Richard Dannenberg

SEMESTER TWO 2021 – ANIMALS AND THE ANIMAL

THE STORY SO FAR

WHERE WE ARE RIGHT NOW:

January 2021. Second year of an already crazy, dark and unpredictable decade. We were all saying that the new year might bring more joy, though under that I feel most people knew that it wouldn’t exactly be a sudden new golden age. We’ve had insurrection and violence in the USA and the start of a new presidency, hoping that it will shine on us all. The start of a new lockdown in England, and continuing lockdowns throughout the UK, including in Wales. The vaccine is being slowly administered, but it still feels like a long journey. The death rates are around and over a thousand per day, it feels like the most bitter winter. This opening line from Shakespeare’s Richard III springs to mind (you can see a performance of it by Benedict Cumberbatch here)

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York,
And all the clouds that loured upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths,
Our bruisèd arms hung up for monuments,
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smoothed his wrinkled front

Another good text to sum up how we’re all feeling, and I am is the eponymous final song on Gorillaz’s Demon Days album (track here). The song ends on a more optimistic note, but I’m just going to share the first pessimistic and hopeless half, as I feel that’s where we are at the moment, sorry. But it has images of self-love and hope in it still:

In demon days, it’s cold inside
You don’t get nobody, people sigh
It’s so bad, lasting far, but love yourself
Hiding in a hole in there
All the glasses are too big
Bring it back, got to hold it back
To let you do that yet you don’t want me back
Before it fall down, falling down falling down
Falling out to go far from the soul (ah)

In these demon days
It’s so cold inside
So hard for a good soul to survive
You can’t even trust the air you breathe
Because mother earth wants us all to leave
When lies become reality
You numb yourself with drugs and T.V.

Those two lyrics in bold sum up the environmental feelings and connotations towards Covid very well. It just feels so frustrating to be a in a worse position in Semester 2 than Semester 1, but somehow I feel like we should have seen it coming. I have just come out of two weeks of isolation, and am eager to get on with new projects, even though it feels hard and gloomful with everything being online again. But we must make the best of it, as they say. Even though it all feels like such a minute, limited and lifeless version of what university students and arts students have experienced in the past, as this should be the middle of what they call “the best three years of your life.” But I’m sure it’ll still be fun and exciting in its own way.

WHAT WORKED WELL LAST SEMESTER:

• The collaboration, gathering an ensemble
• Balancing directing other creatives and letting them bring themselves to the projects
• Working with a musician
• The online community of the Winter Show

THE THEME:

The theme is “Animal”. I thought for a while ever since Semester 1 that the theme would be “AnimalS”. I don’t really know what difference that actually makes it, still wanna look at animals as a whole and our relationship with them, and I might focus on one type in the end. So for the theme might as well be “ANIMALS”, that’s how far I’ve taken it from “ANIMAL.”

Hope you enjoyed that bit of waffle.

I plan to actually focus and let this topic lead me much more than the themes have in past semesters, as I always had an idea already set out before the module started, and I made the theme fit into my project, not the other way round (I know very naughty of me). Although through osmosis, particularly with “Nature” last semester, the themes would still embed themselves and influence the creative development.

At the beginning of secondary school I remember being very interested and one might say “nerdy” about the different classifications of animals. Of course now I realise that these are very human categories, and aren’t part of any system created by animals.

I love animals. They’re us. We are animals. It’s a change of escapism to think about them, to feel humble, to get out of this pandemic-stricken world, which we keep saying is nature’s revenge against us.

It’s also used as a negative and derogatory description:
– “You’re monstrous, you’re behaving like animals”
– “You little piglet!” (courtesy of my grandmother when commenting my eating habits at the table)
– “Don’t eat with your fingers, we’re not animals!”

But also positive, and cheeky:
– “You sly old dog/fox”
– “The early bird catches the worm”

… BUT ANYWAY… I ALREADY HAD A LOT OF IDEAS OVER THE CHRISTMAS BREAK, HERE THEY ARE:

A SPACE
Do we all become a bit like animals on the dancefloor? (track and music video Animals by Martin Garrix). My original project idea for Semester 2 Year 2 was to create an experimental club dancefloor which was also a cross-arts exhibition space. I thought about how we all let out energy when we’re dancing wildly in clubs, showing our animalistic sides. Though some might choose to withdraw and be calm, stealthy animals in the ecosystem. There’s an uncomfortable parable one can draw in club culture with sexual harassment and assault, and that this falls under the predator and prey element. Though in my project it would have also all been about creating a safe space so as to eradicate toxic and dangerous elements like that, creating a safe and (some would say) utopian club culture. That is one good thing that comes from our differentiation from other animals: a set of values and morals in order to respect and keep each other from harm – even though there’s a lot of contradictions through all the violence, intimidation and harm we cause – which some might say is all the negative and aggressive elements of animals that are still in us humans despite our civilised standards and morals. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau talked about how he thought civilisation had violated nature, in a petty attempt to tame it. So this could have also been a behaviour study into the animal species known as homo sapiens.

KAFKA’S THE BURROW
A short story by Franz Kafka.

AESOP’S FABLES
(TalesWithMorals, AesopForChildren)
I could retell them physicalise and stage them, can be preparation/exercises for The Burrow. Apply In All Languages Physicality

ON THE PLANET WITHOUT HUMANS
When I was 13-15 in school, I imagined a future where animals are left without humans. What would they do?

MY CAT TALES
Creating a fictional world where my pet cats talk  (Problem is I’m not gonna be home again in time. Could write about what I’ve written down so far) 

ANIMAL DIARIES
Writing about my own impressions of animals, a very anthropomorphic approach. Also take photographs (Photography Overlap Chance, Analogue), as one of my other modules this semester is Photography 3, chance for an overlap. You can create files on animals. Most obvious one to draw on in the Aberystwyth area is seagulls.

Can also create parallel sketches, drawings and paintings, I could use this as a drawing exercise.

WOLF PACK
At my one year of Drama & Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moore’s University 2018/19 I had to retell a fairytale in a new way for the module Introduction To Scriptwriting, in the form of a 10-page-script. Someone suggested to me to retell Red Riding Hood from the perspective of the wolf, and so that’s what I did. We had to do it partly in stage, screen and radio, and so that’s what I did.

My remaining module this semester is Writing Audio Drama, so I could return to this world of the wolf pack I created through radio drama, chance for more overlap.

SOUND PIECE
Doing a connection of animal sounds. 
Plan to sit on Professor John Harvey’s Sound Art module, useful
research. I created sound pieces.

Kate Bush does some weird and wonderful animal noises in her songs:
Birdsong from 2005 album Aerial.

Donkey backing vocals in 1982’s Get Out Of My House

She didn’t make a dogs sound in this album, but who can forget her Hounds Of Love, special mention to this 1985 gem album cover:

…AND THERE ARE SO MANY OTHER TEXTS, ARTWORKS AND PIECES I HAVE SEEN THROUGHOUT MY LIFE, MANY DURING MY CHILDHOOD

FICTIONAL STORIES

THE BURROW
Short story about an animal, still need to read it. It’s weird, I’ve heard about this story for so long and devised so many ideas of staging it in my head, without
actually reading it

WATERSHIP DOWN
Children and adults book classic, loved it as a child, especially listening to the
audiobook. Very masculine though, well not masculine but quite patriarchal,
female rabbits aren’t represented.
There have been three animated adaptations, a film in 1978, 1 3-season TV series from 1999 – 2001 and a 2018 miniseries.

REDWALL
Series of children’s fantasy novels, the animals are highly anthropomorphised.
The villains are always rats, weasels, stoats, and ferrels, along with the occasional fox, pine marten, snake or wild cat.

SILVERWING
Another children’s book series, about bats, by Canadian author Kenneth Oppel.
The bats are banished by birds and beasts, because they don’t choose between
being either, they wish to remain both.
Features cannibalistic bats, which are bats from Spain, a much hotter climate.
Really like some of the guitar music. In my film I could include some music from the TV shows.

THE ANIMALS OF FARTHING WOOD
Book series by Colin Dann and adapted into a European TV series. Much darker and realistic approach, similar to Watership Down, a group of animals go on the search of a new home after their old one, Farthing Wood, gets
destroyed by humans. However here it is various different animals from foxes to badgers to moles to snakes to hares to mice.
I have only seen the TV series. While several animals do have characteristics that are stereotyped to their animal image, the Adder is very threatening and cunning, they are all given round characters, apart from the Rats in Series 3, who are nearly portrayed as evil invaders.

WARRIOR CATS/WARRIORS
Looking at various clans of wild cats who live in the woods. I have read 25 of the books.

BAGPUSS
A creation by Oliver Postgate and Peter Timmins through their company
SmallFilms

DER RABE 
(Translates as The Raven). A text written by a school friend Cedric Kunkel, for a Poetry Slam Workshop we did together in 2013. I don’t remember the contents much, just that it featured a raven flying and watching someone. I wrote to Cedric if he could send me the text, but unfortunately he can’t find it anymore.
He told me that the story was about a raven observing a human from a window, and feeling both jealousy and admiration for this person.

MAUS – Die Geschichte eines Überlebenden
(Translates as Mouse – The Story of a Survivor). A comic book dramatisation by American cartoonist Art Spiegelmann of the Holocaust, featuring the Jews as Mice, the Nazis as Cats and the Poles as Pigs. It is a memoir piece as it features Spiegelmann interviewing his father who was a Jew and a holocaust survivor.

Example of animal anthropomorphism that are used to represent human values and conflicts, however not everybody was happy with this:

“According to writer Arie Kaplan, some Holocaust survivors objected to Spiegelman making a comic book out of their tragedy.^[163] Literary critics such as Hillel Halkin objected that the animal metaphor was “doubly dehumanizing”, reinforcing the Nazi belief that the atrocities were perpetrated by one species on another, when they were actually done by humans against humans.^[164] Comics writer and critic Harvey Pekar and others^[165] saw Spiegelman’s use of animals as potentially reinforcing stereotypes.^[166] Pekar was also disdainful of Spiegelman’s overwhelmingly negative portrayal of his father,^[167] calling him disingenuous and hypocritical for such a portrayal in a book that presents itself as objective.^[168] Comics critic R. C. Harvey argued that Spiegelman’s animal metaphor threatened “to erode [Maus’s] moral underpinnings”,^[169] and played “directly into [the Nazis’] racist vision”.^[1“

I haven’t read the comic, but I also find using animals to represent human narratives and values problematic, as they don’t share these values, and while we can both find similarity in the sides of humanity we don’t like with the wild, brutal sides of animals – it is also a disfiguration of animals.

BABE
Two films about a pig. I think back to this pig, and the revelation where Babe finds out that humans eat so many of his kind, and how he’s so shocked and sad by that. Every time when I eat pork I feel like a cruel monster.´

NATURE DOCUMENTARIES

MEERKAT MANOR
One could say my favourite one, has left me with an eternal fondness for meerkats. 

NATURAL WORLD
Anthology nature series

BIG CAT DIARY
Love big cats: Lions, Cheetahs & Leopards

LOST LAND OF THE TIGERS
…

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH
Almost feels like an ambassador, both a human ambassador for the animal kingdom/queendom, but also the animals’ ambassador for our species.

SPRINGWATCH/AUTUMNWATCH/WINTERWATCH
The animals are constantly watched and commented on by human presenters such as Chris Packham, Bill Oddie, Kate Humble and Simon King.

ANIMAL FARM

BOB THE CAT

X-MEN AND OTHER SUPERHEROES

Some superheroes and supervillains take about animal qualities 

JOSEPH BEUYS

I LOVE YOU THAT MUCH

FANTASTIC MR. FOX

ISLE OF DOGS

THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA

MIRANDA WHALL – CROSSED PATHS

…

MONGRELS

CREATURE COMFORTS

WALLET & GROMIT

ANTHROPOMORPHIC KIDS SHOWS

PINGU

JAKERS!

REPRESENTATIONS/SIMULACRUMS/
DISTORTIONS OF ANIMALS

POKEMON 

The relationship between animals and humans

DAEMONS IN HIS DARK MATERIALS 

The relationship between animals and humans

WEREWOLVES

….

THE BASIL BRUSH SHOW

PATRONUS CHARMS IN HARRY POTTER

Animals

EGYPTIAN MYTHOLOGY

Animals feature greatly here. 

THIS PHOTOGRAPHER 

INTENTIONS, ASPIRATIONS:

• THERE’S SOMETHING SO PURE AND REFRESHING ABOUT USING THE ANIMAL AND ANIMALS AS A THEME, I THINK IT’S REALLY GOING TO ANIMATE ME
• I WANT TO BECOME ANIMALS, AT LEAST TRY AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, AND SEE HOW I FEEL AS A HUMAN BEING, AND AS AN ANIMAL MYSELF AFTERWARDS, I WANNA BE AN ANIMAL
• THE MAIN FOCUS IS PHYSICALITY, I WANT TO USE THIS PROJECT TO REALLY EXPERIMENT WITH THAT, BOTH AS A PERFORMER AND A COLLABORATIVE CHOREOGRAPHER, CONTRAST TO THE LARGELY NATURALISTIC
  PLAYWRITING AND STAGING THROUGH ZOOM IN LUCIDA LAST SEMESTER
• CAPTURE THIS THROUGH PHOTOGRAPHY AND EXPERIMENTAL FILM, CINEMATOGRAPHY AND EDITING SKILLS (get onto Dr. Kim Knowles’s Art Cinema Module) – GOOD PREPARATION FOR EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA PRODUCTION WHICH I WANT TO TAKE IN YEAR 3
• TAKE THE ETHOS OF COLLABORATION TO A NEW LEVEL, WORK WITH EVERYONE WHO IS INTERESTED IN MOVEMENT AND DANCE, ESPECIALLY IN CREATIVE ARTS & INTERDISCIPLINARY PRACTISE

….

WEEK ONE (25th – 31st Jan)

MONDAY

I watched David Cameron’s Prime Minister’s Questions, out of various reasons, and saw Larry The Cat mentioned. Imagine a future where he walked about parliament with no humans left, like the Fox in the Gallery. But with true power.

There was a spoof news article during the peak of the Brexit negotiations chaos, which joked that Larry The Cat was in actually in charge. But I can’t find this article anymore.

TUESDAY 26.01.21
Would be interesting to interview some Animal Behaviour and Zoology students, both for their scientific insights but also to look at their relationships (if that’s what they would call it) with animals.

WEDNESDAY 27.01.21

As is often the case, I listened to Strange Timez by Gorillaz and saw that post about the guinea pigs, and I connected the two. I could see the two of them, these two guinea pigs, moving ab

The MSN article:

A totally blind guinea pig and her sister that helps guide her around are in need of a new home after being taken in by the RSPCA.

Ami, a six-year-old black guinea pig, relies on her sister, Yuki, for help due to her condition.
They were taken in by the animal charity’s Danaher Animal Home in Essex earlier this year, after their owner could no longer care for them.
“Poor Ami also has a little head tilt caused by a previous ear problem,” said supervisor Craig Horsler.
“But her health problems don’t cause her any pain and certainly don’t slow her down, thanks to Yuki’s support.
“Ami is always the first to emerge when she hears the rustle of a bag of treats but waits for Yuki to seek them out so she can follow her lead. It’s adorable to watch.

REPRESENTATION OF BLIND PEOPLE, I personally don’t know anyone who is blind. Do some research. 

ANIMALS SO FAR IN THIS NEW WORLD

• My own cats back in Gutweiler 
• Larry The Downing Street Cat
• The Fox Who Was Let Loose (Would They Still Be Alive, could be there descendants)
• The Wolves In My Red Riding Hood Tale, survivors if they were massacred
• The Two Guinea Pigs
• The Spiders, The Seagulls and The Rats around our house. Generally The Seagulls in Aberystwyth
• Meerkats, Gotta Have Meerkats In There
• A Goldfish and other Fish in an Aquarium
• Some Animal Before It’s About To Be Slaughtered

— INTERRUPTION —-

I don’t know what to do.
I still don’t know what to do
I don’t know if I’ll ever know what to do
IT’S SO FUCKING UNFAIR

I JUST WANNA HOOOWWWLLLL

I wish I could howl like wolves do.

Howl like Fox does in the beginning of this episode of The Animals Of Farthing Wood, when he finds his dead daughter.

The music and the animals, and the emotional encounters between the animals makes me feel emotion and pain, I don’t always feel I can feel it. At the end of this same season Fox loses his son Bold:

WEEK TWO (1st – 7th Feb)

THURSDAY, 04.02.21

Notes from all the arts pieces connected with the theme “Animal” we looked at. In hindsight I wonder whether I should have even been attending these sessions. I wish I could have been back at my German family’s, grieving together. But fucking Covid.

BECOMING ANIMAL

Collaboration between filmmakers Emma Davie & Peter Mettler and philosopher David Abram.

– That’s what I want to do, become an animal.

“A return to the body is a return to the earth”
“Mingling our ears…”
“Explore our relationship with more than the human world”

“Visceral Anguish and Yearning”

“Perception is an ongoing communication/realisation between my bodies and the bodies of other human beings”

• It’s also about nature, it’s about us as humans going out and becoming like an animal.

“I’m also finding myself seeing from their perspective”

“Photoreceptive beings”

“But the animal in me is mistrustive. How can this technology possibly help us connect?” 

“In touching things…”

“Isn’t this what anthropologists call animism” 

“We can think about language as a… It’s a sensuous thing” 

“Doesn’t our language belong to the animate landscape as much as us?” 

“Carvings and animal symbols on rock”

“The ultimate symbol of animals” 

“Each Letter only referred to a gesture of a human mouth“

“The letters reflect not as human“

“As people learn their ABC, their symposium is closed within a hall of mirrors…”

“Other animals are not really conscious…”

“Time is a notion common to us two legeds”

“Nature, the other animals, the plants, begins to fall away from us humans” 

“Everyone is caught up with making records of things… Are we sliding into a time of such difficulty…. we are living in this area of profilate spending” –(LUCIDA) 

• SECTION ABOUT THE HUMAN WORLD, FEELS SO BLAND AND HOPELESS, BORING, MUCH MORE FUN WHEN 

My car’s name is moonshine. 

Silicon Valley. 

• THE BISON LOOKS SO UNHAPPY NEXT TO THE CARS, LIKE IT’S BEING THREATENED

“OUR SENSING BODIES AND THE SENSUOUS EARTH “

“Please check surroundings for safety” 

“Quick spiralling past trees, like a quick pack/horde/band of animals”

Sometimes it just seems as if our technologies are trying to mimic that ancient cosmos we just inhabited

Cobwebs, they freak me out. Arachnophobia, fear of spiders. Dreamt that 

The shadow, is our shadow also a type of animal? 

“We are flying… And have almost forgotten to notice” 

As I sense the plane around me

“List of beverages

I feel like we’re interrupting and disturbing the animal by filming it, intruding, I can’t look it in the eye with proper happiness or feeling good about it, and that taps into my wider feelings of guilt throughout my life” 

Again filming that animal feels like a sense of intrusion. 
When the two moose fought at the end, I was expecting it to become much more violent, the music seemed to be suggesting that.

SPIRIT ANIMAL

This can be a great starting point for movement and consciousness

My mum told me once how she became an animal. 

I can hear how the hawk is the predator in these sounds 

FROM HERE TO EAR

FEELS LIKE EXPERIMENTING ON ANIMALS, OR IS IT GIVING THEM A VOICE SOMEHOW? 

Copulation on guitars

OTHER SPACES:WOLF SAFARI

I love wolves 

I wanna be that wolf pack. But i can’t do anything in this fucking environment

This is one I’m gonna look deeper into. 

BE – LULLABY

Found the beginning somehow really uncomfortable, because we have this fear of bees, wasps, hornets, that they’ll sting us. But Bees are seen as the good ones, the rest are evil? 

Hah, that makes me think of The Wespen Stück

It’s a music video 

Melancholic Nature makes me think of my dad

THE LONGEST FLIGHT

THIS ALL SO QUICK, I FEEL LIKE I CAN’T ENJOY OR PROPERLY PROCESS IT. 

TOUCH DOWN!!!! TOUCH DOWN!!!!!! 

TOUCH DOWN!!!!!!!!! 

(X-MEN: EVOLUTION PILOT OPENING) 

FLIGHT OF THE SWANS

Humans always wanted to fly. Do they have the right (to want) to do that? 

PERSPECTIVE 

It’s nice to be home.

THE MAN WHO WANTED TO BE A GOAT 

WHAT ARE THEY DOING WITH THE GOAT? 

BEING A BEAST 

I WANT TO KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE. WILD THING 

HERITAGE 

IT LOOKS AND FEELS SO FAKE, BUT IT IS BEAUTIFUL 

PLAY DEAD, REAL TIME

PLAY DEAD, JUST PLAY DEAD, PLAY DEAD (SPOOKS 7X01)

ENJOY THE SILENCE

PLAY VIDEO AND AUDIO TOGETHER 

I JUST HEAR THE MUSIC AND FEEL SAD

AND HUNGRY, I HAVEN’T EATEN ANYTHING 

I wanna free these horses though, they’ll be in my future 

I like the future cause it gives me more playground/playing field, I can imagine more. 

NORDIC NATURE SOUND EFFECTS 

Sound 

My father said that he preferred to go out into Nature and hear the sound of the birds. What did he mean by that? 

REFLECTION:

I’ve never felt something after seeing many of these art pieces. I feel sorry for the animals, and I feel all these contemporary artists are fucking wankers.
Well, it’s not quite as black and white as that. But how is birds on guitars
different from mice in a maze?
But yeah, opening image of the presentation was a horse hanging down in a place of extreme human luxury. Who the fuck do we artists think we are? What have we become? What are we, as humans? And why am I surprised? Is my
consumption of animals and animal products just as bad, or can I feel a little less worse due to it being a little less bad?

MORE EXAMPLES OF ABUSE OF ANIMALS FOR THE SAKE OF “ART”.

SALVADOR DALI’S TOSSING CATS (Article)
They were going to at first explode a duck with dynamite

STEVE WATER’S CHICKEN
Do I have the right to be disgusted about that, when I have eaten so many chickens and I don’t know how they’ve been killed?

SINGING CAT VIDEO
Maybe it’s too far to call it abuse, but yeah, it is being overly used for comic effect.

And even when actual animals aren’t being harmed, I always found, and I might just being sensitive, that animals are killed off for amusement, the dog in Sugar Rush.

PLAN:

…

Talked with LJMU Drama graduate Alina, she might be willing to become a fox or an owl. And her partner Zach who is also an actor might also take part.

WEEK THREE (8th – 14th Feb)

MY ENCOUNTER WITH A SEAGULL

I was just going for a very quick walk on the Pier Promenade, wanted to see the sunlight. And I saw a seagull sitting on a precipice, and was right near to it. I tried to catch its eye, to get some sort of connection. I didn’t have my camera or my tablet with me, I had no intentions of taking photographs. And just like Lucida would say, it would have been an amazing photograph, although the seagull might have flown away. But there it just stayed. Wasn’t sure if I was making it nervous or not, seemed to look from me to another man who was just standing nearby. It felt wrong even to look, I mean you wouldn’t do that with a human that you didn’t know/had never met at all. Just like what Miranda said, animals have just become these spectacles of wonder.

THURSDAY SEMINAR:

LETTER TO THE MEAT I EAT:

To the Bacon, Chicken and Sausage
To the Chickens and Pigs
We Look At You, And I Eat You
Sorry, but I was raised that way
And I don’t think I’ll change much in the future
But hopefully one day
I once looked you in the eye
When I was walking with my father in the green
And decided to
From that look
To not eat you again
And I did stop for two years
But not now anymore
But hopefully one day again

DE-EXTINCT
Bring back species like the Wooly Mammoth
That’s in a way still continuing violation of the animal space.

ANOTHER ENCOUNTER AND OBSERVANCE OF A SEAGULL

I was walking down a street and two people were eating something, a seagull looked very interested in it, and I was interested in how

Then another seagull was following someone who was opening the door to where they lived, he shooed the seagull away. Primitive and petty humans.

Started to look and think about how I could physically mimic a seagull:
1. But arms facing straight together backwards
2. Bend down on your knees
3. Have face turning forwards

MY POTENTIAL ANIMAL KINGDOM SO FAR
Me as a Seagull
Ruth Hogg as a Jackdaw or Crow
Sally as some kind of Bird, in a tree
Alina Burwitz as a Fox and/or Owl
Ania Sefarin as a Wild Cat
Joe as a Dog

TALK WITH KUBA
Kuba is a 2nd year Drama and French student, who I have done Drama modules with, as well as collaborated on projects outside the course.
Narrative of sheep, became part of his journey to try and understand Wales more, the sheep are always this passive observer over the past 200 years. Is somewhat less enthusiastic about it now.

TALK WITH ZOE
Projection, talk with Chris and Steven
What would you project on it?
Live footage of real animals, what would that create?

TALK WITH NIALL ABOUT FILMING PERFORMANCE
Close Up, Mid-Shot, then Longshot, Classic Shooting Of A Scene
Tracking Around
Worm’s Eye View
Cinematography & Lighting

WEEK FOUR (15th – 21st Feb)

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ANIMAL

Link to Quick History of Photography

Gather all the different performers techniques and physicality, and create something as a solo performance. Or a dual performance. Would that work? If we livestream from the Arts Centre, maybe that’s how it would have to work. Could have Kuba at least. This is linked to my ideas last semester for Lucida as a stage performance, having a movement section telling a quickfire history of how humans worked to capturing the light through various techniques.

It’s a very simple but great place to start from to tell a story through dance and movement. And this time it’s both the history of humanity and releasing & connecting with our wider animal nature.

THIS IS HOW IT COULD WORK, STRUCTURE:

EVOLUTION A-????/????-A

• NORMAL HUMAN BEHAVIOUR Walking (a la Berkoff maybe), Talking, Running
• Could then go backwards with evolution, apes, what came before that, all the way to slime (when did Animals start?)
• So a crash course in evolution, try it beginning to current status, 
• ..

THE FUTURE?

• What could humans evolve into
• The animal in this future without humans. Add a science-fiction element?

GENERAL ANIMAL FEATURES (Can include when directing everyone)

• Foraging/Looking
• Eating Habits (No Manners)
• Going To The Toilet In Public?
• Predator & Prey (How To Do It As A Solo Performance, and as a Dual Performance With Social Distancing)

LINKED TO FEATURES, TAMED ANIMALS VS WILD ANIMALS 

THE SCENOGRAPHY & THE SHOW:
(If we’re able to be in the Arts Centre)

• Lighting & Scenography installed by Jake & Carys
• Music composed by Osian and/or other musicians
• Filmed live by someone, do I need someone?

WEEK 5 (22nd – 28th Feb)

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WEEK 6/READING WEEK (1st – 7th March)

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WEEK 7 (8th – 14th March)

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WEEK 8 (15th – 21st March)

…

EASTER BREAK WEEK 1 (22nd – 28th March)

went to see my grandmother, and then on Sunday I went to Berlin.

tomorrow I’m going to enter the flat where my father died, two months since it happened.

EASTER BREAK WEEK II (29th March – 4th April)

In Berlin. In my father’s flat. Blood stains are still on the wall. It really hurts.

But as they say, life goes on.

Well they can fuck off.

EASTER BREAK WEEK III (5th – 11th April)

leaving berlin. back to gestorf. funeral on friday the 9th. famikly there.

it was more cathartic than I thought it wiould be.

it was nice to spend the day with family.

butit all happened far too fast

and in the end, life must stuill fucking go on.

as must this project…

WEEK 9 (12th – 18th April)

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WEEK 10 (19th – 25th April)

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WEEK 11 (26th April – 2nd May)

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POST MORTEM AND FUTURE BEASTS

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EPILOGUE, 25th August 2021:

Here we are again. Another semester of creativity, stress and poor time management. This time the most difficult one.

I’m currently at my grandmother’s in Gestorf in the Greater Region of Hanover, where my father was born, and sadly didn’t get to retire. Today my grandmother, my aunt and me went to the local company that makes gravestones to find one for my father’s grave, its the same company that made the grave for his father 16 years ago, my father wanted to buried right next to him. We found one we all like.

The question then came whether to add anything apart from the name and the dates. I suggested that we could put the emblem of a cat on my father’s grave. My father loved his cats, but he stopped having them in 2012. I wonder whether he might still be alive if he had carried on having cats, maybe a cat could have saved his life. My grandmother was against that, she said it crosses a boundary. Well, sorry grandma, but I want a cat on my father’s gravestone because I want some form of happiness and beauty to lighten up this dark and solemn village where my father was born, and because of World War II trauma, was never able to fully break free and be what he wanted to be. The same for his parents, I wish it had been different for all of them. (My grandmother can barely speak English so she won’t be able to understand this, and she never goes on the Internet anyway.)

So I’m going to put a cat on my father’s grave, put a human symbol of the animal, in tribute to his best friends Charlie, Lionie, Sukey, Foxy Fox, Larnie, Lulu and Lilly – Lilly, who he without meaning to contributed to her death. And through that, I was born. For me the cat symbolises so much, I was created because a cat died, and we need cats in our family to keep us alive. If there is a heaven, I hope my father is in it with all his animal friends. 

SEMESTER ONE 2020/21 – LUCIDA AND NATURE

A BIT OF TIME TRAVEL, CALLING FROM 20.01.21, THE END OF THIS PROJECT

Hi I’m Richard, and I wanna be an artist. I’m a bit, actually no I’m VERY all over the place. I like to dream and to make up new worlds, dystopian futures and alternative realities, but it’s all about right now, about the moment, about these crazy times we’re living in (sorry if that sounds too cliched and not original enough, it’s the best I’ve got). 

I get very easily overwhelmed, and I feel my art is always me trying to make sense of all the chaos. So this notebook is quite chaotic, but it does have a structure, in that it led to an amazing performance on the 16th December, involving 11 performers (including some cameos from myself), captured images from 7 photographers and haunting music from an up and coming student musician. This is the story of LUCIDA, the project that’s been developing in the back of my mind for over three years since 2017, and that I’ve had the chance to stage it in this semester and the annual Creative Arts Winter Show. 

The stimulus for this semester was Nature. I feel I cheated a bit and didn’t create a project born out of this topic, but I took a project/concept and put it slat bang in the middle of this topic. It’s a very loose connection, but the theme and worries of how our relationship with reality is affected by photography (both in a negative and positive sense) has been applied to how this affects our relationship with nature, as our reality is also our nature in a way. I hope you enjoy it!

LUCIDA – THE STORY SO FAR

Hi, I’m Richard, a 2nd year Creative Arts student. I don’t really like giving these introductory posts and laying everything bare, I prefer to keep things more mysterious. But here we go.

Three and a half years ago, when I was still going to school, and I was in my final year, I looked at the prom photographs of the year that had just finished their A-Levels a few months ago. A lot of fine dressed human beings, the elite, the finest, the crème de la crème. And they were all profile photographs, multiple classes and groups, students showing an unbreakable bond and smiling together with dying gratitude for their teachers. Smiling, smiling, smiling and smiling. And I looked at one person I knew in these photos, who I won’t name, and as I looked at their smile in the cacophony of positivity, I couldn’t help feeling such hatred, envy, jealousy and disgust for this person. I won’t go into any detail of what I wrote as it’s too personal and I also have reflected on some of my thoughts, but seeing a frozen image of this person extremely happy made all the feelings I had towards them come up. And I was still trapped in school for another year.

That was the start of Lucida, the project I will be undertaking this year. I started to write a little internal monologue about what I was feeling when I saw this photograph. And then I had an idea for a series of monologues – short pieces of writing for stage – all dealing with someone interacting with a photograph.

THESE INCLUDED:
– Me commenting on the photographs of prom in my school
– A teenager who after a drunk night out looks at regret of the photos of last night in her hangover, it would have been quite stereotypical though
– Nazi Germany photo propaganda (there was a recent exhibition on that in the School of Art, what a coincidence), discussion between government officials and photographers
– A photographer and their model talking about the next photoshoot
– Some photos my mother found of her late father, my grandfather who died years before I was born. These were from the 60s but they already resembled smartphone selfie photos in a weird way. How these photographs make me feel
– A lonely old woman who looks at family albums of all her relatives, but laments and despairs over the fact she is barely seeing them in person anymore these days
– A physical theatre choreography to represent the science and machinery of photography

These were all just ideas I wrote down, with some scene descriptions and some thoughts of consciousness for the characters in these scenes. I never fully developed them. I was so busy with school, then switching to university and other projects that I never got to dedicate myself fully towards it. But it was always stuck in the back of my mind. I first called it: “Memories Of The Frozen Image”, but I soon decided that there was a better name: LUCIDA. In tribute to Roland Barthes’s book on photography, Camera Lucida.

I’ve been collecting ideas, reading up on photography, working on my own photographic practise, storing away a whole world. And now it’s time to let it out.

Just to clarify, each week the sections about my project Lucida will be in blue.
and the sections about the workshops will be in green.

But Am I An Artist?

I don’t know, I’ll let you decide. But what I create does tend to excite me, it’s like travelling into new worlds no one else knows about. It’s a nice feeling.

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