From Islands to Acronyms
In February 2010 I uploaded www.projecteigg.info, an unusual platform for the presentation of visual and aural artworks that had been the culmination of two years of activity with the Isle of Eigg, a tiny island community in the Scottish Small Isles. The website’s spider diagrams and shades of grey offered (and still offers to visitors) as little interpretation upon the outcomes of Project Eigg as possible, whilst also being reminiscent of analytical diagrams and charts.
The artworks created during Project Eigg explored the way I saw the Eiggach relating to their contemporary and historical island, and the discontinuities therein. In several cases I found myself creating a ‘revival’ or even generating an island myth that seemed closer to something the contemporary islanders could relate-to, than the myths of the historical island that they are effectively stewards of.
Performances on remote hillsides, interventions and the eventual audio walking guides were all based on recorded conversations, popular phrases and island stories – old and new. Interpretation was unavoidable. Yet it had to be danced-around carefully, with islanders comments such as “we don’t want to be anthropologised” and in one particular case “the word interpretation makes people think ‘wank’… [it’s] often associated with people who’ve not a fucking clue about the place or the history”. I must admit, at the time I found this environment extremely challenging. Making ‘input’ like this a part of the project seemed at first to be counterproductive, but proved to be a genuinely interesting way of looking at how Eigg relates to its history and its cultural appropriation. It also created several points of tension between the islanders and their ‘outsider-in-residence’.
Re-enactment, re-telling, and lecture were very much in my mind as I was creating Project Eigg, when recording interviews, when interpreting popular island phrases into performances, and later: for example when thinking about how I might explain the creation of a set of prosthetic horns for an impotent ram. These three modes are themselves analytical and tend to embellish simply because of their processes of re-presentation. I use the word ‘re-presentation’ rather than ‘representation’ as the former has a more focused semantic meaning of reappraisal rather than simply depiction or association. Each process has become increasingly important to my practice but also increasingly slippery and illusive the more I’ve examined the semantics and etymology of the words and their applications. I have used the opportunity of creating this article to expound upon some of my etymological research (for those who are interested) at the end of this article.
It seemed a natural step for the mass of data, images and sounds I had collected from the Isle of Eigg over the past 2 years to be examined through a process of ‘re-presentation’, and in some kind of performative lecture that would bring the previously mentioned three key methods under further scrutiny as well.
In November this year I am showing a series of one hour performative events for Sideshow 2010. My intention is to take an even closer look at the processes and modes by which information can be presented, absorbed, reinterpreted, controlled, confused and forgotten. And I’m broadening my practice to involve working with actors, being that two of the three key methods have their origins in entertainment or theatre.
Another shift in this project is that I’m not performing, which has felt very strange and slightly liberating at the same time. Strange because it feels like taking a step back from the viewer, and liberating because it has started to take on a life of it’s own in other people’s minds. Instead I’m working with professional actors of re-enactment and oral-storytelling, an expert in the field of dramaturgy, and a number of seasoned lecturers, who will each be re-presenting the information in their own particular ways. I hope to direct this group to create interweaving re-presentations of real and fictional events from the island, that allow the processes of re-enactment, oral-storytelling, and lecture to create their own distinct and overlapping impressions.
Every element of the event’s construction and delivery will be significant, and none more so than the seated revolve referred to as the MRP Device. The Multidirectional Re-Presentation Device will be a moving stage-revolve, not for the actors or sets, but for the viewers. Audience members are going to be sat upon the tiered platform in the centre of the space, and physically turned by assistants to face three constructed stages around the room. This curious device came out of a realisation that none of the three key methods translated easily to any other. That a mental shift needed to take place in order to comprehend the change of format. When this shifting is translated to a physical movement outside of the audience’s control, you end up with a fascinating experiment in which audience members piece together a set of events from contrasting deliveries, and in seating more akin to a playground merry-go-round, than a lecture hall or theatre stalls. I think audiences are going to be as aware of the methodologies at work as the narratives and re-presented events themselves. It will be interesting to see what people remember afterwards, and how I can affect that.
The etymologies of re-telling and re-enactment
‘Re’ is a prefix that signifies a change of state, a return to an original or opposite position, and in some cases repetitively. The word “enactment” has more original usage in the implementation of laws than elsewhere, only appearing in connection to actors in modern dictionaries. Re-enactment societies are associations whose members carry out re-enactments of events(usually battles), from a particular historical period. Re-enactment is not conducive to the exact replaying of events, but an event reflecting upon a theme, in particular named conflicts. Thus the meaning of re-enactment is to enact or describe an original emotive position, not with any certainty, but intended to provide a context in which to imagine original events.
Re-telling also has an interesting etymology, with ‘tell’ and ‘telling’ thought to have dual associations to both certainty and uncertainty. For instance to the certainty of money and the uncertainty of betrayal, lies, and card-sharks. ‘Tell’- as a prefix is often derogatory, know-it-all, and can even have overtones of falseness, such as in tell-all, tell-tale and tell-card (an early name for a card shark or conman). The word “telling” is to have a striking or revealing effect. It’s origin may derive from the telling or counting of money and of the certainties within mathematics. ’Retelling’ almost certainly does come from the term for the counting and recounting of money, to be sure of it. The verb to ‘tell’ is to mention or name a series of things one after another, to communicate information, to advise, to narrate, or divulge. In poker the word is used to describe the behaviour that can betray deception.
The re-telling of events requires of one, not so much the assurance of evidence but simply the ability to string information in a way that is both interesting and makes reference to things that are known to be true. To re-tell is to create anew, in language, a list of signifiers that the teller deems significant enough to draw our attention to, that we might then base our judgements and the creation of our own story of events upon.
