Emily Orley​
Place as a remembering process
Place as a remembering process
with Katja Hilevaara
May 2011
A performance lecture with Katja Hilevaara about making and breaking images in Utrecht, the Netherlands (PSi#17 international conference, Camillo 2.0) Giulio Camillo?s Theatre of Memory can be seen as the epitome of a place that remembers, storing all knowledge in the form of images, for the individual spectator to engage with. We discussed his concept along with the writings of cultural geographer Doreen Massey, who defines place as a ?throwntogetherness?, a process that is contested and ever-changing. While drawing on these ideas we presented a staged dialogue that articulated and questioned our own working process and aesthetic. We experimented with the dialogue format to demonstrate our practice in speech. With words. With images, that we evoked and then took apart.
Meme 2
Meme 2
with Elinor Brass
2010-11
A second web-based dialogue with Elinor Brass in images, inspired by and grounded in the city.
A Methodology of Locks (Salt & Water)
A Methodology of Locks (Salt & Water)
Dec 2010 & March 2011
A creative response, in collaboration with Ella Finer and P.A. Skantze, to current conditions (disaster) in which there is productive interaction between performer and performer and spectator and performer. A call to arms/a call to imagination. Performed at the Sexuate Subjects: Politics, Poetics and Ethicsconference at UCL in December 2010 and again at the (Re)Branding Feminism conference hosted by the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, London in March 2011.
Into the Page
Into the Page
July 2010
A performance, a talk, an experiment in place-writing, as part of the -writing symposium at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London. I began to explore what it means to view a piece of paper as a place by entering into a page of my grandfather's writing and travelling across it.
An Unravelling
An Unravelling
with Ella Finer
February 2010
A performance installation with words and wool. Part of i'm with you #2, MKII, London. The work began to consider how disentanglement or the un-making of a journey may play out in the briefest moment. Part of an on-going conversation concerned with mappings of multiple female voices in both visual and aural space.
A Patina of Antique Filth
A Patina of Antique Filth
with Elinor Brass
October 2009
"I had worn bad enough things before, but nothings at all like these; they were not merely dirty and shapeless, they had ? how is one to express it? ? a gracelessness, a patina of antique filth, quite different from mere shabbiness?"
George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London
A place-specific installation with a soundscape created in collaboration with Tim Dutton, as part of the Shunt Lounge, London Bridge. The work was inspired by the colourful history of the London Bridge area and Orwell's 1933 book Down and Out in Paris and London.
Ivory Towers
Ivory Towers
With Katja Hilevaara
June 2009
A performance installation at the Easton Community Centre, Bristol. Part of the sixth You and Your Work Festival. A dining table was slowly and deliberately laid with an ever-increasing array of cutlery to create a small-scale but epic landscape. (Photos© Mel Shearsmith)
Cassandra Float Can
Cassandra Float Can
Directed by Four-Second Decay
February 2009
A one-off performance of Anne Carson's Cassandra Float Can in four voices, Roehampton University, London. Devised and directed by P.A. Skantze and Matthew Fink of Four-Second Decay.
Meme 1
Meme 1
with Elinor Brass
2008
A year-long web-based dialogue documenting the discovery and response to the new places in which we found ourselves after moves to opposite ends of London.
Opiate
Opiate
with Katja Hilevaara
November 2008
A site-specific performance installation at the Resistance Gallery, London. Part of the fourth my site | in space curated by Switch Performance Comapny. The gallery, underneath the railway arches in Bethnal Green and not far from where Jack the Ripper's victim's were discovered, is thought to have been the site of an opium den and later an air raid shelter. For the installation a track made from knives and nuts spelt out a rhythmic message in Morse code.
I long for you I long for you I long for you I long for you
photos© James Shilland
National Service/Esperanto
National Service/Esperanto
with Ernst Fisher, P.A. Skantze and Matthew Fink
Oct 2008
A performance installation at the Chelsea Theatre, London. (Also performed at PSI 14 conference in Copenhagen, August 2008.) Miniature landscapes - scenarios of catastrophe and creation, love and loss among the world’s nations – moved across the space on six free-standing butler trays. This was a performance which constantly made and unmade itself, creating images using dust, sand, model figures, domestic utensils, comestibles and international kitsch.
photos© Matthew Fink
Narcissus
Narcissus
with Katja Hilevaara
June 2008
A performance installation with mirrors, torches and a hammer, involving the making and breaking of a series of images in response to the myth of Narcissus and Echo. Shunt Lounge, London.
photos© Elinor Brass
Hampstead Road
Hampstead Road
with Elinor Brass
April 2008
An immersive installation inspired by the history of the site of the Camden People's Theatre. It involved five hundred found objects, suspended, whitened, and scattered across the space. Suspended, as if in water. Whitened, as if petrified over time, washed-out by age, by use, by neglect, by forgetting. Colourless litter, archaeological remains, a constellation of accumulated history. Sound by Tim Dutton.
'Hauntingly beautiful and calm ... visually arresting'. Andrea Ioannou
Arts Hub, 30 April, 2008 (Read full review)
Lusikka
Lusikka
with Katja Hilevaara
October 2007
A performance installation at the Green Room, Manchester (part of the Emergency platform for live art) which involved a fleet of teaspoons making their way across the café bar, only to disappear minutes later.
Teippi
Teippi
with Katja Hilevaara
October 2007
A site-specific performance installation tracing puddles with electrical tape. Shunt Vaults, London.
photos© Juliette Humble
States of Ignorance
States of Ignorance
with Elinor Brass
August 2007
Photographs of a small-scale site-specific installation exploring the history of the Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London. Commissioned by and exhibited at Execution Ltd, 91 Brick Lane.
Traces of Mr Shillibeer
Traces of Mr Shillibeer
with Elinor Brass
June 2007
Photographs of a small-scale site-specific installation exploring the history of the Pleasance Theatre, London. Exhibited on site.
The Way to Be Rich
The Way to Be Rich
with Elinor Brass
Jan 2007
Photographs of a small-scale site-specific installation exploring the history of the Mayfair Library, London. Exhibited on site.
"You are here," insist the arrows on maps and guides. How many of us really are?"
Lucy Lippard