Pearson/Brookes : carrying Lyn

 

On Saturday June 2nd 2001 - the day of the Wales-Poland soccer international - Mike Brookes, Mike Pearson, John Rowley, Richard Morgan, Paul Jeff and disabled performer Lyn Levett performed two journeys across the centre of the the city of Cardiff.

[the first journey] - At 12 noon Pearson, Rowley, Morgan and Jeff left Cardiff Central station and carried Levett through the crowded city streets, on a predetermined route through nine agreed and fixed locations. Each leg of the journey, ten in all - to be completed within precisely ten minutes, regardless of their distance apart - was tracked and videoed by Mike Brookes. At each location there was a pause of precisely five minutes, recorded by a single group photograph, shot on colour Polaroid film. The journey culminated at Chapter Arts Centre two and a half hours later. An enigmatic event experienced by passers-by, 'en passant'.

[the second journey] - At 7.40pm, they set out to retrace their route precisely, through the same locations and durations, across a city which, within the space of a few hours, had changed its nature. Now videoing themselves and recording their pauses on black-and-white Polaroids shot by Jeff, the group members passed their documents immediately to waiting cycle couriers who ferried them back to Brookes, within ten minutes of their making. An enigmatic event experienced by passers-by, 'en passant'.

[the assemblage] - From 8pm, for an audience in Chapter's studio theatre, Mike Brookes simultaneously constructed and presented possible versions of both journeys, in real time, from the available documentation: layering video and audio recordings from the first Journey with footage from the second couriered to him directly from the street, and juxtaposing this with the presentation of still images and recordings of short theoretical and critical textual reflections on the contemporary city. The reconstruction of the journey thus took place within a twenty minute time delay of the live event, a delay that was both revealed and confounded by the eventual arrival of the performers in Chapter.

 

* for related material please try the performance chronology of the archive and the Pearson/Brookes category of the blog