Nicola Morton Static Ice Melt 12/04/2012 Performance
1hr10min; Video 15min; Installation 2.2mx2.2mx0.5m ice, recycled wood,
newspaper, diary entries, polyeurethane film; Photographic Installation/Costume
2mx1.5m 32 modified 4x6prints on recycled plastic; for “The Cage In Us” Judith
Wright Center of Contemporary Art, Brisbane.
The
performance/installation happens simultaneously with Cage’s Theater Pieces (1960) as part of the
“Cage In Us” festival celebrating John Cage’s 100th birthday. The
performance experiments with ideas of psychological static and melting vs
stasis and shedding at the autumn equinox.
The performance is an
audio-visual experiment and durational. Nicola lies on a bed of ice for 1hr and
10 minutes. Sounds from VLF receivers and static are produced, accompanied by a
projection of a performance for video of an autumn equinox ritual, Nicola
screaming at the edges of a gigantic waterfall. The bed of ice is installed
surrounded and littered by photographs, newspapers and diary entries spanning
the last year and a half. Nicola wears a camoflauge hooded costume made out of
transparent cellophane and photos. The photos reflect stasis, and consist mostly
of lone psychedelic experiences with strangers and the built environment.
The audience response
was also an experiment (and on reflection, frustratingly ironic). Mostly the
viewers sit down and read the diary entries to the freezing Nicola, a weird
time warp happens as they read her own diary entries to her, trying to keep her
mind engaged while she slowly becomes frozen from the ice. An unexpected sense
of community was experienced.
Psychedelic and
shamanic forces vacillate between static (permanent) and (stasis) temporary. Sharing
a shedding ritual is problematic. In an attempt to psychologically free herself
from her diary entries and photographic memories of stasis nothing is actually
shed at all. The community rescues the entries and upholds the static till her
death. Media triumphs forever as static. Shedding is truly temporary. Ice
melts.
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