Norma Cohen as Echo

Echo started life as a ten minute play written in just 48 hours. The piece was inspired by the story of Echo and Narcissus from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. It formed part of the Cold Writing Festival, a strand within Ovid Reworked: The Brixton Project, and was presented in an empty-shop within Brixton market.

Since then the piece has been developed further with showings as part of Sounding Off at the Vitrine Gallery and the scratch night PILOT in Birmingham.

Echo explores themes of torture and public punishment. The piece continues to be developed over the course of 2010.

Links

Are You Sitting Comfortably

Artsadmin

Performance

“…everything’s been taken care of – in front of each of you is a full script for the evening. It sets out everything you need to say and do to remember Paul. Please follow it carefully and don’t deviate. You should begin after this toast. And so, everyone, I’d like you to raise your glasses. To Paul Allen.”

A participatory scripted drama for 30 people.

Commentary

Instructions for a Wake is a scripted scene for a group of participants to perform to each other. The piece explores the theme of family and the action takes place at a wake.  It was first presented as a scratch performance at Battersea Arts Centre and further developed over the course of a two week residency there.

Images

Click on an image below for a larger version (images from the scratch performance).

Links

Instructions for a Wake was a collaboration with Martina von Holn

Five Easy Pieces was a limited-edition set of 5 original artworks, created by the artists of performance company Switch. Mark contributed Instructions for 24th December, a Christmas ghost story for two people to perform at home on Christmas Eve.

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The other artists contributing to 5 Easy Pieces were:

Helen Schoene, Robin Dingemans, Ewelina Kolaczek and Justin Allen

Smash the control images. Smash the control machines… was created for Performances That Kill, an evening of performance art in response to the photography of Charles Gatewood. The title was inspired by Charles Gatewood and a quote from William Burroughs. You can view documentation for the event here.

Links

Smash the control image. Smash the control machines… was a collaboration with the artist Ewelina Kolaczek.

Two cities. Two rivers. Two generations.

Performance

On a series of notice boards overlooking the Thames is a scripted conversation between the artist, Mark Butcher, and his grandmother. The artist gives participants a mobile phone. The text on the boards instructs them to call Gran in Plymouth and perform Mark’s side of the conversation. Gran performs her side. The artist watches the call being performed.

Commentary

Instructions for a Call is a site-specific piece performed on the banks of Rivers, the Plym in Plymouth, where I grew up, and the Thames in London, where I now live. The piece explores the distance that inevitably grows up between family members and generations. It looks at how we try to bridge this distance and presents a fleeting, unreal moment when we’re once again united.

Images

Click on an image below for a larger version.

Links

my site | in space

Downloads

PDF of the script/text (file size: 661.9kb requires Adobe Acrobat or other PDF reader)

A community hall on a Sunday afternoon. Preparations for a play.
A director. A scene under rehearsal. A struggle toward utopia.
An attempt to outrun history, powered by an ever-changing series of actors.

Performance

A scene from a play is rehearsed over and over again by a ‘director’ (the artist) and an ever-changing group of ‘actors’ (the participants). The scene is for two characters involved in an armed revolutionary struggle. Participants are free to come and go, they can watch from the auditorium or take to the stage when instructed by the ‘director’.

Commentary

Instructions for a Wake mixes together a seaside town, a revolution, play-acting and firearms. The script is a mixture of community theatre and agit-prop, strange, silly but disturbingly serious… It asks the audience up on to the stage, puts a gun in their hands and wonders if they can make it believable.

Images

Click on an image below for a larger version.

Links

Instructions for a Scene was part of the 1st weekend of the Whitstable Biennale curated by Emma Leach

Performance

The artist instructs a group of participants to create a sequence of three tableaus. Each depicts a moment from an apocalyptic narrative, beginning with a group of scientists creating a terrifying weapon and culminating in the end of the world. The artist photographs each tableau and later assembles the images into an online exhibition that the participants are invited to view.

Commentary

Instructions for an Exhibition sets out to examine the relationships between artist,  audience and subject. It playfully turns the audience in to both the materials and subject of an ‘exhibition’, and ask questions about ownership, complicity and exploitation.

Images

Click on an image below for a larger version (images © 2007 Andy Eaton).

Images from the exhibition

These images were taken by the artist as part of the performance. Click on an image below for a larger version.

Links

My Site | In Space