The Original Proposal 1991
LODE – A PERFORMANCE
A space covered in magnetic compasses.
The needles point (indexical signs), but NOT to magnetic North!
They form a pattern corresponding to an actual but invisible field of magnetic power.
Bring another compass to the ‘field’.
All the needles tremble at the presence of this new element.
Then they settle down.
Where do they point?
A ‘great circle’, a ring around a globe shaped earth.
A line runs through here, Liverpool, and here, Hull!
And here, (?) and here, (?) too!
Where does it point?
LODE is a performance of signs. The unloading and loading of signs as if they were an extremely delicate cargo.
Signs that evoke the presence of that which is elsewhere in space and time.
A cargo that reveals at each arrangement a new pattern, a field in flux and therefore a metaphor of our changing present.
The quayside: an abstract ‘line’ that circles the earth, land and oceans, crosses here, and here!
These are places of embarkation and, in this work, the point of departure for imaginative, evocative and symbolic journeys out into the world of the present.
They are also places for ‘unloading’ a precious cargo.
A cargo of vessels that contain more vessels (simple, elemental magnetic compasses), brought to these shores in ships.
This is the performance, the careful, ritualistic unloading of this cargo of simple compasses from the ‘great circle’.
Bowls from the two hemispheres, with water and floating magnetic material, sometimes shaped like boats.
There are journeys to places in Europe and the Americas, situated on the extended Liverpool – Hull ‘great circle’.
The cargo is made from materials found in these locations, natural elemental materials, and the processed, manufactured, and sometimes ‘imported goods’ like products made from ubiquitous plastic.
The specialness of material that comes from particular places is merged with a sort of general material to make many simple compasses. The making of these objects, and the places in which they are made, will be documented using video.
A ship comes from the West carrying cargo to Liverpool.
A ship comes from the East carrying cargo to Hull.
There are ‘dockings’.
There are ‘dockers’, who spread white rushes on the ground.
This action, as a sign of taking care when undertaking an enterprise, contributes to the ritualistic feel of the performance.
Then, there is the unloading, one by one, of these elemental compasses, and the creation of a ‘field’.
These compasses, because they are magnetic, reveal the cardinal directions.
In that they come together as a ‘field’ they form a complex pattern that will symbolically stand for the present.
They are objects that have come by sea, from various points on the ‘great circle’ that links here, Liverpool and here, Hull with Europe, the Americas, and beyond! They are also symbols pointing to the experiences and histories that connect all the fugitive realities of NOW!
