​UNPRECEDENTED

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UNPRECEDENTED is a new project, currently in development. It explores and interrogates the recent and unprecedented increase in the use of the word 'unprecedented'. It is a kind of poetic and aestheticized prayer for these unprecedented times, and the unprecedented feeling that we might be on the verge of something unprecedented.​

     The project's had its first performance outing on 27 Oct. 2022 at Runt of the Litter (London). This first iteration of the work involved a series of ritualistic actions which gesture towards ideas of beauty, fragility, excess, and inevitable collapse. The objects and materials used were selected for both their visceral nature and their iconic or symbolic status. Nonetheless, these actions and the visual situations they created eluded straightforward interpretation, remaining open and associative rather than fixed. They audience's meaning-making processes were further complicated by the hypnotic and incantatory audio track which accompanied the actions without any apparent connection to them. Without any attempt to harmonise the visual and the aural, both aspects of the work were treated separately. It is in their inexplicable juxtapositions and reverberances that the force of the work and is spell-like poetry resides.

​​The audio track for the project's first outing was created in collaboration with Evie Janneman, who lent her 13 year-old voice to reading through a list which, repeating the word 'unprecedented', touches on a kaleidoscope of pressing contemporary issues. The track opens with 39 bell tolls which, marking my age in years at the time of the performance, open up a liminal space for the work. As backing, the track samples percussion from the funeral ceremonies for Elizabeth II, some notes from Cow Song by Meredith Monk, and fragments of the second movement of Hernyk Górecki's Symphony No.3 also know as the Symphony of Sorrowful Songs.

​Formally, UNPRECEDENTED builds on my previous explorations on the musicality of lists [UNNEGATIVE; 20x20, swings x roundabouts), and my interest in the ritualised use of totemic objects [WINDWARD & LEEWARD - a refugee requiem; Masculine Expressions of My Creative Prowess]. Conceptually, it extends my previous explorations of current global crises, particularly socio-economic and environmental concerns [ALL WITHIN A COLLAPSING BUILDING, a septet for the apocalypse; ALL TOMORROW'S TOMORROWS; Solastalgia Playlist - videos for the end].

Images by Marina Yarovaya @m_yarovaya

​UNPRECEDENTED no.1
27th October 2022
Runt of the Litter, London (UK)

"This is a strikingly beautiful and unsettling work that invites us to consider the nature of the ‘unprecedented’. Performed with exquisite precision, an egg is rubbed with lard then delicately coated in gold leaf. Perhaps an exaltation of frugality, appreciating a necessity of life. Perhaps the added sparkle and glitz are just adorning the delicate, outer shell  — whether the egg is rotten or wholesome inside, we do not know. Or perhaps the golden coating highlights the fragility of the shell, as it is not prevented from smashing on the floor. With this rupture, the rhythm of the piece breaks, the bubble bursts, the egg is irreversibly broken. UNPRECEDENTED offers a series of images and actions that are rich with potential significance. It speaks of politics, economics, and of our daily rituals that, in a moment, can be irredeemably rupture."
Dr Paul Geary (Lecturer in Drama, University of East Anglia)