Orographic
This project is about morphography, transfiguration, mapping, describing, showing and epitomising; it is about mountains, desire, emotion, before and after, landscape, drawing, moving, falling down, gravity, ecology and responsibility.
An Inclination to describe what we have seen leads us to make communications with other people and with the things around us. We are a descriptor for our own behaviour and a description of physical action. What we see is how we are or may become. To look at a mountain is to look at something vast, we become filled with a desire to be part of that enormity. What may feel like a desire for conquest is a need for assimilation and belonging. If we break something to discover what it is made of then are we trying to become like the thing we have destroyed? The short circuit of seeing linked with a desire to own can prevent us from seeing and understanding.
This project looks at the landscape and at massive, tectonic structures in particular. Artist and public will are invited to consider the physical form and effects of mountains on their own lives. At each performance location we will create a response to one monumental landform.
Beginning with the physical shapes, colours, textures and lines of the site we made costume and movement that talks about mountains and their historical place within local culture and ecology.
Orographic will guide you into an alternative reality, bringing perspective and compassion.
Way
The figure stepped forward into a ladder of sunlight.
Below precipital shoulders a wild and pathless forest grew
with a marked cleft or ravine at the North and South faces,
filled with swift water.
Seen at a distance, harsh lines in pinnacular form lifted above
its shoulders and white with ice hung three triangular massifs,
the central piece being the tallest.
Stepping across the landscape the air around it was
meteorological and thick with a quad of ravens suspended or
pinned in indigo blue air.