Showing posts with label Ockham's Razor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ockham's Razor. Show all posts

Sunday 9 October 2016

Viva la vida¹ !

This is a micro-review of (or response to ?) Yarn (Garn) (2016)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2016 (20 to 27 October)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


9 October

This is a micro-review of (or response to ?) Yarn (Garn) (2016), as seen at Saffron Screen on Sunday 9 October 2016 at 5.00 p.m.



Yarn (2016) [the link is to the official trailer, on YouTube (@YouTube)] was seen at Saffron Screen (@Saffronscreen), and is a four-stranded documentary about artists - very broadly defined to feature those who direct and appear in a yarn-themed circus-style performance in Copenhagen² - and their work and the effect (impact ?) that it has internationally³ (except for the circus, where we are only within Denmark⁵).





Things to like (in no particular order) :

* That the underlying theme is much broader than textile-art (essentially, for the three individual artists, crochet, although Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam's⁴ installations / constructions require the use of a certain grade of nylon (which she specifies)) : it is really the natural world and how, if at all, we respect and conserve it, e.g. in just a few generations, deviating from a pattern, over the last couple of millennia, of people making their own clothes…

* The presentation of materials in and behind the closing titles

* We will all have our own ‘favourite’ artist(s) from the strands, and moments within the latter (in artistic terms, I suggest Olek⁴, originally from Poland)

* Including a sense of our appreciation and understanding each strand's artist’s (or artists’) work developing and deepening, as against the initial disclosure of its content and import



Connections (in alphabetical order, by name or title) :

* Energized (2014)


* Freistunde (Doing Nothing All Day) (2015) [micro-review to come, from notes made at Leeds International Film Festival 2015 (@leedsfilmfest / #LIFF29), but meanwhile a link to the film's page on IMDb...]


* Last Call (2013) (the link is to the film's web-site - it is reviewed with Energized (2014) (as listed above), but the part of the review that addresses Last Call is incomplete)

* Match Me ! How to Find Love in Modern Times (2014) (as seen, and linked to, at Sheffield Doc / Fest⁵ (@sheffdocfest))

* Ockham’s Razor (their show Not Until We Are Lost)

* Rams (Hrútar) (2015)




Things that impress less (again, in no particular order) :

* Use of animation, which may be intended to diversify the impact of the strands (no pun intended about implied unravelling), or, conversely, to interweave them, but actually may just interrupt one’s concentration (as with the narrated text and the decision, at all levels, to use it ?)

* Variability in camerawork and in the effectiveness of editing choices

* Barbara Kingsolver’s text (as if ‘inspired by’ Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman), but really its being uses when we might want to contemplate the quietness of, e.g., livestock scenery (for sheep) on Iceland right at the start and the creatures themselves in themselves, and without an overlay of a voice and words

* The opening caption claims to differentiate a noun and a verb, to riff on the idea of a material (noun) and telling a story (verb), but the latter definition is of another noun (not a verb)



End-notes

¹ It was unclear that this fact (from Wikipedia®) featured in Icelandic yarn graffiti artist Tinna Thorudottir Thorvaldar's choice of slogan : 'Viva la Vida' (/ˈviːvə lə ˈviːdə/; Spanish: [ˈbiβa la ˈβiða]) is a song by the British alternative rock band Coldplay.

² As if to pander to all needs, the placing captions have, for example, to state ‘Denmark’ below ‘Copenhagen’ (as if anyone who did not, but wanted to, know could not note it and look it up ?) : there is sometimes actually more care that we should know where we are than whom we are seeing ?

³ For example, we see the featured artists in Barcelona, Berlin, Rome, and Hawaii.

⁴ Rather unhelpfully, and not for the first time, the film's entry on IMDb (@IMDb) only credits one other artist, Tinna Thorudottir Thorvaldar (originally from Iceland), and not Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam (originally from Japan, and whose name one noted enough from the credits to find her), or the director and performers at the circus-style show...


⁵ The comment made about Match Me ! How to Find Love in Modern Times may be relevant here, one imagines : the Q&A essentially confirmed what one had really already suspected, that it was not really about match-making, but had been made to be to complement the story of a couple who had met through a type of arranged yogic marriage.








Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Wednesday 1 April 2015

Interview with Ruth Wall : Ockham's Razor, Kathryn Tickell and The Side, and other projects

More views of or before Cambridge Film Festival 2015 (3 to 13 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


1 April

Harpist Ruth Wall with compositions written for her by her husband (Graham Fitkin) provided part of the music for Ockham’s Razor’s (@AlexOckhams') aerial-theatre show Not Until We Are Lost at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge (@CambridgeCornEx).

Sadly, although Ruth had played other gigs live, only the locally formed choir was not a pre-recorded element on this occasion. However, it was still an amazing accompaniment to hear in the space that had been made (by taking out the seating of the flat stalls), both at the dress rehearsal, and at the first performance.

On the strength of it, The Agent, having talked to Ruth (@RuthWallharp) when (as a member of the quartet The Side (@TheSideBand)) she played the first gig with Kathryn Tickell (@kathryntickell) at Childerley Hall, near Cambridge, asked her for this interview…



Q1

Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Ruth !

These questions were devised after hearing your playing (sadly not in person, but recorded) at the dress rehearsal for, and the first local performance of, the show of aerial theatre Not Until We Are Lost by Ockham's Razor (@AlexOckhams) (at The Corn Exchange in Cambridge (@CambridgeCornEx) last December).

I understand that, even when the score is performed live, there is a taped element : what does it comprise, and to what extent, and how, did you work with the composer (your husband Graham Fitkin) to determine its content ?


The show uses two harps, wire-strung and lever harp, and more than half of the tracks for the show are just solo harp, no pre-record.


I play as much as humanly possible, but, as Graham sometimes wanted the sound of more than one harp at once, we recorded the secondary lines and put them on the computer for playback. So I had in-ears [personal monitors, often custom fitted, to cut out ambient noise], with this other harp playing, so that the whole performance would be in time. It was complex, working out this element, and we used a click-track occasionally, too.


I worked closely with Graham in devising how all this could succeed, adding more lines to be played live as time went on. Graham also attended the first week of rehearsals, as the Ockhams' creative process took place later than the composition / music rehearsal, and he needed to add and change odd things.


Generally, a good fun process, though occasionally Graham shut the door on me to let me work things out alone and also to avoid the expletives !



Q2

Please describe some of the techniques and effects employed in your part of the event, and also what challenges they can represent in live performance.


Complex counterpoint, very fast arpeggios, many harmonics, playing the red box [sound generator] with a bow and beater while also playing the harp with another hand, conducting the choir whilst playing (especially in rehearsal, and sometimes in performance), live control of the computer...

All this needed tons of practice on my own, with all the harps, red box and computer at exactly the correct height and position, as Fitkin music doesn't allow for any pauses. On top of that, the music is very tricky : rhythmically, I often play in two time-signatures at once, in different hands. It took SO much practice, and I did worry for months that I wouldn't manage it.


In performance, one last thing – I needed to watch the Ockhams', as I was synchronizing to their moves quite often.



Q3

Are there any favourite passages in the score, either because of what you are playing, or (as it has been said by the directors that it is too complicated for you to watch as you play) because of what you know that the performers are doing at the same time ?


Yes, when the Cat-flap (a massive construction of scaffold bars, which swings back and fore) is first released, the music is at its peak of complexity, and the performers are sliding down the scaffolding, or dodging the massive wall of iron bars. SCARY !


I really must NOT look then, but it is impossible not to see images flashing by, generally life-threatening images of little gymnasts flying through the air, trying to avoid this swinging wall.


Also, the first piece, for wire-strung harp, when Tina is in the Perspex tower, hidden. Amazing lighting and pacing in this, musically and visually... and, as the audience eventually discovers that there is a person hidden in the tower, there is a very special atmosphere in the room.



Q4

A few years back, you brought three types of harp that you like to play (with, of course, some of Graham's compositions for you) to a recital at Kettle'€™s Yard (@kettlesyard), in Cambridge. Congratulations on your CD, released at the end of last year, that now features three harps: what excites you most about the CD, and also the responses to it that you had ?



Thank you ! You are referring to The Three Harps of Christmas. It's an utter joy to play Graham's music I met the music before the man, and love the complex harmonies and rhythms, as well as the wit and sensitivity, that he has employed in making these old Christmas carols new.


Each has a unique character and the choice of harp for a specific carol is made carefully : hence, the wildly buzzing Bray harp for 'We Three Kings' or the delicate, bell-like sound of the Gaelic wire-strung harp for 'Away in a Manger'.


To go and perform them then in beautiful historic houses, all around the UK, has been very special : the settings of Fyvie Castle, Holkham Hall, Culzean Castle, Glendurgan, etc., etc. Incredible atmospheres, and such a special tour with Christmas decorations, candles and champers !



Q5

With this project with Ockham's Razor, you toured with the show for some time. With the group, or generally when on tour, what raises your spirits, or keeps you fresh ? (One imagines that it may be different things at different moments / in different moods ?)


I enjoy travelling on the whole, and love the chance to see new places, but I generally get excited as soon as I start playing.


The lights help, and the audience coming into the room as I play (in Ockhams' case), all get my adrenaline going. I also loved hanging out with the Ockhams' they are a great crowd.



Q6

How much time do you spend touring nowadays, and do you have any more dates planned, playing as a member of The Side, with Kathryn Tickell ? The collaboration's first gig [reviewed here] was local at The Long Barn at Cambridgeshire's hidden Childerley Hall and do you have any special memories of that evening ?


I loved that first gig at Childerley it was one of my favourites. Playing with Kathryn and The Side is amazing fun. I love the girls, and they are all such supreme musicians that being on stage with them is a wonderful experience. We will be touring more this year, and, having just finished a long, happy tour in February, I can't wait for the next outing!


At Childerley, Jocelyn and her friends looked after us so well, from the picnic in the garden, to dinner on the terrace, and then the most lovely wild party, with dancing it was a total joy. The Long Barn is a great venue, and to see Joss and her family dancing down the aisle when we played was an incredible buzz !



Q7

Finally, what message would you give to someone coming to Not Until We Are Lost at another venue, and are there any other similar collaborations under way that you can tell us about ?


I would recommend the Ockhams' show totally, and also recommend that the audience keep wandering during the performance, not to get stuck with one viewpoint... and be prepared for some audio and visual magic !


I am working on my next show at the moment, with Graham again, a new album that we will be releasing in late summer, called LOST. The initial inspiration came from the Ockhams' music that Graham wrote for me, but, in the last year, he has transformed it, and only a couple of the original tunes remain.


The new album is for me on harps, and Graham on moog [synthesizer], autoharp, and red box. There are visuals in the live show, and it will involve video, and lighting.


The music has a mesmeric quality to it, highly intricate rhythmically, and focuses on how 'lost' we can feel in this world, including loss of faculty, understanding, memory, etc.


Thank you so much, Ruth, and I am sure that we all look forward to LOST, album and show, later in 2015, as the sensation of feeling out of place in this world is one that many are sure to find themselves relating to through the experience !






Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Thursday 1 January 2015

All in one place : Reviews and previews at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge (@CambridgeCornEx)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


6 January (under construction)


In, as they say, reverse chronological order (= most recent first) :


* Artist Gilly Marklew's impressions of Ockham’s Razor’s show Not Until We Are Lost at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge * :

Watercolourist Gilly Marklew at the dress rehearsal for Ockham’s Razor’s (@AlexOckhams’s) show at Cambridge’s Corn Exchange, Not Until We Are Lost


* Ockham's Razor at Cambridge's Corn Exchange : Not Until We Are Lost * :

A new show at Cambridge’s Corn Exchange by aerial theatre group Ockham's Razor


* I am to Mozart (and Haydn) as Schubert and Brahms are to me * :

This reviews Noriko Ogawa’s interpretation of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3


More to come...





Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Friday 19 December 2014

Artist Gilly Marklew's impressions of Ockham’s Razor’s show Not Until We Are Lost at The Corn Exchange, Cambridge

Artist Gilly Marklew's impressions of Ockham’s Razor’s Not Until We Are Lost

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


18 December

Watercolourist Gilly Marklew at the dress rehearsal for Ockham’s Razor’s (@AlexOckhams’s) show at Cambridge’s Corn Exchange, Not Until We Are Lost



Moonlight Sonata (© Copyright Gilly Marklew 2009)


It is a pleasure, which is ever present, to retire in contemplation of this watercolour, and to be wakeful with it after sleep :

The best art, whatever its apparent simplicity may be, one can live and grow with, because it has this quality to it that it never ceases to give as the eye explores, and re-explores, the felicities of construction and execution.

Partly, that is a question of the richness that keeps coming to the eye, but that richness is not simply in the work, but came from somewhere : Gilly Marklew has been known as a dear and gifted friend for more than half-a-dozen years, and, much as she might play down her intellectual side, her essential gifts of copying in image, word and sound, and her love of inventiveness and fun, are central to what makes her work special and alive – coupled, of course, with a strong sense of line, form, colour, and the dynamic power within a composition*.


It was a special pleasure, by invitation from the marketing team at The Corn Exchange, to bring Gilly along to the wonderland of expression that was last night’s dress rehearsal by aerial-theatre group Ockham’s Razor. In the event, she did not find herself with enough light to make use of her supply of sketching material, and the action anyway proved a little too swift for the medium, but she relished the clarity with which the subjects in the performance had been lit, and she took in image after image through her camera-lens, some of which have been shared in the original response to the evening.


Image by, courtesy of, and © Copyright Gilly Marklew 2014

A pose and a face such as this, that of the group’s Telma Pinto in the solo opening of the show, is classic material for Gilly Marklew : the timelessness of the expression, look and gesture


Since last night, the show has been seen again, and a short discussion with cast and crew took place, and Gilly has been making sketches after the fact, using what attracted her when she saw through her lens. On this first one, she comments :

I wanted to play up the interconnected movement and love story as I saw it, [without the climbing] poles, to emphasize the aetherial.


An original sketch, by, courtesy of and © Copyright Gilly Marklew 2014,
based on images taken at the dress rehearsal


The other sketch available so far is an ensemble piece, about which Gilly says This is a bit rougher, but there was more energetic movement in this scene, so it merited a more vigorous approach.


An original sketch, by, courtesy of and © Copyright Gilly Marklew 2014,
based on images taken at the dress rehearsal


In some key-words, after the matinee, this Tweet sought to use language to describe how this part of the performance looked and felt :




With her painterly perspective, here describing her artistic approach and process, Gilly uses these lovely phrases ‘vigorous approach’ and ‘interconnected / energetic movement’ : for us, those descriptions may be in the same relation as are our internal attempts to encompass, through our senses, the performers’ work in Ockham’s Razor, and to find ourselves touched and emboldened in our responses :

In the live show (as against with a smaller audience at the dress rehearsal), we had this sense of atmosphere from sharing what we felt about the different scena as they unfolded – all at once and in the moment : for they do unfold, not as origami figures might, but with the delicacy and precision that we might, say, associate with the construction and appeal of a Fabergé egg.


After the show, in response to questions about working with Graham Fitkin on his score (as beautifully performed by harpist Ruth Wall), Alex Harvey said a little about what had gone on, after they had met him, between Alex’s fellow directors Tina Koch, Charlotte (‘Lottie’) Mooney and Graham, seeking to communicate through the language of moods a conversation about the score, and helping it to take shape. Now that we have it, though unfortunately at this venue Ruth cannot be present to play live, the music feels integral to the piece...


The life of the work is in its performance, and its performance is inseparable from the immersive participation of us being there, reacting to sound and visuals (from, all the time, the actors, from Ruth, and from each other), and to the sheer drama of limbs and bodies that are flying and interacting through space and time – the actors knowing their parts and abilities so well that they are in, and simultaneously are, the vigour and interconnectedness of which Gilly speaks :

In her pastel interpretations of moments from Ockham’s Razor's Not Until We Are Lost, in finding her own relatedness to the energy and imagery, Gilly shares with us wonder and amazement that even the performers themselves seem to feel just about being alive in, and having such power of motion within, our physical world.


Artist, and Bauhaus lecturer, Paul Klee is famous, in art circles, for opening his Pedagogical Sketchbook** with this proposition (from which the work, and its teaching, develop) :

An active line on a walk, moving freely, without goal.
A walk for a walk’s sake.
[emphasis added]


In the second scena on the large apparatus (whose first reaction to seeing which Telma Pinto delightedly described to us as like a playground), when it becomes hinged as like a gate, we have yet another moment of discovery – it is as if another Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy (from the Narnia novels) were playing as Lucy does with Aslan (after The Stone Table), all four enjoying a game of chicken with it :

Running, as one does on a beach, towards the roarers of the ocean, and then squealingly away again, even more quickly (if possible), at a sudden appreciation of the sea’s might. All its nimbleness and experimentation – as if for the first time – caught in the hope of Graham’s score, and in the magic depicted by Ruth’s playing.


Whether evoking metallicized percussion, the picked notes of guitar, or of plucked instruments (as of a lute or thumb-piano), the boundless sound-world of Ruth and Graham's music, just as with the variety and variation of Gilly's palette, are all emblematic of the richness in Not Until We Are Lost, that we

begin to find ourselves [...], to learn the points of compass again as often as [we] awake, whether from sleep or any abstraction

[Henry Thoreau, Walden, chapter 8, 'The village']



End-notes

* As Gilly shared just on the night of the dress rehearsal, Moonlight Sonata relates to an image by Henri Cartier-Bresson that she once found and pasted into her source-book : she had seen, in his photographic image, the classicity of The Three Graces, and had – with some of her favourite sitters (not least the one placed centrally) – created her own version, looking back, beyond him, to what she thought had inspired him.

** So published in the UK by Faber & Faber Limited, London, 1953, in translation of Klee’s Bauhaus text from 1925, Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch.




Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Wednesday 17 December 2014

Ockham's Razor at Cambridge's Corn Exchange : Not Until We Are Lost

A new show at Cambridge’s Corn Exchange by aerial theatre group Ockham's Razor

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)


17 December (closing Tweet added, 28 December)

Glimpses of the dress rehearsal of a new show at Cambridge’s Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx), by aerial theatre group Ockham’s Razor (@AlexOckhams) : Not Until We Are Lost



Although sounding like it could quote the works of Samuel Beckettt, the title derives from Henry Thoreau’s Walden*, but no knowledge of Emerson’s or his transcendentalist thought (or of Beckettt) is necessary to an appreciation of what is to be seen and heard…

In around half-a-dozen scena, which seem to defy transparent and scaffolding materials by the forces that are exerted on them (though this is no lesson in dynamics or Newtonian principle), aerial theatre group Ockham’s Razor (@AlexOckhams) tell a series of stories – the exact meaning, though, is for us to interpret, even as it would be if we had words, rather than actions and interactions, to construe…


Afterwards, co-director Alex Harvey said that what appears before the audience is open to interpretation, and fellow directors Charlotte Mooney and Tina Koch even felt that saying that there is a choir as part of the musical accompaniment is not a give-away, so here goes :


Image by, courtesy of and © Copyright Gilly Marklew 2014

Some of the scena (involving all four performers (Alex plus Hamish Tjoeng, Grania Picard and Telma Pinto) on a giant scaffolding climbing-frame, which later becomes a swing) seem euphoric, even utopian, with a triumph of collective behaviour and what modern jargon calls ‘working together’, but not all of them.

One seems to revolve, more unfortunately, around the conjoined roles of Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel, another that of a young woman pestered by the attentions of two similar men, who appear to be hunting her as if in a pack and to win her confidence : it all ends with seemingly innocent fun and enjoyment, but what has she been cajoled into, and for what reason ?



Image (of Telma Pinto) by, courtesy of and © Copyright Gilly Marklew 2014

Paper rips and tears, and the performers bodies fly between or across the face of, blunt scaffolding-poles, with no room for error, no avoiding the consequence of a mistake, and, as already alluded to, the transparent material is tested, seemingly to its limits :




It is in that medium of a clear tower, which sometimes seems more than merely a box in cross-section, that we have scope both for what seems survival of the fittest pushed to its extremes, and for the greatest elation. In the latter case, maybe a release from a – maybe Narcissistically-created – invisible prison that could be what we conveniently call 'depression', and where love, and responding when another reaches out, are part of the healing.


Image (of Alex Harvey and Telma Pinto) by, courtesy of and © Copyright Gilly Marklew 2014


Never pulling its punches, in the fitness of the guitar- or harp-like melodies, dissonances, arpeggios, the physicality and riskiness of the performances, and the theatrical content of the scena, Ockham’s Razor (@AlexOckhams) give more than an entertainment :

All at once, something that, by turns, can be seen as encouraging, cynical, or appalling, but always thought provoking, and never compromising with the belief in realiz[ing] where we are and the infinite extent of our relations (Thoreau*).


A follow-up piece, featuring Gilly's sketchings from her images after the event, is linked here ...


The show runs at Cambridge's Corn Exchange from 18 to 21 December.




End-notes

* Specifically, chapter 8 (‘The village’), where Thoreau starts by talking about being physically disoriented, and having to put one of several visitors on the right track in the dark, being guided rather by his feet than his eyes.

Following the observation It is a surprising and memorable, as well as valuable experience, to be lost in the woods any time, Thoreau develops the thought ,with the effect of snow, and of night added to it, ending the section where the words occur, first in a different form, then as quoted (but he is clearly no longer to be read as writing just about the visual world and mistaking one’s way, any more than Canto I of Inferno) :

In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round — for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost — do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he awakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.






Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)