Everything is Churning & Opening is a suite of 4 elemental songs and 3 dances.
On a first visit to Colourscape I was struck immediately by two impressions. Firstly, that the experience of wandering through differently coloured zones had an affect on my sensiblities akin to the Greek/Baroque idea of 'affects'. Simply put, I felt different in different colours. It also felt 'elemental' to me, although perhaps this is also because so much of my recent work engages with the natural elements. Secondly, that the space felt, and functioned like a gut; a labyrinthine network of passages, tubes, valves, openings.
Everything is Churning & Opening then reimagines the ideas and sounds of natural elements as a series of affects, fused uneasily (in Frankenstein combinations) with allegories of digestion. Earth features clay sounds, and the eating of fruits and vegetables. Water is a weepy lament with watering can gargling, Air is flatulent Jazz scat solo, and Fire an increasingly wild fireside folk song about swallowing insects. Central to the work is its costume and design, led by Monika Czyzyk and Matteus Scibor, rolling the performance into a larger ongoing collabroative body of work with Czyzyk; Almanach.
Performed by ARCO (Neil Luck, Adam de la Cour, Chihiro Ono, Benedict Taylor), and Monika Czyzyk and Mateus Scibor with performative visuals.
Monika Czyżyk - costumes, with character from Bodyssey series, 4k videos, Video Girls
Mateusz Ścibor - 360 video
Footage from premiere at Colourscape Music Festival, Clapham, London September 2023 Work commissioned by Eye Music
Live audio engineered and recorded by Matt Saunders
Audio and Video mixed and edited by Neil Luck
