Sat with coffee in the corner of a charming café, we met to decide
upon the nature of a new planet and its contents. The first hour was
concerned with the practicalities and relative merit of various tectonic,
hydrological, meteorological and physical systems. The nurture of responsible
mountains and rainbows was a central concern. However it was decided
that for the most part the laws of physics served us well, that the creation
of a new sun was out of our remit, and warranted no further discussion.
The meeting continued for a further six hours and covered progressively
slippery areas of discussion ending with the creation of escape clauses
in case things were to go wrong at some future point. Perhaps our creation
might turn against us, perhaps we would tire of it… We succeeded
in perverting our honest, hopeful intentions of making a better place
by employing our blameless ignorance to bite off more than we could ever
possibly hope to chew, committing a mighty act of hubris.
Since this meeting our work has centred on notions of invention both
of nature and ourselves.
In a studio with a few lights on we met to unleash the Dumb Bunny; we
let it change our worlds by changing our bodies, slipping us into dreams,
running lemmings off cliffs while mollycoddling penguins.
Huddled around a gas stove in our Base Camp in a walled garden we experimented
in world creation, experimented on our audience and other plastic animals.
We have developed methods of confusion, immersion and distraction that
allow us to change the world between your blinks and heartbeats or while
you are asleep.
r e a d e r
Through the varied pieces that we have created certain themes reappear:
animals and nature, a conscious awareness of the present moment and the
creation of memory, black humour and sincerity. We employ evolutionary
shapes and timescales, making work based on the shape of a storm, the
change from a day to a night, the change from a deer to a blue whale.
We meet nature through visitation and becoming.
What we bring to the process is rooted in specifics; as research is
shared, it is stretched, perverted and knocked by random events. What
forms is a unique landscape through which the performance is chartered.
New interrelationships of logic both challenge their starting point,
and provide a line to the materials past, driving it, however invisibly.
r e a d e r is a collaborative performance group based
in Glasgow, dedicated to the production of new theatre, site specific
works and associated projects in digital media, video and installation.
Shared authorship through processes of collaboration is at the heart
of the group's work.
Comprising a core of four artists, since the group
formed in 2001
r e a d e r
has produced three studio-based performances
and a host of events for alternative spaces.
Contact
w : www.readreader.org
e : info at readreader.org
Studio performances:
Dumb Bunny 2003
Tramway Dark Lights commission
Glasgow
touring Spring 2005
An intimate piece about escape, disguise and keeping perspective between
the top and bottom of a cliff.
2003 was the year of the new world. Dumb Bunny is our way of showing
how to start to make your own world by quietly exiting this one. For
a year we explored ways in which we could correct or even re-make the
world using our super-human powers of persuasion and hypnosis.
your hand on my skin and the Earth’s still turning 2002
A performance about getting lost in the dark, creeping rot and putting
yourself to sleep. About setting yourself on fire, only to be drenched
by second hand tea from the mouth of the Health Minister of Bhutan
So Long 2001
A studio piece about monumental and momentary change, transformation
and evolution. A night sea crossing taking in the end and the beginning
of the world, explaining what living is along the way.
Research performances:
a meeting to decide upon the nature of a new planet and its
contents 2003
We hit a point in our research where we could not go forward until this meeting
was carried out. It was carried out, it took seven hours.
Base Camp 2003
We went back to the Hostel environment performing a durational event, underneath
the branches, canvases, plastics, clouds and stars. It was a further development
of our ongoing process exploring evolution and worldliness.
Special Relationship 2002
In the grand front room of a Victorian Youth Hostel, we put up our tents
and bedded down. At the height of the Iraqi weapons inspection debacle,
r
e a d e r offered an alternative interrogation
Photo Credits
1] Phil Stainer
2, 3, 4 & 5] r e a d e r
Photographs provided by and copyright of
r e a d e r