The Future of the Universe / Mae Dyfodol y Bydysawd is a 5 minute karaoke-inspired video, created in collaboration with Megan Arnold. Our creative partnership grew out of a commission to make experimental new work as part of a digital / online project hosted by Elysium Gallery in Swansea and International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. It was shown as part of Elysium Gallery's contribution to IICSI's Improvisation Festival 2022.
The project invited us to reframe the past and imagine emerging futures. Megan was starting from her explorations of humour, slapstick, performance and astrology and I from my observations and interpretations of the way power and hierarchies are laid out in the land.
Which, of this project meant using footage of road markings and cats' eyes, flipped to the roadside by traffic, shining out of their allocated place, like will o the wisps. Megan sent me video of a performance against a green screen which I mixed and edited in FCP.
Together we thought about ideas of predestination and freedom, and the possibilities of breaking through and beyond expected channels, personally and societally. With a mutual interest in play, accident and risk as integral to the creative process we started to share visual experiments with no idea of where they might lead us.
Gradually over the six months of the project, the visual material melded and condensed into the 5 minute video, set to Megan's music along with lyrics in Welsh and English that arose in the course of our discussions and exchanges.
Without being explicit, international events over the course of the partnership are incorporated in the work, so that for us, it reflects global as well as deeply personal experiences or themes, played out in an imaginary (but perhaps visionary?) intergalactic arena.
The video can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/1003162645
Later it was shown at Ed Video Media Arts Centre, Guelph, Ontario, Canada and at a snow viewing(!) at The Cloud Factory, Newfoundland, Canada
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