Intangibles

Intangibles by Hugo Glendinning, Adrian Heathfield and Tim Etchells is about matters like the following: What is it that we experience when we say that a person has presence? Is it some integral part of that person’s being, or is it just a special effect? What is the difference between live and mediated presence? Where does presence reside: in the body of the performer, the eye of the spectator, or somewhere in between the two? Why do we desire presence and lament absence? Are the two things so opposite after all?

Expressed in the way of a performed conversation Intangibles is a fluid pre-scripted exchange between divergent voices – on the cloudy and elusive notion of presence in performance. Working through their personal archives of experiences, images, video and sound recordings, Glendinning, Heathfield and Etchells have brought together a set of materials to explore these tricky questions, from their distinct perspectives as photographer/witness, critical theorist/curator, theatre director/writer. Their conversation ranges between instances drawn from music, theatre, photography and dance. They encounter tired singers, a pathetic ghost, illicit hairdressers, a frightened child and a sublime shipping forecast.

Refiguring their remote exchanges with each other on the subject as they travelled around the world over a number of months, in Intangibles the three have composed an imagistic spoken meditation on the diverse affects of presence in performance. Pushing hard at naming moments that were keenly felt, they ask what aspects of the phenomena of presence will remain out of reach of language and thought?

Adrian Heathfield is a curator and professor in Performance and Visual Culture at Roehampton University in London. He has published the books Live: Art and Performance, Small Acts and Shattered Anatomies, among other things. Hugo Glendinning is a photographer and visiting professor at Creative and Performing Arts at University of Exeter. Both have for several years collaborated with Forced Entertainment, led by Tim Etchells.

Intangibles is a new collaborative performance lecture, composed as a three-way written exchange between Glendinning, Heathfield and Etchells, and performed by Glendinning and Heathfield live, with pre-recorded video contributions from Etchells.

Source: BIT Teatergarasjen spring program 2010, from the program of the performance. 04.08.2010: http://www.bit-teatergarasjen.no/article/294