Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects   (2011)

Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects   (2011)

Stones, walnut veneered bed headboard, shelving system and ink.
1m 50cm high x 60cm wide x 20cm deep

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Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects exists as a series of shelves made from sections of a walnut veneered bed headboard  – now denoting a sequence of theatrical acts,  or a series of theatrical stages, or differing levels of consciousness or dream  – which display a number of stones and chunks of masonry of various sizes. Each of them is labelled with an object; eg wet trousers, harpoon, car keys, stills camera, newspaper, knife etc.
Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects exist as propositions for pieces of back-stage apparatus intended to allow actors to prepare themselves physically and psychologically for the carrying of imagined objects onstage.  Despite their failure to describe the form of the object they are designated, through handling these stones in the wings of a theatre, actors could experience, and attempt to memorise, the weight of objects they are about to mime carrying out on stage, to feel the objects’ gravity within their bodies.  But invariably this recollection of mass fades almost immediately as the object leaves the hand.
Beyond their proposed theatrical function these objects can also be seen as operating within any institutional or domestic setting; our daily performances with any of these bits of apparatus might also require the development of a heightened sense of how we engage ourselves bodily, and ground ourselves, with these objects’ real possibilities which also invoke a sense of environmental collapse and displacement or migration.  The work also exists within the realm of science (or speculative) fiction whereby the original source objects have ceased to exist but are, through this ‘kit’, maintained within cultural consciousness as memories catalysed by name and a weight felt in relation to our bodies.

In its proposed and imagined capacity to transform the (bodily) experience of the user –  Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects offers almost the opposite sensation to Ghost. While Ghost offers a passive body an experience of lightness and fluidity, of gliding and floating through space, Props...slows the body, activating it, yet weighing it down with the physicality of ‘our baggage’ extending through our limbs and into our posture, movements and therefore our emotions.

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An individual image of each of the ‘props’ was reproduced in F.R. David, edited and designed by Will Holder, “This is not new, of course”,  No. 9 (Spring 2012)
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A second version of this work:  Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects. (Flood)   (2013) & Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects. (Fire)      (2013)  

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Props. For memorising the gravity of mime objects (2011), was exhibited alongside In culo alla balena!   [“Into the ass of a whale!” ] (2012),  New Wing.  A Rehearsal for a Faulty Projector (2011), Meetings of people with stammers to describe a fire    (1999-), and Play, Play, Play (2011) in:

In the Belly of the Whale (Act III):
curated by Ariella Yedgar and Rosie Cooper
(with works by Jesse Ash and Cally Spooner / Edwina Ashton / Adam Chodzko / Côme Ciment / Winnie Cott / Jess Flood-Paddock/ Anthea Hamilton / Donna Huddleston / Germaine Kruip / Jacopo Miliani.  And featuring Orson Welles: The One Man Band, by Vassili Silovic and Oja Kodar)
Montehermeso, Fray Zacarías Martínez, 201001, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Araba, Spain

It was first exhibited, (alongside works by Côme Ciment, Anthea Hamilton and Jacopo Miliani) in:
In the Belly of the Whale:
curated by Ariella Yedgar and Rosie Cooper
Cartel Gallery, London