Carreg Cennen Castle

In the days before the invention of the 'Popty Ping' (see previous post) the Welsh used to hang out in castles, or, when the English happened to build their own castles in Wales, the Welsh would hang out around these castles with large amounts of weaponry and menace. Today we visited Carreg Cennen Castle, dramatically set atop a crag at the western end of the Brecon Beacons National Park. We were driven there in style (and relative speed) by the lovely Ceri who we had met at St Mike's in Aberystwyth. Now I spent a significant proportion of my childhood drawing castles and imagining them garrisoned by warrior mice (long story) so the chance to wander through a real live ruined castle with its own cave underneath was very, very, very exciting.

[The walk to Carreg Cennen Castle]

[Anthea and Ceri hanging out in a window recess]

[Anthea remembers what it was like to be a high school teacher ... in case you can't quite make out the inscription, it reads 'latrine outlet']

[On the way down to the cave]

[Enjoying the view]

Self-proclaimed Filmer Holiday

Today was self-proclaimed 'National Filmer Day' (put it in your diaries now for next year) and to celebrate Anth and I took the train to see the sights of Machynlleth. Any usefully mediocre guidebook will indicate that there are numerous things to see there, including the building that housed the medieval Welsh hero Owain Glyndwr's parliament in 1404, the Welsh Museum of Modern Art, and just out of town, the Centre for Alternative Technology. Bron-yr-Aur cottage, just north of Machynlleth, is known as the place where Robert Plant and Jimmy Page (of Led Zeppelin fame) wrote a number of songs that ended up on Led Zeppelin III, including "Gallows Pole" and "That's the Way".

[Machynlleth station]

It was a little wet today which added to the atmosphere; it felt something like being in the Blue Mountains on a sharp April morning - with the mist rising out of the valleys - except here it was so intensely green, really greeny green, as if someone had gone to town with all the shades of green that are on offer in a pack of 72 Derwent colour pencils. Machynlleth itself was a little sleepy and we could rouse no one in the parliament building to open the door, despite the fact that someone must have put the advertising sandwich board out on the street to advertise that it was indeed open. At least we saved spending £1.50 each on what looked like a rather dodgy historical display.

We had more luck at the Centre for Alternative Technology which is a fascinating showcase of practical ecological solutions for everyday application. It's situated in a disused slate quarry and is reached via a water balanced cliff railway. The top car is filled with water - the bottom with people - and then gravity pulls the water-laden car down to the bottom, thereby lifting the people-laden car to the top! While the displays on home construction, energy conservation, waste disposal, composting and gardening were fascinating, the highlight for me was learning the Welsh term for microwave: 'Popty Ping'. I kid you not.

[Centre for Alternative Technology]

[Water-powered cliff railway]

[Anth among the flowers at CAT]

[The Cambrian, seen at Machynlleth station in the afternoon. Its presence exposed the suppressed steam fanatic in many seemingly innocent bystanders.]

Copenhagen capers

Well, I'm back from Copenhagen, having failed miserably in my attempt to decapitate the city's famous Little Mermaid. In fact, I didn't even get to see the Little Mermaid as it was a bit of a walk to get to reach her. What an anti-climax, eh? However, the conference was very worthwhile, featuring a number of interesting panel discussions, and I was also able to wander about the city and take in the sights, including a guided tour of the Danish parliament or Folketinget. (I'm developing a research interest in the performativities of parliament buildings.) This made up for my rather dreadful (budget-conscious) decision to stay in a hostel and share a room with nine strangers, at least one of whom inevitably suffered from severe sleep apnea. Here follows some photos, and in case you are wondering what Anthea was up to during all this, I have also included one from her too:

[Nynhavn canal]

[Bicycles: everyone cycles everywhere]

[Canal surrounding Christainsborg Slot - my hostel was in an adjacent square]

[Student accommodation University of Copenhagen-style]

[Did I mention that Chuck Norris was in Copenhagen too?]

[Anthea's photo en route to Devil's Bridge via steam train]

What a mess!

What a mess of a day! I'm glad it's over. I seemed to spread confusion and misinformation wherever I went and my desk has atrophied from a state of creative foment to an impenetrable mound of paper. Time for a break I think. Fortunately, tomorrow I'm off to Copenhagen where, under the guise of attending a conference, I shall attempt to decapitate the Little Mermaid statue for the third time since its unveiling. See here for a report of the last time this occurred.

[That's right sweetie, just look away while I reach for my hacksaw ...]

The Architecture of Creativity

While compiling readings for a new module called 'Improvisation: Spontaneous Performance', I've come across the work of Keith Sawyer. Apparently he's a professor of psychology and education in the US and "is one of the country’s leading scientific experts on creativity." (Why does he feel the need to describe himself as a 'scientific' expert?) Anyhow, he maintains a blog called Creativity and Innovation and has a website with links to some of his past papers on creativity, improvisation, development and collaboration.

He recently posted a blog entry on architecture, pondering the sort of building design that might enhance or facilitate creativity. (You can find it here.) It looks like this was sparked by the experience of having his university department move into a building that is rather bland and isolating, with rows of identical offices and featureless corridors.

I might stop here, for fear of incriminating myself ...

[A Creative Space?]

Working from home

I'm just working from home today; firstly, because I can; secondly, because it was raining; and, thirdly, because I felt I'd actually get more done sitting at this table, by the window, than in the office. I'm trying to write an article about space and subjectivity, arguing that the theatrical labour that occurs within the backstage spaces of theatres not only involves the making of theatrical performance but also the making of theatrical performers (specifically, 'professional' performers). Writing is always a laboured, drawn out affair. Today things seem to be working themselves out into an ordered form, but for the last week I've been comforting myself with Franz Kafka's observation: 'All things resist being written down'.

Beware the toad

[When walking or driving to Ynys-hir, beware the toad]

Prague ...

Here's some photos from our trip to Prague in June this year to meet up with Em and Chris.

[Anth in Cafe Gaspar Kaspar at the Prague Theatre Institute]

[Despite the persuasive advertising we didn't actually go in]

[Em can't keep a straight face]

[John Lennon Wall]

[An advertising billboard in Václavské náměstí: the play being touted is Our Country's Good by Timberlake Wertenbaker. It's based on Thomas Keneally's novel The Playmaker and deals with the first European theatre performance in Australia, a production of George Farquar's The Recruiting Officer in 1789]

Many faces of Anth and Aber ...

[April 2008 - AF]

[June 2008 - AF]

[July 2008 - AF]

I can see my house from here ...

I've been taking advantage of the launch of Google Street View in Australia on the 4th of August to re-visit places back home. This is, of course, a deliberately nostalgic undertaking. From across the other side of the world I can gaze upon my former house and 'walk' the streets of my old neighbourhood. It's all so familiar, and yet oddly disconcerting on at least two levels.

Firstly there is the strange disembodied mode of navigation; my body still holds the memory of walking these streets, of laboriously mowing the grass outside my house. I still retain a knowledge of which routes to take to get to other places, the various uneven patches of grass and pavement, and the peculiar smells encountered. But floating along on Google in fits and starts is so flat by comparison; the places depicted seem to have been dessicated. A mere photograph is static, and a video supplies its own movement, but Google Street View is a curious amalgam. The images are static but continuous and it is I who scroll through or along them. What do I get out of this, a dessicated partial-animation of a place once alive and lived?

The temporal dislocation is another disconcerting aspect. If I look at the image of my old house I can see that it was taken some time ago, when I was still living there. There are pot plants on the porch and I can see my filing cabinet through the front window. One of the windows is open. Maybe I was at home, inside, when the Google van recorded my street? But looking at the scene I can't get over the fact that this place no longer exists as it is depicted. Of course, this is like many of the photos I have with me of people and places, but these don't proport to the virtual timelessness that the Google images seem to offer. The Google images themselves are also dislocated because of the pasting of multiple static images into a continous image. The result is some disturbing representations of headless or malformed humans. Perhaps, as I scroll past, I could even recognise someone in the street who isn't alive any more.

How might a program like Google Street View change the way we relate to the places around us? Instead of seeing it as the loss of place, and a replacement for physical travel, I am reminded of Edward Casey's optimism that 'thinned out' or 'leveled out' places might intensify the desirability of actual places. "The more places are leveled down, the more - not the less - may selves be led to seek out thick places in which their own personal enrichment can flourish." (Between Geography and Philosophy: 685)

You meet really interesting people ...

Is this advertisement for Cardiff's buses meant to be funny? 'Late wife'?!

It's summer time in Aberystwyth...

It has been a while since my last post, and consequently there's probably no one out there in the blogosphere who even thinks of checking here for new posts. But the news is that Anth and I are now living and working in Aberystwyth (sometimes described as 'the Brighton of Wales', which is a bit better than the Lonely Planet's 'a faded Georgian seaside resort'). I have decided to revive this blog so as to post photos and observations from my new home on the west coast of Wales. The photos below are provided just to prove that we got a summer - it lasted all of three days.

[Aberystwyth Beach and Promenade - AF]

[South Beach, and yes, it is an Australian flag - AF]

The Man With the Golden Jaw

Its Election Time So ...

... I'm reading Chimpanzee Politics by Frans de Waal. It seems that the Chimpanzee who becomes the alpha male of the group gets everyone else to back him in his challenge through 'displaying' himself, 'bluffing', alternating between intimidating or supporting the lowly, liberally dosing out goodies, forming loose strategic coalitions of convenience and avoiding brief jocular conversations with shock jocks at airline baggage carousels ... hang on, I think I'm getting confused now ...

Poorly Formatted Poll

Please contribute to my poll found in the column on the right.

Pretty self-explanatory I think ...

Note: I have now withdrawn the poll ...

I'm Going to Prague ...

... and this is what I'll be talking about:

‘Implacing’ Theatre Practice: A Theoretical Framework

Despite the increased attention that has been directed towards the function of space and place in the production and reception of theatrical performance little sustained academic attention has been directed towards backstage space and the use of such space by theatre practitioners. In Space in Performance (1999) Gay McAuley concludes that this exclusion of backstage space indicates the extent to which many studies of theatre architecture “are in fact concerned with the building as aesthetic object rather than with its function in a complex social process.” (9)

In this paper I will articulate a theoretical framework through which the function of theatre architecture in performance processes might be better understood. Beginning with Edward Casey’s phenomenological approach to ‘place’, and informed by the work of Edward Soja, I will argue that scholars investigating theatre architecture must take into consideration ‘perceived’ space (space as it is empirically measured), ‘conceived’ space (space as it is represented), and ‘lived’ space (space as it is experienced). The meaning of any place, especially a built place, is always complex and contested, and it is the very tension between ‘perceived’, ‘conceived’, and ‘lived’ space that constitutes the ‘matrix of sensibility’ within which any place is made meaningful.

Such a framework encourages a more holistic understanding of the vital relationship between theatre architecture and theatrical performance and opens up avenues for insight into how theatrical performance is made and re-made in different cultural settings and historical moments.

Best opening line to a story...

From Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis:

"As Gregor Samsa awoke from unsettling dreams one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."

What is your favourite opening line to a piece of prose, poetry or drama?

Surveillance Culture

I've just been reading 'Encountering surveillance', the final chapter of John McGrath's Loving Big Brother: Performance, Privacy and Surveillance Space (2004). In it McGrath advances some fascinating ideas about how the development of what he terms a 'surveillance society' in many Western nations has involved distinct cultural shifts as well; in effect, we have developed a 'surveillance culture'. McGrath sees the development of such a culture as radically discontinuous with given representational understandings and as "nothing less than a challenge to our consciousnesses." (219) McGrath argues that to ignore these challenges is to lose any control over the various forms of ourselves that are now in circulation.

What struck me in this chapter was the way McGrath sees our engagement in surveillance as "structured in a profound way by death." (211) While the surveillance cameras that increasingly record our daily movements are often presented as protective, they are also "always potentially filming our deaths." (211) The blurred security footage of UK toddler Jamie Bolger or that of murdered Sydney resident Kerry Whelan that we see broadcast on nightly news programs may seem innocuous, but to watch it is chilling because of our knowledge of why we are watching it. Indeed, McGrath argues that surveillance images of ourselves are traumatic because "our own deaths may appear at any time." (211) In effect, like the appearance of missing or otherwise harmed people, "any appearance of ourselves on surveillance footage can carry traces of this trauma-in-waiting, the ultimate surveillance scene that we, of course, will never, ourselves, see." (211-12)

So, the rhetoric that increased surveillance leads to increased security is patently false. The very fact of surveillance readily admits the ever-present potential for injury and death, increasing our awareness of our own insecurity. Ultimately, in our brave new surveillance culture, harm cannot be prevented, only witnessed.

Finally, while on the topic of surveillance, check out the German film The Lives of Others if you get a chance.

Shoes I: These are my boots

These are my boots. There are many like them, but these are mine.* I often wear them on wet days. Together we have travelled through many parts of Australia, New Zealand and Europe. In these boots I can stand up all day long and not get sore feet. They provide my feet and ankles with a hard leather exoskeleton, supporting and protecting them from awkward sideways movements. The fact that they are leather is significant. Leather requires care. I have enjoyed heating them in the oven and then lovingly applying bees wax as a waterproofing agent. The warm leather melts and absorbs the wax, producing a marvellous smell and greasy texture.

These boots are heavy and they lend me a sense of weight. I feel confident in these boots. I imagine that they make my feet sound imposing as I advance along corridors. Indeed, in these boots I advance and never retreat. With their enclosing leather and thick, insulating, rubber soles, these boots attach me to the earth. Whilst wearing them I will not easily be knocked over by anything!

And the red laces are also a great conversation starter ...

* 10 Commonwealth Bank Award points for anyone who can name the film I am riffing on with this line.

Walking Country

There's a beautiful podcast currently available from Radio National's Radio Eye programme entitled 'Ways of Walking Country'. The programme involves interviews with four individuals whose lives engage profoundly with the simple everyday practice of walking.

I've spent a lot of my life walking and no doubt many of you have too! What a simple pleasure that we too often take for granted! Through the act of walking we engage intimately with our surroundings, performing our places of residences and our local surrounds by traversing the 'runs and rills' we find ourselves in. We inscribe and re-inscribe our own embodied maps. Through this the places where we walk also inform who we are; they affect the shapes and habitual rhythms of our bodies.

[Martin Place, Sydney - AF]

When I am in the city I walk faster. Walking through the Devonshire Street tunnel under Central Station I enjoy the mild exhilaration of cruising past and between people, overtaking and sliding through gaps that open around me. I imagine myself as something akin to a V8 Supercar (although stealthier and with less gaseous emissions!) with a similar sense of changing up and down gears. I see a gap, I push into second, third, fourth gear, slide through the gap and then knock back down to second. The tiles underfoot offer little resistance. I can forget my feet; I push from my gut and my shoulders. My legs might actually be propelling me, but in this state I am aware of them only as keeping up to the push of my body through the crowd. Research out of California State University has suggested that city walking speeds have increased by ten per cent over the past ten years. Perhaps the influence of modern transport together with the development of technology that allows for the rapid transmission of ideas and documents leaves our physical bodies straining to keep up in their wake.

As part of my performance practice (such as it is) I've spent a lot of time walking in rooms, with others. Just walking. You can learn a lot from just walking, about yourself, your environment, your relationships with others. Choose a room, clear it of furniture and walk. Avoid patterns. Walk perpendicular to the walls, walk parallel to the walls. Walk in a grid; walk in organic curves and spirals; walk back and forth along the same line. Stand still. Walk at different speeds. Enjoy smoothly transitioning between different speeds. Invite some friends to walk with you. Think about other things as you walk. Think about yourself and your body. How does your body move? What do you notice about the feeling of the air on your skin, the proximity between yourself and others, between yourself and the walls?

In the bush my walk is irregular and conscious. It's a thinking walk. Maybe 'thinking' doesn't have the right connotations ... It's a productive walk, a craft. My muscles and joints have to work out the country as they bring me into it. They lift me onto rocky steps and attempt to stabilise me on uncertain, slippery ground. I can't forget my feet and legs. I'm tied to them. I have to keep watching the ground in front and around them so as not to crash down onto it. If I'm encumbered with a heavy pack I find myself grounded, having to hold myself up as I move. Without a heavy pack the tension lessens; I'm unburdened and can scramble and leap ahead. This bush experience is more removed from the everyday. I associate walking in the bush as restorative and regenerative when compared with my everyday urban travels. Is it really?

I thought of this post as I walked, in the sun, to the shops earlier this afternoon. My spongy thongs kept my feet in a clumsy sympathy with the asphalt, the cracks in the concrete pavement and the lumpy grass of the nature strips. Maybe in the next post I'll think about shoes ...

Let me leave you with four photos of less everyday places I've enjoyed walking in. The first three are from a recent traversal of the Milford Track in New Zealand. The final photo is from the Jameson Valley in the Blue Mountains.

Where do you walk?

[Clinton Valley, NZ - BH]

[Mackinnon Pass, NZ -AF]

[Arthur River, NZ - AF]

[Looking towards Kedumba Crossing, Jameson Valley, NSW - AF]