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Blog Week 2 - Nest Building Nest City Necessity !

I find that I have painted my life, she confided, things happening in my lifewithout
knowing (4). Close acquaintance with the subject guided the accurate presentation not only of the
outward image but also of the sensation within, transforming the subjective and personal to the
mystical and universal.!

I have picked flowers where I found them, OKeeffe acknowledged, have picked up sea shells
and rocks and pieces of wood where there were sea shells and rocks and pieces of wood that I
liked.When I found the beautiful white bones on the desert I picked them up and took them home
too.I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live
in it (5). Stripping things of extraneous detail, the artist reached for their essential geometry and
substance and created images that were at once realistic and abstract.!

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http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/10/3/ac-1003_article!
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My lab partner, Ryan Reynolds has been asking me what I mean by autobiography in dance
terms - how dance can be narrative - if it all in any literary sense. I am not sure it can, but that may
well be the point. Dance is the lens I use to understand the world and Georgia OKeefes
statements about her work resonate with me in a general sense and in relation to a type of more
subtle narrative or storytelling. Known as the Mother of American Modernism, I continue to
explore this idea of the lineage of women artists before me, including Marina Abromovich and
Laurie Anderson and and and!

And this sense of gathering from my city, from my collaborators practice, from my life experience,
these layers of story exist - this nest building!

I now find myself engaged with two local artists, photographer/musician/lighting designer, Stuart
Lloyd-Harris and sculptor, Daegan Wells.!

I have approached them both quite separately, and what seems somewhat ironic is that both have
taken me to the Residential Red Zone and set me a task of some description.!

Where last week, Stuart photographed me at night, on a road corner beneath a gum tree, Daegan
sent me to a section with an astro-turf tennis court. !

Where Stuart had me stationary, Daegan had me exploring a large section with a tennis court at
the back. I recorded the sounds of my exploration, which gave me a really great sound archive to
return to the studio and play with.!

It is uncanny that Stuart had approached me with this idea of nest last year, but it is something I
have been interested in for at least the last few years and now I learn more about Daegans current
project, which is to build shelters out of found objects in sites in the Red Zone.!

What is this about? Artists heading into this so-called abandoned ghost land to build shelters, to
gather resources, to have their practice engage with this rich site. !

Recently, a CNZ survey announced that Christchurch residents deemed the arts to be less relevant
to the rebuild than they did a few years ago. I have no idea what questions they were actually
asked and how they came to these conclusions but I find it intriguing that me and my colleagues
are all engaged in a re-build of sorts ourselves. There is a sense that one way or another artists
are really seeking to relate their practice to this cataclysmic time. !

I am so interested in how our work can address the real world - how it inhabits our real lives and
our real lives inhabit it. I cannot deny my family in my arts practice or the fact that I am raising them

in a strange nest, a broken nest attempting to redefine itself, throwing things together that are
considered of value - but to whom? It can seem like a very fragile eco-system indeed!!

Inhabitation seems to be a word that is creeping into various aspects of this research series, along
with the word shelter and inheritance / lineage. !

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Reference points for the week: !
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I am reading a bible of sorts each night and it really gets my heart racing. Women Artists in
the 20th and 21st Century. Ed Uta Grosenick!
It is my bible of sorts that I read before bed. This sense of lineage beyond the ! !
choreographic world, a sense of being in a long line of pioneering female artists is thrilling
and inspiring. !

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I started to explore this documentary called Rebel Architecture by Al Jazeera profiling !

architects who are using design as a form of activism and resistance to tackle the worlds
urban, environmental and social crises. !

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I am exploring new collaborative relationships. !

I am developing a new work / works, themes, language, imagery!
I am exploring the ways in which I can apply photography, sculpture, architecture and song
writing as methods for dance making.!
I am addressing ways in which my life can inhabit my arts practice. !

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So what am I actually doing? There are four possibilities I think?! !
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I am not sure I need to commit to any one thing, and the lines seem rather blurred at all times. I am
building nests.!

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In the studio, I took time to establish methods whereby I layered aspects of my collaborations.!
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I wrote down the memory of my actions at the red zone sites with Stuart and Daegan and used this
text to start to play with a physical language.!

I played further with the skull and one fur - exploring my body as an extension of the skull.!

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I moved specifically to the sounds I heard in the recording. !
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These three aspects culminated in this architectural, linear language that butted up against a more
visceral state / anthropomorphic language. !

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