Monday 23 September 2013
Family Time
one of the great joys of my extended time away from work has been the opportunity to do lots of different things together and with different members of my wonderful family.
We watch films, go bowling, have a trip to Cadbury World. I have dinner in London with my youngest niece. We visit an interactive exhibition by famous children's author, Julia Donaldson. We enjoy a fantastic day out in Gloucester with my brother and his family.
And best of all, we celebrate our youngest grandson's birthday, not once but twice! Like the Queen he deserves special treatment, and he's now made it to three years old. What a very special party ... or should I say, 'parties'!
Yours as ever,
electrofried(mr)
Thursday 19 September 2013
Wednesday 18 September 2013
Punch-drunk and reeling ....
Dear Sheddists,
it's not just the photography course that occupies my attentions during the recent sabbatical visit to London. On Wednesday evening I take the tube to Paddington and join a growing queue outside a huge disused warehouse just round the corner from the station. We've come to see Punchdrunk's production, 'The Drowned Man', an interactive play based loosely on Georg Buchner's, 'Woyzeck' and the warehouse is the venue for Temple Studios, a mythological Hollywood film-set.
We're shepherded into neat lines, issued with identical porcelain-white masks to be worn for the duration of the performance and instructed to remain silent at all times. We're then released into a dimly-lit labyrinthine corridor that twists first one way then another until at last we arrive at the doors of an old-fashioned elevator shaft. The lift opens and we're beckoned in by a commanding concierge. Once the doors close safe behind he provides the very briefest of introductions to just a few of the characters we will encounter during the night before ushering us out into the bottom floor of the warehouse.
It, too, is dimly lit but a little further investigation reveals it to be the setting for a 1940s American trailer park. We're left to roam, exploring the trailer-vans and surrounding areas in criss-crossing streams of white-porcelained solemnity. The intricate detail of the set is breath-taking; there are artifacts, posters, personal belongings. letters, photographs - all of which we are free to look at, pick up and examine to our hearts content. The letters, in particular, provide a number of a clues to the story that's about to unfold.
The braver members of the six-hundred strong audience begin to venture beyond the trailer-park to discover a deserted chapel, complete with over-flowing bath-tub and penitent rosaries, and on the other side of the floor a Wild-west film-set. Already, the boundaries between what is 'real' and what is recreated have dissolved into a misty hallucinogenic haze.
The first of the cast appears, a distraught lady, who leads away a number of the audience in the direction of a saloon-bar as her part of the story begins to unfold. But hers is but one of many and before long there are actors running this way and that, cutting and dicing the audience over and over again as we seek to keep up.
Apparently unconnected scenes unfold before us. Spurned lovers, shoot-outs and beatings, a bar-room serenade, a series of dressing-room dramas - the paths of the actors and their following audiences intertwined up and down the four levels of the warehouse.
Over the course of two and half hours it's absolutely impossible to keep up with more than a few strands of the story, but this fragmented quality just adds to the immersive and disorientating experience of the event. Each floor contains a number of different sets to explore, many of which mirror or mimic those on another level. The scariest of all is at the very top of the warehouse where the Sand-witch lives. Her lair includes a recreated funeral, complete with rows of straw-filled, motionless dummies.
As time passes the action becomes more and more frenetic until at last all the audience is brought together in the one set for the climax of the performance. I won't spoil the show by telling you what it is .. even if I had understood it!
We leave the warehouse, Punchdrunk and reeling ... what an evening!
Find out more here ...
best regards,
electrofried(mr)
it's not just the photography course that occupies my attentions during the recent sabbatical visit to London. On Wednesday evening I take the tube to Paddington and join a growing queue outside a huge disused warehouse just round the corner from the station. We've come to see Punchdrunk's production, 'The Drowned Man', an interactive play based loosely on Georg Buchner's, 'Woyzeck' and the warehouse is the venue for Temple Studios, a mythological Hollywood film-set.
We're shepherded into neat lines, issued with identical porcelain-white masks to be worn for the duration of the performance and instructed to remain silent at all times. We're then released into a dimly-lit labyrinthine corridor that twists first one way then another until at last we arrive at the doors of an old-fashioned elevator shaft. The lift opens and we're beckoned in by a commanding concierge. Once the doors close safe behind he provides the very briefest of introductions to just a few of the characters we will encounter during the night before ushering us out into the bottom floor of the warehouse.
It, too, is dimly lit but a little further investigation reveals it to be the setting for a 1940s American trailer park. We're left to roam, exploring the trailer-vans and surrounding areas in criss-crossing streams of white-porcelained solemnity. The intricate detail of the set is breath-taking; there are artifacts, posters, personal belongings. letters, photographs - all of which we are free to look at, pick up and examine to our hearts content. The letters, in particular, provide a number of a clues to the story that's about to unfold.
The braver members of the six-hundred strong audience begin to venture beyond the trailer-park to discover a deserted chapel, complete with over-flowing bath-tub and penitent rosaries, and on the other side of the floor a Wild-west film-set. Already, the boundaries between what is 'real' and what is recreated have dissolved into a misty hallucinogenic haze.
The first of the cast appears, a distraught lady, who leads away a number of the audience in the direction of a saloon-bar as her part of the story begins to unfold. But hers is but one of many and before long there are actors running this way and that, cutting and dicing the audience over and over again as we seek to keep up.
Apparently unconnected scenes unfold before us. Spurned lovers, shoot-outs and beatings, a bar-room serenade, a series of dressing-room dramas - the paths of the actors and their following audiences intertwined up and down the four levels of the warehouse.
Over the course of two and half hours it's absolutely impossible to keep up with more than a few strands of the story, but this fragmented quality just adds to the immersive and disorientating experience of the event. Each floor contains a number of different sets to explore, many of which mirror or mimic those on another level. The scariest of all is at the very top of the warehouse where the Sand-witch lives. Her lair includes a recreated funeral, complete with rows of straw-filled, motionless dummies.
As time passes the action becomes more and more frenetic until at last all the audience is brought together in the one set for the climax of the performance. I won't spoil the show by telling you what it is .. even if I had understood it!
We leave the warehouse, Punchdrunk and reeling ... what an evening!
Find out more here ...
best regards,
electrofried(mr)
Sunday 15 September 2013
London remembered
Dear Sheddists,
if you've followed this peripatetic blog thus far you're probably wondering what all the strange photos from my course in London are about. Well, puzzle no more ...
Simple as ABC
Our first project is to find letters of the alphabet 'on the street', a turn of words afforded a somewhat liberal interpretation by our tutor. Mine are culled from the building where the course takes place, a leisurely walk along the Regent's Canal toward Camden and a fleeting visit to the gardens of St Pancras Old Church. It's fascinating to explore the hinterlands of the City and the gardens, in particular, prove especially interesting.
From subsequent research I discover the church is mentioned in Charles Dickens', 'A Tale of Two Cities', reputedly as a supply source for itinerant body-snatchers. Fittingly, it's also the last resting place for the mother of Mary Shelley, author of 'Frankenstein'. Rumour has it she planned her elopement with the poet Peter Bysshe Shelley whilst in the graveyard tending to her mother's memorial.
Finally, it appears the church gardens also have an illustrious photographic history. They provide the backdrop for artwork used by the Beatles to promote both 'Hey Jude' and 'The White Album'.
Little do I know all this as I set to work capturing a few more letters of the alphabet. And it's then I chance upon ....
if you've followed this peripatetic blog thus far you're probably wondering what all the strange photos from my course in London are about. Well, puzzle no more ...
Simple as ABC
Our first project is to find letters of the alphabet 'on the street', a turn of words afforded a somewhat liberal interpretation by our tutor. Mine are culled from the building where the course takes place, a leisurely walk along the Regent's Canal toward Camden and a fleeting visit to the gardens of St Pancras Old Church. It's fascinating to explore the hinterlands of the City and the gardens, in particular, prove especially interesting.
From subsequent research I discover the church is mentioned in Charles Dickens', 'A Tale of Two Cities', reputedly as a supply source for itinerant body-snatchers. Fittingly, it's also the last resting place for the mother of Mary Shelley, author of 'Frankenstein'. Rumour has it she planned her elopement with the poet Peter Bysshe Shelley whilst in the graveyard tending to her mother's memorial.
Finally, it appears the church gardens also have an illustrious photographic history. They provide the backdrop for artwork used by the Beatles to promote both 'Hey Jude' and 'The White Album'.
Little do I know all this as I set to work capturing a few more letters of the alphabet. And it's then I chance upon ....
The Hardy Tree
In the mid 1860's a budding author and poet is charged with over-seeing graveyard excavation works to facilitate the construction of the nearby Midland Railway London terminus. Hundreds of headstones are removed and set out in a neat circle, only to be pierced in repose by Mother Nature. A sapling springs to life in the centre of the circle and the Hardy Tree is born.
He goes on to write, 'Far from the Madding Crowd', 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' and 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles'. The sapling, meanwhile, puts in an equally impressive shift ... as you can see from the photographs above.
Fresh
Our sophomore project is delivered on the second day of the course when we each receive a sealed brown envelope. Mine contains the single-word challenge, 'Fresh'. After much head-scratching I resolve to visit the legendary fish-market of Billingsgate, now relocated to the unpretentious backyard of glittering capitalist Canary Wharf.
I awake at four, and after the briefest of showers set out in search of my chosen subject-matter. The tube-station at Euston Square is all but deserted. It's a short hop to Baker Street and then on to the Jubilee Line for a dawn-break zombie ride to the Wharf. It too lies silent and brooding in the early morning air. A five minute walk punctuated by the occasional perfunctory jogger and then I'm there!
The hustle of piscine trade belies its ice-cold surrounds. The stall-holders to a man are friendly and welcoming, beckoning me on to take a series of photographs. An hour passes in the blink of a shutter and I retire for a much-needed bacon and scallop roll, cooked as I watch, at the fish-market cafe.
Street Life
The remainder of my City photos are no more than quick-grapped snap-shots, dipping into the shallows of a restless metropolis. But what bliss to lose myself in the moment!
Then all too soon ... it's over.
See the photos
Please do take a look at the galleries posted earlier in my blog and see if they make any more sense. You'll find them below if you scroll down a little further.
best regards,
electrofried(mr)
Thursday 5 September 2013
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