Pearson/Brookes : the man who ate his boots

 

'the man who are his boots' marked the second studio base collaboration by Brookes and Pearson; and was made as a direct response to issues arising within the recent act of their work 'the first five miles', and an exploration of the possibilities of re-examing those issues within a studio context.

At the centre of the work Mike Pearson performed the text of his complex four part monologue - structured across an examination of the exploits of four men from his home county of Lincolnshire: two who left for Wales, a third who grew sugar in Australia, and a fourth who tried to walk to the north pole. Brookes framed that act of delivery among an informal gathering of spectators, contained within a space defined and lit simply by the physical and durational structure of four computer controlled slide projectors and four small back-projection screens. The screens simply detailing the route of their previous five mile journey, through photographic documentation of the surrounding landscape at fifth of a mile intervals. While Brookes' aural architecture layered and structured a driving sound ambient that made it impossible to engage acoustically with the spoken text of Pearsons' performance, while enabling the delivery of his voice directly to each spectator individually via short range radio link and the provision of individual headsets.

'the man who are his boots' was initially developed and presented within the Centre of Performance Research : 'performance, places and pasts' conference, 1998.

 

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