The Clockwork Divide

Artist statement/ Directors notes.

The Clockwork Divide was originally conceived last year, (2000) when I was interested in creating a performance exploring the present moment. The focus on the ‘present moment’ grew out of previous works where I was investigating how unresolved baggage from the past colours our current sense of self.

Then one day I bumped into Conan the bubbleman who showed me these amazing photographs of his big beautiful bubbles. I knew in that moment the perfect tangible metaphor to describe the potential and fragility of each moment we experience is the bubble.  I asked if we could collaborate and 12 weeks later The Clockwork Divide was created.

For me it was important to have three performers on stage, initially to represent the past, present and future. But more importantly to portray how it is possible to become detached and isolated from ourselves and our environment if we are unable to find and respond to our internal sense of self.

The conceptual framework for The Clockwork Divide was to explore contrasting ways of defining moments in time and how these constructs affect the human condition.  These constructs drew from differing philosophies of Aristotle, St Augustine and Henri Bergson.

This performance is possible because there is a great team of people contributing. Simon Linke created the soundscape, Cab Huf helped in developing and refining the movements and last but most importantly Conan the bubbleman created the amazing and mesmerizing bubble membrane.

Blaide Lallemand

I am the past time, am old, but
Am too the time to come, for I
In my knowledge, close my eyes, and am
The membrane between past and the future,
am thin and
That thinness is the present time, the
Membrane
Is only my anguish, through which
the past seeps; penetrates, is absorbed into
The future, through which
The future bleeds into, becomes, the past
Even before It ceases to be
The future. Am also
The knife edge that divides.

Robert Penn Warren

 

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