Reviewed by Alice McKenzie
EXCAVATIONS
I keep finding the future inside of me. I can hear it really loud, coming like a field of windmills, or a hive of bees.
I know, I know, I know.
I am digging. Deep past the topsoil.
– Peggy Shaw and The Clod Ensemble, text from the performance Must.
In the city I was born in you cannot dig anywhere without finding traces of humans, most long since dead. It's a city built on top of other cities, and the shores of its river are a tinkling mess of stones, bits of broken pottery and bones at low tide. In some places they have installed paving slabs made of glass so that you can glance down at the remains of a 900 year old hospital (which in turn was built on top of the site of a Roman cemetery) whilst you run to buy an overpriced sandwich on your lunch break. Pipes, cables, old foundations, layers of waste in different states of decay, tree roots,
mycelium, tunnels, buried rivers.
An excavation is a kind of exposure. Digging down deep in order to expose something to the light. She works in the darkness, she plays at the edges, applying both trowels and fine brushes to her dancing. Is it time she is showing us? How far down does she want to get in her body of dancing? How many layers? How delicate the excavation? What happens to these artefacts when they are taken out of their place of darkness and held up in the light? How do their chemicals change under our watching eyes?
APPEARING AND DISAPPEARING/ PLAYING THE EDGES
29.02.2024
Stockholm
Dear Excavation Series l and ll,
Your movement towards me makes it difficult to distance myself and project my gaze on you. I wanted to be analytical, but you are not in front of me and your persistent and ongoing movement onto my sensory organs inhibit most of my intentions. I have to let go of the questions I wanted to ask you. Perhaps they can return at a later point.
You are not in darkness, you are not a choreography that is going on in dim light, you choreograph darkness so that I can experience it as tangible, as a material in itself. This is only partly true because there are times when the contours you erased, the room you made disappear, returns and I arrive again to a sober sense, aware of my role as a witness of a rehearsal at Weld watching Anna Pehrsson dance and dance and dance. In these recurring moments, when I get the chance to orient myself again, as the absorbing frame of darkness retreats, the theater apparatus is reinstated. Square led lights, dusty curtains and taped marleys that reflect the light Thomas Zamolo have designed, currently managed by Mali Dönmez on a computer on the balcony above my head.
You remind me about the work of my friend and colleague Gry Tingskog, an artist who has presented several works that deal explicitly with darkness at Weld (I Object! 2018, Cheating discipline and other artistic affairs 2019, echoes of you(s) 2021 and warp 2022). In their master thesis As disappearance appears Gry describes this choreographic practice as setting up conditions for disorientation to unfold as well as speculating on how art experiences in the dark could be a means of shaking up the western colonial orientation grounded in enlightenment philosophy where light is considered superior to darkness.
If excavation is to “expose something to view by digging away a covering” what is it you wish to expose? And what is Anna digging into? It is as if she takes on a distinct part of the room at the time, starting next to me in lit up audience seats and after a while ending up behind the theater curtains that are covering Welds familiar walls. Here the repetitive rhythm of her movement work reveals another layer of the room whilst the non transparent curtain covers up the loudest marks of her identity.
Anna behind the curtain reminds me of Margit Galanters work, an artist based in Oakland who I met in Zagreb 2022. Margit has a practice called Caving and in addition to working outdoors in actual caves they also practice Caving by covering themselves with a blanket or putting their head into containers like paper bags. They refer to this practice as a “nourishing practice” where the need to spend time in darkness resulted in building “basic fort-like structures in their home and studio” to experience the spatial, acoustic and darkening effect of a cave.
You are divided into several parts, perhaps this is why you are called a series, and each of these parts have their own spatially restricted area. But is the ongoing uncovering of layers in the room actually about the room or should they be read symbolically– referring to something beyond their matter of fact actuality?
In one part your increasing bass resonates more in my flesh than in my ears causing a mild nervousness. Together with the wispy light it has the effect of distorting my bodys’ sense of placement and direction. The experience of being cut off from the actual space as if I was asleep or affected leaves me with nothing but myself to observe. I am thinking about my own thoughts, stuck in some loops and at this point I cannot help but wonder if this excavation is a psychological one.
Later on I consider whether what you are digging into might be Anna's dance archive. A series of cutouts from her pieces? Each revealing paths and tracks, memories of directions and forms in her tissues? Layers of imprints from former particular restrictions to a body's organization of forces?
There is a moment when Anna shifts from an unstable vertical sculling in the air to a grounded position on all fours. Horizontally aligned with the floor she holds all of her weight with only toes and fingers. This moment reminds me of an orange spandex suit and purple light filling this room (Cut in/Fold out 2016) and the orange suit reminds me of a scenography made up of loads of threads in a knot hanging from the ceiling, accompanied by a vertical body that falls and catches its weight (In [brackets] 2017). As you trigger these memories of Anna's earlier works I think of how the environment she is producing in her choreographies are always so distinct, it is as if each work is a specific color or texture. In these environments the dance unfolding is always as particular as that color or texture. This engages me as a spectator because it asks me to reorient my perception of not just what, but also how I am witnessing and interpreting the work.
Thank you,
Oda
Alice MacKenzie is a dance artist, performer and writer. Her work tangles speculative fiction with medicinal plants and cultures of bacteria which she shares as performances, perfumes and leaky texts. She is fascinated by the ways in which performances can build temporary worlds, and is happiest when working in collaboration. Most recently Alice’s work has been commissioned by Sånafest, Northern Sustainable Futures, Nya Nya Norrland, and Delta: An Ocean Call. As a performer Alice has worked across Europe in galleries, forests and on stages with artists including elieli, Siriol Joyner, Ina Dokmo, Kristin Nango, Cally Spooner, Dora Garcia, 2/8 Eleanor Bauer, Tino Sehgal and Yvonne Rainer. She works alongside other artists and organisations making books, films, performances and installations in collaboration with people of all ages. She has been a long term artist in residence at both an elderly care home and a special educationalschool in London. Between 2010 and 2015 Alice was part of a collective of dance artists running BELLYFLOP magazine. alicemackenzie.blogspot.com