Arts

4 Arts

Steve Waters and Tangled Feet: ‘Murmurations’

By Jack Warren

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Murmurations is Written by Steve Waters and directed by Nathan Curry. Waters has been working alongside the Arts and Humanities Research Council and UEA to explore how it is possible for drama and performance to aid the conservation of the natural world. The show was performed at two different locations: The National Trust’s Wicken Fen Nature Reserve and the RSPB’s Strumpshaw Fen Reserve. Part of the beauty of the play is that the place in which you see it will impact your experience of it, as well as the weather, who was there, and what time it was.

Both places are also the subject of the play, perhaps even characters in their own right. The rest of the performers: - Chanice Hird, Emily Eversden, Mario Christofides, Carl Parkin, and Fiona Watson - are of Tangled Feet, a troop with a reputation for site-specific performances. Murmurations takes this concept to a new level. The play is a guided headphone tour that includes audio, visual and poetic mediums that are seamlessly stitched together by the fen’s atmosphere as part of the performance.

The narrative follows several different characters, each with a different relationship to the fen: a farmer’s son, a bereaved woman, her mother, two estate agents, and a couple of birdwatchers. There are times when it is difficult to determine who is part of the play and who just happens to be wandering around the reserve, a feeling that would not be possible without the careful balance between public and private that Murmurations achieves. Characters appear in various spots in the landscape, sometimes visible from a long way away and sometimes not until the last moment. Murmurations is a kind of performance that many will have never experienced the likes of.

As you walk along, sound design by Guy Connelly and Music by Polly Wright maintains the atmosphere and feels like a part of the air in the fen. The music is both tormenting and soft

in the way it alters how you see the landscape; the fen moves from a static natural beauty spot to a world alive with people’s stories, memories, and emotions both past and present. Passers-by become unknowing extras, and the audience part of the story. At times it feels as though you are a character in a videogame, each interaction a cutscene, venturing along not knowing what the next encounter will be.

What Waters has carefully done with Murmurations is demonstrate the importance of landscape in changing the temporal and emotional boundaries in our lives. But specifically, how important ecology is in making these connections to ourselves and each other. Waters shows us the beautiful points where humans and nature collide and reform. This connection seems to come from a peculiar place of grief. There is grief for the loss of human life as well as grief for something much broader: a grieving for the loss of connection to nature and the many ecosystems that have died or are dying.

And so, the play is written about its purpose, to reconnect us with the spaces we take for granted. Before It is too late. A murmuration is a flocking together that birds do to travel over long distances both deterring predators and minimising the amount of energy they expend. As the play points out at one point, nature’s only goal is survival. It does not acknowledge borders, cultures, or languages. It seems that through this play, Waters is telling us that we must do the same thing.

Arts The Creative Process: Creative spaces

By Elizabeth Woor

We’ve all heard people say that a clean space makes a clear mind. But what sort of space helps nurture creativity? It’s a question that many have attempted to answer in the past, hoping to unlock the secrets of society’s most famous artists. Quite simply, there is no one answer to this question. Creative spaces are intensely linked to those who occupy them.

Where an artist creates their work is an incredibly personal place. They might spend most of their lives just trying to culminate an environment that stimulates their creativity to its maximum level. It’s also no secret that artists often become so engrossed in their projects that these ‘work’ spaces spill over into their personal lives. The boundaries between an artist’s creative space and home are therefore not always entirely clear.

Some might even go as far to say that an artist’s studio is like an extension of their work. Personally, I believe this to be true. Take, for example, Jackson Pollock’s studio. The studio itself was relatively plain - there was a wooden floor, one big window to let light in and lots of trolleys scattered around holding paint. However, what made his studio unique to his art was the layers of paint that slowly built up on the floor. Pollock famously loved to work on the floor so that he could drip paint on the canvas. His slightly chaotic and sporadic movements with the paint resulted in the surrounding wooden floor panels also being heavily decorated. Pollock’s studio was thus completely unique to his own artistic process.

Studios over time have expanded enormously. Nowadays, it is common for world famous artists to employ dozens of workers to help them bring their ideas to life. In regards to studio spaces, this means bigger working areas and more ‘professional’ finishes. Perhaps reflecting the consumerist culture of today, artists such as Jeff Koons work in what Artspace called a warehouse that resembles more of an ‘apple plant’ than an artist’s studio. Koons’ work is strongly tied to popular culture, so perhaps we shouldn’t expect his studio to look like anything other than a technological empire.

Of course, most artists do not have the luxury of working in spaces that are as grand as Koons’. Especially in large cities such as London, space for an artist can be like gold. Small spaces aren’t necessarily a bad thing though, some creatives thrive off being closely surrounded by their work and inspirations. Francis Bacon felt most creative in his cramped, messy studio. Many would say that the mess in his studio would prevent them from feeling relaxed, but what works for one person does not necessarily work for another.

Artist studios are complex. In my opinion, they are undoubtedly linked to the way that artists create. Whether it is a subconscious effort or not, the surroundings of artists bleed into their work. Often, this can also occur in the opposite manner – the art slowly takes over the space it is housed in. Either way, the right creative space for an artist can change their artistic direction forever.

Bridges by Claire Sullivan

By Jack Warren

Bridges is a brutally honest portrayal of mental illness. A bridge might seem like a slightly clichéd metaphor when it comes to the complex areas of life that we all navigate at some point. But Sullivan dismantles the long-flogged bridge peddled by therapists and councillors and builds a new one out of the wreckage. One of resilient acceptance grounded in stoic thought and self-control. It is not without emotion that this happens though. We are given a tender insight into what life is like for many people who struggle under pressure. And in doing so, the piece forced us to examine our own experiences under Sullivan’s gaze.

Claire Sullivan is a self-described ‘slogger’ as mentioned in her work. Beginning with a bridge crossing, she describes the slogger’s disposition to the world as perhaps slightly fearful, but resolute, placing one foot in front of the other. Always going for the next goal. As a 3rd year scriptwriting and performance student from UEA, Sullivan’s education has clearly given her the ability to think critically about the world. In Bridges, we see a clever reversal of this application and deconstruction that we students learn. The superb twist with Bridges, is that the spotlight here is turned back onto education itself. Specifically, the pressure that is inherent in all levels of education and what it can do to young people.

What Bridges does specifically, has to do with unlocking the place where pressure, a truly life changing pressure, starts to affect many people. For many this all starts with GCSE’s. It is rare that we stop to consider, when did all these feelings begin? Sullivan asks us to stop and look at the way we feel from a different angle. Why must we always be moving forward without question, without appreciation, for the present moment and what we have achieved so far? In this sense, Bridges offers its own form of therapeutic practise. Sullivan’s examination of mental health issues goes right back to the formative years of pressure and responsibility. The stress of exams and the future comes at the most unstable time of many of our lives. For those of us who carry on, perhaps regrettably with education, we forget how we felt when this pressure is forced upon us because for many of us it has been constant since then. This is when the pain of perfectionism begins for sloggers like Sullivan. This pain is explored in depth, quite obviously with the eye of a perfectionist.

In Sullivan’s voice, there is a welcome honesty and at times raw emotion. It is clear this is somebody who has thought long and hard about the articulation of her experiences and processing of emotions. We are shown how a relentless drive for perfection can be transformed into a drive to appreciate the small, the day to day, that leads to the recovery of a sense of self. Something which can easily be lost in the waves of assessments, deadlines, and exams. Which is a valuable lesson that many of us could learn. Bridges tells us that it’s OK to occasionally not be making moves forward across the bridge, but to just stop and acknowledge where we are, and appreciate it for what it is. Overall, Bridges is an exceptionally well written and performed piece that offers us the time to stop and consider how we approach the pressures of life and why. It is something to which we can all intimately relate. But of course, we must wonder, with Sullivan’s self-described disposition as a ‘slogger’ what comes next now that this bridge is crossed?