Pret Video

PRET VIDEO

The Design for Living dictates that we need love and power. For a while my power came from my place of work. It gave me purpose, not because I loved making coffee or the money, but because of the people I worked with. I met many good friends at Pret from all over the world and even moved in with a couple of them. However not everything lasts forever and eventually our team parted ways into new jobs and new lives. 

As the first of us started to leave I began filming inside of work. I put the clips together to form a sort of scrap book of what it was like for us to work together in Pret. It reminds me of the wonderful people I met and the power of love and friendship. 

The Matrix - What is more important? The Mind of the Body

The Matrix - Reality and Fantasy

There must be more...

Looking at the Wachawski Brothers and what they have interpreted from studying Baudrillard and alternate realities, using The Matrix: (The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions. 1999. Directed by Wachowski Brothers. USA: Warner bros Ltd [DVD]).

“To deny our own impulses is to denythe very thing that makes us human” (Wachowski, 1999).

What’s more real/important? The mind or the body? The body decays but the mind can live on forever if you believe the mind exists as a soul.

   Sexual awakening is about leaving the mind and embracing the body – what makes us human.

Neo in the Matrix (No sex, all in mind, can’t trust anything) > Neo realises the real world (has sex and uses the mind to unlimited possibilities)

·       

    Knowledge alone doesn't define us as human but what we do with it does. That’s why we CREATE art. There is no point just thinking about it because it will stay in the mind.

“Difference between knowing the pathand walking the path” (Wachowski, 1999).

    To escape the ‘matrix’ or control you must believe you can use what you know, use the body. 

·    “and when I found him he told me Iwasn’t really looking for him. I was looking for an answer...what is thematrix? The answer is out there Neo, and you will find it if you let it”(Wachowski, 1999).

·               “Time to make a choice Mr Anderson”(Wachowski, 1999).

Men in black with sunglasses >un-human, especially because feeling is given away most by the eyes.

·               “What good is a phone call if you’reunable to speak?” (Wachowski, 1999).

Bugged by agents: Bug through the belly button. Rebirth?

·         “You take the blue pill you believe whatever you want to believe. Youtake the red pill and you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbithole goes. Remember all I am offering is the truth” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “Time is alwaysagainst us” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “It means buckleyour seatbelt Dorothy cus Kansas is going Bye Bye” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “Welcome to thereal world” (Wachowski, 1999).

Neo enters the matrix through a mirror which covers and suffocates him. He is then re-born, bald with wires attached to him from a pod.

·         “Wenever free a mind once it’s reached a certain age” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “I’m trying tofree your mind Neo. But I can only show you the door. You have to walk throughit...You have to let go of it all, fear, anxiety...free. your. mind”(Wachowski, 1999).

·         “They are the gate keepers. They guard all the doors. They hold all the keys. That means someone has to fight them” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “After nine yearsand you know what I realised Ignorance is bliss” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “Hear that Mr Anderson (a train). That is the sound of inevitability.” (Wachowski, 1999).

The only thing certainin life is Time and loss.

·               “My name is Neo.” (Wachowski, 1999)

He chooses his ownidentity and Trinity’s kiss releases him from the spell – Love.

· 

The Matrix Reloaded

Commander:

I can’t help thinkwere plugged into them.

Neo:

They don’t control us. We could destroythem if we wanted.

Commander:

But what would happen to our heatetc...

Neo:

So we need them as much as they needus?

Commander:

There is so much in this world that Idon’t understand. I don’t understand how that works but I do understand WHY itdoes. I don’t understand how you do the things you do but I do believe there isa reason (Wachowski, 1999).

    

Neo becomes more and more mechanical as the trilogy continues – more invincible and less human. He also discovers that the oracle is just aprogramme. My mum is not superhuman either.

·         “Without purpose we would not exist” (Wachowski, 1999).

·         “Choice is an illusion. What control is is power – those who have it and those that don’t...” (Wachowski, 1999).

The Matrix bit by bit:

Leaves first reality and embraces the body

Fights himself and a kiss brings him back (wakes up from the spell)

Stuck at a Railway Station (needs direction)

Loses sight and then loses Trinity (his love)

Chooses to fight.

What does it all mean?

Death is inevitable and something we all have in common but we also have choices:

·         Choices to love

·         Choices to fight for something you believe in (power)

Being scared of the unknown is being afraid of what a person is not good at or comfortable with. But time spent overcoming these things establishes long lasting effects. Being scared of time is a refusal to acknowledge loss and being close to someone means a countdown to losing them.

Lust can be an escape from the mundane world to a purgatory without time, but something so wonderful cannot exist in this world: It exists in a dream world, in the theatre, in the movies, in art, where there is no society or other people, where it is easy and pure. Is that place more real than this one? We are led to believe it isn’t.

Gregory Burke and Hoors

GREGORY BURKE AND HOORS

ARTISTIC INTERPRETATION OF THE PLAY HOORS

Ibsen and Shakespeare paint pictures and meaning to their readers using the symbolism and poetry of their extensive and heavy written word. Burke's plays are not text or monologue heavy and instead are made up of quick conversations between characters. The meaning is less in the text and more in the situation and history of characters. Finding the meaning requires taking a step back and looking at the story as a whole.

Here are some of my favourite quotes from his plays and a 3D mood board I created from reading Hoors.

GARAGIN WAY

Real Life:
Frank: “You want to kill me as a hobby?
EDDIE: I just want tay kill you. (Beat) For me.” (80)

THE STRAITS

Life corrupts:
“It’s not like you can run away in a place this size. Nowhere to run, is there?” (Doink, 76)
 

HOORS

Life’s layers: “Average bottle of perfume comes in a box. Might be an elaborate box but it’s still just a box.” (Nikki, 7)

Conceptual art created after reading and analysing Hoors by Gregory Burke

Inside one box is another and inside that is another. Three boxes to represent the three stages of life...

The First Box - Childhood, Ignorence, The Things we Used to Believe. 

Second Box - The Reality of Adult Life, Money, Time.

The last box - Not Covered yet, maybe wont be for a long time, maybe never.

THE FIRST BOX:

THE SECOND BOX

THIRD BOX

Photos from the womb

PHOTOS FROM THE WOMB

Fairytale in the Ancient World

Fairytale in the Ancient World

“This is consistent with the role of Apollo and Artemis in the mythical forms of tale; Artemis need only ask her oracle – giving brother about Snow White’s beauty, which he himself experienced”

Daughter of Philanimon,has a thousand suitors: Apollo and Hermes rape her and Hermes puts her to sleep; Apollo comes disguised as an old woman. Chione has twins. Chione antagonises Artemis with boasting who kills her with an arrow...”it is as if the magic mirror in the Grimm tale were being used here not to tell the queen that Snow White is the fairest of them all, but instead to tell Snow White that she must not boast of being fairest of them all!”

Frotting Reality and Going Mad

Frotting Reality and Going Mad

Frotting Reality by Alex Evans  is a play with three different narratives: Elsa who is ignoring reality, Adam who won’t accept reality, and Daron who gives up on reality.

'Frotting' means 'to rub up against'.

I directed Elsa's narrative as part of an ensemble of plays called Another Leap at The Traverse Theatre in 2011. Unfortunately I do not have any photos or footage of the completed play and only my analysis and inspiration behind it. 

My staged version featured a group of seven actors with Mickey Mouse ears on their heads and a Mickey Mouse doll attached to their feet and wrists. They sat in a cluster and fed their doll cheese. Elsa started the play with a monologue then clambered through the mice singing a song to herself. Her lines were spoken for her by Emm her imaginary friend who she comes face to face with once through the huddle of mice. For the video version of this scene click here.

                  

ADAM

 Adam and Charlotte meet in a club...Adam is easy going and impetuous and takes Charlotte to see the sunrise, something she has never done. 

"Take whatever reality happens to be, and rub up against it like there’s no tomorrow (Evans, 1) 

Adam and Charlotte's story explores the idea of living in the present and for all its worth. They both live in a reputational bourgeois city called Edinburgh where people live comfortably and with high importance. But this hierachy they see in themselves is only a rubbing off of the city onto themselves, they lean on something which is  wonderful and rest on it until the day they discover they are not the city nor wonderful.

                       
“People find themselves born into a city that’s so beautiful, so grand and unusual, that they just kind of transfer those qualities to themselves...If you’re not from Edinburgh, you don’t live up to their standards” (Evans, 2). 
Charlotte is a 'goth' a label pinned to her by pop culture because of her interests and the way she dresses. This gives her an identity which makes her feel good and gives her power but also dictates the way she is perceived by the rest of the world, of which does not always work the way she would like it to: "I mean, being a Goth is not about Night of the living Dead - it’s about the romance of the darkness, its sexy like vampires are sexy”(Evans).  She also goes on to say that anyone who has an identity which is a little different or less socially acceptable is above everyone else. People who like 'frotting' live outside of social restrictions: “It is my strongly held belief that the three most intelligent groups of society are female Goths – we really are; we have to be – and homosexuals and...uh...cats” (Evans).

Jacques Lacan says we are all looking to fill a void inside us - one of love and partnership, like a soul mate and someone who will make us feel complete. Sex can be seen as an act to complete oneself  where two people physically join together and become one. Adam and Charlotte argue that what is more important is the mental connection between two people rather than the physical 
“...frotting is basically a kind of rub...there’s no real physical connection. No tab A into slot B and so on...But skin on skin, touching, feeling, and again, rubbing, and I can’t stress rubbing enough, it really is quite important, and suddenly you kind of become one. I like that” (Evans). 

Vampires in pop culture tend to be metaphors for sex where instead of putting one anatomy into another they exchange blood.
In

contrast to our temporary union in sex theirs is a permanent connection and their partnership is seen as a much more enduring union than any physical sexual union human beings have.“Frotting Reality” becomes “rubbing up against reality” which becomes “being one with reality” Sex is different for males and females: for females it is a way of connecting and a way of creating life and for males it is a way of ejaculating/ spreading their seed" “Women are different...our sexuality is sacred” (Evans) which Charlotte says in response to Adam thinking up names for a vagina - “flaps of fun”.

                       

Are cartoons more real than pop culture TV? The term “mindless watching” applies to all cartoons but like fairy tales are these ways of telling children what life is really like in a buttered up way, 
           
“What’s real about a game show? If you get something wrong on the wheel of fortune, somebody makes a buzzing sound.You fuck up in Roadrunner, and an eight foot bird pushes you off a cliff. He still makes a beeping sound, but it’s closer to real life, surely” (Evans). 

And then Adam reminds Charlotte that nature is not within our power, it is something much more powerful than any nuclear bomb or piece of technology we are ever to invent “I don’t know. Not long...it’s not an exact science, you know. Its not like Radio Times; its sunrise, not MTV”(Evans) 

“Chalotte: Shame we don’t have a remote control.

Adam:What, you want to channel hop reality?

Cahrlotte:Yeah. I’m a couch potato when it comes to the spectacular” (Evans).

           

Adam is a free spirit and he lives outside of reality where to him reality is when people are fake and robotic to social norms  i.e the day time when everyone is about and living. Therefore he prefers to spend time awake in the night time which he deems as more real: 

“Charlotte: MOST night? When d’you sleep?

Adam:In the boring bits. Daytime.”

           

  “Life is short. Fiddle with your willy while you can” (Vimrod greetings cards, last lemon productions)

Watching the sun set every morning is a ritual Adam practices because it is something he can believe in where the sun rising is one of the only things constantly dependable, and like death, it is an inevitability. The sun set is the polar opposite to death – a re-birthing “All this talk of virginity. A kissed mouth does not lose its freshness. Like the moon, it rises new again.” (VirginTerritory, DVD)

Basically Adam is all about living life to the full. And he thinks he can achieve this by ritual, and distancing himself from 'reality' which he deems as pop culture. Life is hard as well as it is easy all of us will experience a hardship so all of us must move on with it,“Sometimes you have to get on with the real stuff” (Evans) Adam takes pleasure in the simple and little things because these are most pure and free of human influences:
“Adam: Yeah, but even the mundane stuff’s beautiful if it hits you right.

Charlotte: Maybe. But then falling stars never gave any fucker lung cancer” (Evans). 
Death is always presently impending except in your dreams.

DARON AND NICK

Daron and Nick have problems. Daron is recovering from a suicide attempt, and having got out of a sanitarium earlier than advised...he is totally hypersensitive to reality...Nick, his long suffering partner drags him away on holiday. To the coast of Scotland, hoping that ‘trees and tartan’will save him. No such thing happens. Daron is plagued by nightmares. He confesses to Nick that he thinks he thinks he will never recover. As Nick watches, Daron walks into the sea”(Evans, )

WATCH THIS

Throughout the play Daron is haunted by the sounds of a dog yelping due to his recent witnessing of a dog being run over by a car to be left paralyzed. A dog is an animal like the goat is Albee’s The Goat or Who is Sylvia. An animal is devoid of the mirror phase – pure and completely whole - devoid of language and society. It represents him and what he feels is happening to him.

Daron and Nick take a trip to Scotland to escape the city however Daron soon finds out that your problems follow where ever you go. Time is not measured spacially – you could be constantly moving/thinking/active and not move anywhere: “To the coast of Scotland, hoping that trees and tartan will save him” (Evans).
                       

“As Nick watches, Daron walks into the sea” (Evans).
The sea in the story is a symbol for freedom, freedom from everything un-natural but also from everything human. “Daron: Its fucking chaos, it’s so...so inescapable

    Nick: It’s just life...it’s just what is

   Daron: And that’s fine for normal people. But for me...” (Evans).                     
                       

Daron's mind is stuck, it can still see beauty but all it understands is that the seasons keep changing, same thing over and over - progress to nowhere.  “I know it is (Scotland  is beautiful). I can still see that. Its radiant. But its soul and water and atoms. I’m sorry, I’m glad we’re here. But it’s just particles. Its quarks and electrons” (Evans). "Its October. Trees are going red”(Evans).“(Ref to his state of mind) Nah. I’m bored with it, frankly. It never changes” (Evans).                               
                       

The Mickey Mouse references are constant throughout the play and run into all three narratives particularly Elsa's. They are there as a reference to capitalism, “Well, I admit it’s not Father Christmas, blazing poker, Mickey Mouse’s underpants Blood of Satan – red, but it’s still noticeably redder than the others”(Evans)

“It’s very dark” (Evans).

“Nick: What’s swallowing you?

Adam: Dunno. The world. Reality. The whole of fucking reality. White noise. Buildings.The dark, the light. Fucking everything. I panic in the streets. I’ve told you all this” (Evans).

A Sad

Falling down through an endless pit

Nowhere to go but down

The whole worlds swallowing me

Every day Every town

Everything, everyone against me

I cant help but hide

From the vicious universe

I want to escape this ghostly ride

Lie to me betray me

Drown me in the sea

Pull the plughole from the sink

Unlock the key, set me free

I'm restless and cowardly

I don’t know what's wrong

I've got anger inside me

Its been there too long

I want to scream and cry

Let it all go out the door

To leave me alone

So I am not trapped any more

No food or water for so long

I don’t know what they taste like

No happiness or kindness

Has yet entered my world, my jail

No generosity or helpfulness

Nobody has volunteered

No nothing, only sadness

Falling down through an endless pit

Nowhere to go but down

My life has left me in shambles, and left me

All on my own

By Sophie Lancaster, aged 12 years old.

What we don't know cant harm us. Unfortunately with age comes a wealth of experience and knowledge and as that continues the more we are parted from our care free baby life. “...There was a time when I could look at the sky and feel inspired. Like it was some kind of connection. Some gathering or something...Galaxy of starts – well, that’s a London pallodium...And now stars are just another word for big haircuts...Fuck it, I don’t care of the truths out there. I want it to stay there. The truths half the problem”(Evans).

 “There is much to learn from Winnie the Pooh...chill out” (Evans).

“Coming to terms with the fact that everyone I know and I myself will die – the only certain thing in life – was hard. I was very angry at the world for a while and I felt very betrayed”(Psychologies magazine. Interview with Toni Collette March 2010).

Faith “Um...I don’t know! I suppose I was questioning what life was all about and I didn’t like not having the answers.And I mean faith is lovely, but its ultimately just making a decision to believe in something . And that’s not enough for me – except when it comes to work. When I have that feeling about a job. It draws me in and it’s almost like I have no choice...” (Collette).

 “The trouble is, ‘when you are a Bear of very little brain and you think of things, you find sometimes that a thing which seemed very thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it” (Sibley, Brian. (2001). Three Cheers for Pooh. London: Egmont Children’s Books Ltd.)

 A lady talking about coping and living with a disability: “I’m just getting on with my condition, and hope to show others that we cant always have an answer for everything. But that’s the adventure of living" (Siri Hustvendi “The Shaking Woman)