– Fergus Johnson – Oct/Nov 2020
…THOUGHTS ON AN ENDING…
so that’s it, the residency comes to a close, Unfinished Fridays finishes and it’s time for me to leave
it was a beautiful evening
they were six beautiful weeks
they were autumn days cold and colourful
they were chatting outside with a cigarette or two
chatting outside with Naïma
we were chatting about rhythm
about how our work and our bodies and our selves leak into each other
how a conversation becomes a frame and suddenly
this thing
this thing you have been creating
this thing that you have dragged with you all the way from home
changes
what we change changes us
by talking we touched
each others work and each other
we changed
we changed the work the work changes us we changed the work
through talking
together
so suddenly i feel that my work is also dealing with rhythm
the pulse of poetry
a queer heartbeat
body-rhythm
the drumbeat of change
in the end my film is a poem occurring through text but also image
it’s a game of rhythm
black screens beating out the beats between our voices
we are many bodies held in one film of skin
many voices singing collective harmonies of the self
many bodies dancing together in one container
we intersect with ourselves and for a moment are still
then the song continues
maybe this is what the film is about
maybe this is how our talks about rhythm have become manifested
in the black screens between images
in the criss-cross of voices
fragmented rhythms chasing each other round in circles
maybe you could call this work music too
so i end with one more image:
it’s just a shot of my editing desk
but don’t you think it looks like a score?
i guess it is
<FRACTURE> <FRAGMENT> <FRAME>
things change and are fractured. i thought i would be sharing a short solo in the next edition of Unfinished Fridays but the new light lockdown in Berlin means the event was cancelled. then i thought i would be sharing related research that i am working on with friends but our work is about touch so that too has been canceled. now instead i am going to create a short film for the upcoming (online) edition of Unfinished Fridays. things change and are fractured. things are fractured and change. we shift and move into new realities, new bodies, new relations.
fragments emerge and connect. the images i created for the publicity for the abandoned Unfinished Fridays have become inspiration for the emerging work:
these are overlays, images created from stills taken from my research and overlayed with each other as well as anatomical sketches from Blandine Calais-Germaine’s seminal work, ‘Anatomy of Movement’. now i want to take these images, spontaneous fragments appearing like found objects from the now dead space of an aborted sharing, and create a short film. why not?
my research and part of my practice here in Lake Studios relates to yoga. i have been doing an almost daily yoga practice in the mornings. but even as i thought about my queer body emerging not only from my anatomy but also through the fragmented and fractured process of living my life i somehow excluded the morning practice from this conception. it was disconnected, just something i do in the mornings, almost like a coincidence. so we frame the coincidence. why not include the self that practices in the morning as just one of the many selves that occupy this skin we call body.
from fractures and fragments comes a frame. the image of overlays becomes a skeleton, the morning yoga practice flesh; this new film i will create suddenly finds itself with yoga as a central theme.
______________________________________________________________________________________
<BIO>
as artists we are often asked to write a bio so here is a bio, or a bio-poem or an instant-bio – kinda like instant compostition but instead of composition it’s a bio.
…
fergus is
fergus is here today this week for six weeks here in lake studios
fergus is here
full of nostalgia, full of the other times, full of mermaids
with green hair this time, green eyes and a quiet room to dream lake-y dreams
this the difference, a resident, sheltered and homed not just visiting but
here
fergus is
fergus is listening to gwenno, a new favourite
favourite song from the album is this
this gorgeous melody and magic words sung in cornish, what a surprise
to hear cornish, dead language of my childhood homeland, what a surprise to hear
a celtic tongue suddenly spoken from spotify’s shuffle
tasting home in a new home
how strange, how lovely
cornwall is oceans
cliffs, coasts, rocks, waves, salt, salt salt salt salty saltwater kissing me
fergus also is oceans
is water and salt and saltwater
is still a mermaid swimming still rusalka still a sea weasel
is still all about magic and queer creatures reaching out and collective art-making and water and bodies and transformation and the tides and the richness of diving into it and holding your breath and this crazy world of sensation all around us just waiting to be licked and caressed and smelled and eaten up like a yummy treat and then being immersed in it and crying with your friends because it made you sick and you ate to much and crying with your friends because this world is so fucked up and its really not enough just to dance but it really is all we can do and all we can do is go to the sea and the water and let go and let it wash over us and just become it
an ocean
or at least, the imagination of an ocean
fergus wants
to imagine an ocean
to imagine new worlds into possibility
like ursula said
to find the radical political beautiful dangerous wildness in our imaginations
together
because if i’m imagining a new would into being then i want you to be there
so you can kiss me of course
or maybe so we can kiss each other
if we feel like it
fergus also wants to enjoy these six weeks
to dance and do yoga and research anatomy and phrasing
to meet new friends and invite old ones along for the ride
and cook and stare out the window and wear nice outfits and talk about sabotaging gender and patriarchy and capitalism
yes to that
yes to dancing and enjoying it
yes to this body moving in a new old space
yes to being here and seeing what happens
yes