportunities Committee.
Haley is a Director on the Board of Trustees of CITE: Commissions In
The Environment and a member of Manchester City Council’s Arts
in Mental Health, Neighbourhood Renewal Fund, Pathways Steering Group.
He is an active member of the Public Art Observatory and regularly contributes
to international journals, publications, conferences and exhibitions.
Photo Credits
1] David Haley
2 & 3] Simon Webb
4] David Haley
5 & 6] Yvonne Haley
Photographs provided by and copyright of David Haley