Aides Memoire/POV (Studio/Stage: Entangling private and public creative spaces through interdisciplinary composition - Portfolio)

Aides Memoire: for four performers and tape (2017), ca.9 minutesPOV: video realisation from photographs (2017), variable durationAides Memoire and POV are linked but independent works. Aides Memoire is a piece for live performance, while POV is a byproduct of Aides Memoire, a video work created from photographs taken during a performance of the live work.Aides Memoire was created for a live BBC Radio 3 broadcast performance by Bastard Assignments (14 October 2017), on the theme of ‘Memory’. It is a piece which incorporates photography, with all four performers using cameras as instruments, the sounds of photo-taking and dial-twiddling being incorporated into the piece, responding to cues in the tape part or narration, drawing parallels between photography and audio recording to document experiences and capture memories. The tape part uses field recordings I had captured while travelling, over a period of ten years. The live narration (which I perform) details my memories, as prompted by the recordings, of the circumstances of recording and often why I recorded them. The result is a little like an aural version of a slideshow of holiday snaps. The recordings are often rough, some marred by wind sound or recorded from further away from the source of the sound than was ideal for a clear recording. However, they all document my experience of hearing those sounds at that time and place.POV is a video work which is realised from the photos taken during a performance of Aides Memoire. All the photographs from a single performance are used (unless an audience member has requested their image not be included), collated to be as close to the order in which they were taken as possible. The tempo of the passing images is shaped by the number of images taken by that camera and the speed at which they were taken, with photographs from a camera that yielded a large quantity of photos passing by faster than those from smaller collections, creating almost a stop-motion animation effect in places. POV therefore provides a form of performance documentation, but of the performance seen from the point of view of the performers.Performance video © 2018 Nicola CavalazziPerformed by Bastard Assignments at Asylum, London, 17 April 2018