Awakenings

In the deep dark dread of 4am morning a latchkey turns in a stranger’s door. The stranger could be young, old, man or woman, but they are certainly asleep. Enveloped deep in the downy duvet of their unconscious, probably dreaming, asleep and awake at the same moment. As the door opens downstairs a psychoanalyst, an actress and a photographer let themselves into the sleeping strangers house. An anxious contract has been set in motion, a contract that begins with the voluntary hand over of the keys to this silent house.

Two women and a man creep into the darkened hallway, close the front door and slowly make their way upstairs. They locate the stranger’s bedroom and make themselves ready. The photographer, a man, enters the room with as much stealth as his nerves can muster, approaches the sleeper and takes a 5×4 polaroid photograph of them in their bed. A stolen document perhaps prescient of psychic catastrophes yet to come. The women then enter the room, the psychoanalyst and the actress, and the ‘Awakenings’ begin.

As the sleeper stirs in their dark room they are aware of a hallucination unfolding. The women silently creep around and onto the bed, starting to enact common nightmares, and poses from the dark recesses of the psyche. No words are spoken, no physical contact is made, but contact is being attempted across the void, across the abyss. The women’s movements are slow and precise and they slowly turn out all the lights of reason. A few more photographic documents are made before the three intruders retreat from this private space. Within two minutes of entering they are gone and the sleeper returns to the dream-sleep of life, but with a half remembered story to tell when light breaks.

As ever the photographs and stories remain, containing provoked observations and perhaps the seeds of enlightened analysis.

Lost in Translation

PAUL+A. – featuring Deborah Light and Laura Jenkins as A.

A companion artwork to ‘I Watched Her until She Disappeared’.

‘Unreliable Truths’ exhibition, Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea, September 2008 (DL)

National Museum of Wales Cardiff, September 2009 (LJ)

Glynn Vivian Art Gallery.

On receipt of this postcard men are invited to participate in the above named PAUL+A project. Your instructions should you choose to comply are to search tonight’s event for the woman in the portrait entitled ‘Portrait of A – 168 blows’, which hangs in the gallery. If you find her you are to approach her, touch her on the shoulder and quietly tell her you are sorry. This will be followed by a whispered confession, a personal apology perhaps on your behalf to a particular woman you know, symbolic reparation for some injustice you may have done her in the past. This enigmatic stranger will silently hear your confession.

The truth content of your confession is your own decision. If you don’t feel able to confront your personal situation you could ask for forgiveness for your brothers around the world who do transgress against women. It will be received as a gesture. No names will be exchanged and A will keep your secret. A will not be abused. If she doesn’t want to hear anymore she will walk away.

A will be accompanied by a paparazzi photographer, who will photograph each encounter on 5×4 polaroid film. If you wish to be seen in the photograph, approach from the back and speak over her shoulder, or alternatively you can approach from the front. On participation you will take ownership of a 5×4 polaroid photograph of yourself whispering to a beautiful stranger, which will be installed in the gallery. This image will represent your apology. It can be exchanged for a black and white print on the closing day of the exhibition. Your photograph may appear in a final edited artwork and by undertaking this task it is understood that you give permission for your image to be used in publication.

Thank you from PAUL+A. - featuring Deborah Light.

Lost in Translation. - is inspired by the last scene of the film of the same name.

National Museum of Wales.

PAUL+A featuring Laura Jenkins.

‘Portrait of A – 168 blows’

“Deborah is kneeling in the white dress that Maria wore in the cell,I’m
 kneeling opposite her with my 5×4 camera on my knee. Over an hour the 168
 portraits of Maria tick by on the computer behind me, and Deborah watches. The music is playing softly. As each portrait ‘disappears’ she rips a hole in
 the dress with a 2″ silver nail. When the cycle is complete we take this
 portrait. I’m reminded of Ann Darrow and King Kong.”

I Watched Her until She Disappeared

PAUL+A

Devised and performed by Maria Sanchez Portillo, Paul Jeff, and Emanuela Contini.

Made as a response to the continuing abduction and murder of young women in N.Mexico “I Watched Her Until She Disappeared” is a work of political art/theatre, which draws a moving performance of resistance by one Mexican woman from the durational act of having an identical portrait taken every hour, day and night for a week – whilst incarcerated in a prison cell with a white male photographer.

Doubly trapped, first in the pose and then in the cell, the woman is the object of 168 ostensibly identical portraits. Her voice reduced to the mute testimony of scratching words and pictures on the cell wall. The man attempts to make her into pure image by subjecting her to a harsh regime of scrutiny and representation. A pure image, (as inscribed in pornography) where everything is taken away from the woman, except her image. The woman resists from the retreat of a feminine space.

Touching on issues from physical violence to psychological terror, and the subjugation of women by the visual, this work examines the fragile relationship between the genders that can explode, like it has in Mexico, into what can only be described as a gender holocaust.

Life is Perfect

PAUL+A

Featuring Sarah Dowling

2) Man and woman in a hotel room, the man is laid on his back in the bed with pyjama bottoms on. The woman is laid on top of him in the pyjama tops. He has a pillow over his face and the woman has her head on the pillow as if to go to sleep. She smiles a satisfied smile and we notice a knife in her hand and a bloody puncture in the man’s side.

15) Man and woman in a hotel room, the woman is laid on the floor in a state of undress. She has a skirt on which is up around her thighs. The man in a similar state, is laid limp on the floor with his arms in an awkward position. His head is up the woman’s skirt and between her thighs. The woman is a trained dancer.

46) Man and woman in a hotel room, the man is laid on the bed naked looking very warm, the woman has gone for a cool shower. On returning, looking cold and wet she decides to demonstrate to the man the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. With a smile she takes the man in a close embrace and slowly rolls them over in the bed sheet until they are wrapped together very tight. She then demands that he give her the kiss of life. With a deep breath he kisses her until she loses consciousness.

45) Man and woman in a hotel room, the room is strewn with their clothes, bedclothes and pillows from the bed. The man and woman are standing wearing just pants. As the man rips off the last sheet from the bed and it is billowing upwards he suddenly brings it down over the woman’s head and twisting it, chokes and suffocates her.

17) Man and woman in a hotel room, the man is laid naked beside the bed, the woman stands over him in a bathrobe. She has one stiletto shoe on, the other is on the man’s head with the heel dug deep into the man’s eye.

The 50 photographs in this project were made by the artists over a 24hr period in a hotel room, whereby they privately performed 50 love scenes, all of which ended in a passionate sexual murder. Each photographed at the point of death by the protagonist.

At 2pm on the 2nd of October 2004 Paul Jeff and Sarah Dowling – Paul+a booked into a country hotel in mid Wales and took a room for 24hours. Armed with costume, props, a 5×4 camera with flash and 50 written legends equating to theatrical stage directions detailing short performances, the pair proceeded to perform and record photographically 50 love scenes all ending in murder. 50 passionate murders equally shared out in terms of gender (including 2 suicide pacts) and recorded at the instant of death on Polaroid type 55 film. Just over 2 murders an hour for 24 hours. These are performances carried out with no audience in a hotel bedroom with only the camera as witness.

The idea was to collapse the instant of death, the instant of sexual passion and the photographic instant into one hugely dense and significant moment. The two protagonists in the scene are condemned to replay the most significant moment of their lives over and over again as if in an infernal purgatory. The murders however are all different, illustrating the multiple potentialities that could have existed in that one dark instant. A temporal moment that is unfolded to show the other potential scenarios that lie behind it, and create a seriality which is neither linear nor spatial but premised instead on Deleuze’s Liebnitzian ‘baroque’ notion of The Fold, where time stands still and seriality unfolds from a specific moment in a specific place– one event consisting of infinite possibilities.

How to be like a Weegee Photograph

‘A+PAUL’

Featuring Adam Goodge

From an original idea by Adam Goodge

A series of devised interventions into the city at night, performed for the camera and witnessed ‘en passant’ by its citizens and invited guests. Each intervention is stimulated by a Weegee photograph and is a direct attempt to provide a contemporary critique through performed enactments, of Weegee’s lyrical, humorous and ultimately ‘Goya-esque’ vision of the edge of reason.

The attempts to be ‘like a Weegee photograph’ culminate in Paul Jeff being tattooed on the arm with the ‘Weegee The Famous’ stamp which promoted his myth on the back of every image.

More Beautiful Than God

PAUL+A

thanks to Lucille Lagier and Jo from Fremantle Arts Centre, W.Australia

M.B.T.G. is a live art work based on a formalised game of strip poker incorporating both installation and performance.

In a modern sexual climate in which most traditional taboos have now been breached it may be ‘homeopathic’ in some way to return to the more innocent ‘mystifying spectacle’ of the simple removal of clothing.

Striptease as spectacle evokes memories of the veil of appearances and notions of hidden truths. From what was once a mystical journey the modern striptease as commodity still stands as a beautiful but inevitably melancholy metaphor for the human condition.

Invoking the “chrono-photography” of Victorian quasi-scientist Eadweard Muybridge and the small room sets and lighting of Jan Vermeer, photographers ‘Paul+a’ will recreate Vermeer’s “pensive women (people) pent up in shallow spaces”. In a series of short performances ‘for one’, in a warm dark and private space Paul+a will assist volunteer members of the audience to regain the ‘state of God’s grace’ in a contemplative and personal manner.

The crowd will huddle outside the space watching a mute monochrome surveillance monitor.

—————–

THE RULES

6 ITEMS OF CLOTHING – 10 TURNS OF THE CARDS.

THE SUBJECTS CARDS ARE ON THE RIGHT.

ALL FOOTWEAR COUNTS AS ONE.

ACE IS HIGH.

A DRAW IS AWARDED TO THE SUBJECT.

IF THE SUBJECTS CARD IS LOWER THEY MUST REMOVE AN ITEM OF CLOTHING.

A PORTRAIT IS TAKEN EVERY TURN OF THE CARDS WHATEVER THE RESULT.

THE SUBJECT WILL FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS OF THE ASSISTANT AT ALL TIMES.

THE SUBJECT MUST AVERT THEIR EYES FROM THE CAMERA UNTIL (AND IF) THEY BECOME NAKED. I.e.. Regain the state of God’s grace.

ALL NUDES WILL HAVE DIRECT EYE CONTACT WITH THE CAMERA.

IF THE JOKER FALLS IN THE SUBJECT’S CARDS ALL CLOTHING COMES OFF.

IF THE JOKER FALLS ON THE OTHER SIDE, THE PHOTOGRAPHER AND THE ASSISTANT WILL REMOVE THEIR CLOTHES AT THE END OF THE GAME.

THERE IS ONE JOKER IN THE PACK.

POLIS

PAUL+A

Polis is an experimental theatre project devised and performed by Pearson/Brookes Co. – an ensemble of performers and artists led by Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes, and constructed in the city of Cardiff over three summer nights. Five performers traversing the city at night creating encounters and situations and mingling with the crowds of weekend revelers. In Chapter Arts Centre across the city a theatre audience taken out five at a time in a fleet of taxis, watching listening and recording scenes of intrigue mystery and provocation. Back in the theatre those not out in the city help to assemble fragments and traces of these encounters; video, photographs, recordings and stories both told and written into the interpretation of larger events that may or may not be happening, on the edges of our awareness as perhaps they always are, in the city.

What is that man writing on a wall? What is she singing in that bar? Why is he taking photographs of lovers?
Was that it, what we saw? – A vivid snapshot of the city and its people over three balmy summer evenings.

One of the five performers, Paul Jeff (aka Paul+a) a photographer, decides that his contribution will be to visit five pubs or bars per evening dressed in suit and tie, armed with a hand held 5×4 camera and flash gun, to persuade the unwitting drinkers there, to help him make a photograph of an embrace. The taxi with the audience members will arrive at a pre-determined time so he has just 10 minutes to persuade and organise his subjects into a scene before they arrive. On their arrival they will watch and record his actions, watch his performance, watch him make the image, taking away with them, apart from their own recordings, a Polaroid photograph from the 5×4 camera. The participants of the embrace will also receive a Polaroid, a record of their part in the encounter.

Five different bars across the city between 8 and 11pm each night. Photography, performed out in the city to two separate audiences, one uncertain as to what is happening, but both participants in the event. Performed Photography, process and exhibition collapsed into the event of photographing. Experimental in the truest sense – provoked observation. The results may look familiar but the journey was different; strange, illuminating, exhilarating. The questions are different, we have come full circle and photography once again resides with time. 
Paul+a 2006.

Have you ever noticed how, while walking in the city on a hot summer’s night, couples involved in an amorous embrace seem to resemble a “still image” amongst the throng and chaos of city life. I always imagine them clinging to each other – as one – in a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable return to the maelstrom, when they will be cast asunder and rendered individual again, suddenly thrown back into the fray. It is a thought full of pathos and melancholy, but it somehow gives us hope for a safe haven and a longing for the existential island that constitutes the embrace…

The thing about the amorous embrace is that it delivers, it fulfils for however brief a time our dream of total union with a significant other – our imaginary beloved. In the embrace we find a brief sanctuary, it takes hold of us when we take hold of the other, and we enter the realm of the unreal. For a brief illuminatory moment the embrace delivers us from language and words are inadequate, although we may quickly whisper them in the other’s ear. The embrace transports us from the symbolic world into an enchanted other world of companionable “sleepiness”. All around us fades. Like the photograph, each embrace is a little death, an instant that transports us.

But the amorous embrace constitutes a significant instant, it is both primal in that it conjures up our mother, and sexual in that it represents the dream of total union with our imaginary beloved. These two representations are collapsed into “one” at the same instant that we are “at one”. The intensity of this at/one(mo)ment (atonement) carries us to both succour and desire. The embrace is the gestural extension of pure desire, and in a flash it whisks us away from life, all is suspended – time, law and reason, – this is an ecstatic deranged interval where all our desires seem definitively fulfilled.

And so, what of our two lovers in the city, lashed together against the storm of progress. They stand stilled, as their bodies melt into one, in a moment which tells endless stories. The delicious mist descends and they let go of the world and drift away to a solace so soon and cruelly checked. Mouths gaping they burst back to the surface immediately to be whisked along by the relentless current.

Paul+a: with thanks to Roland Barthes.