Thomas John Bacon and the NRLA Ron Athey Winter School

In recent years, the NRLA in Glasgow holds a series of Winter Schools. These are some of the best quality courses for artists seeking a period of professional development and research. In 2010 once again excellent teachers are being brought in to run the courses, all of whom are respected artists in their individual fields of practice and they include: Peter Boneham, Ron Athey, Jürgen Fritz and Jamie McMurry, Michael Mayhew.

I was fortunate enough to have my application to work with Ron Athey accepted last year and will be travelling up in March to take part in this project. I plan to take a piece I am developing, currently with the working title of 'Static,' to this in order to test, clarify, and work through some of the questions I need to answer as part of its growth.

At present I am interested in looking at the significance of movement within in this and my growing body of work.

If time or access allow I will post here while away.

Thomas John Bacon on Academia

As my research develops over the next 6 years - you may be able to follow some of it by nominating yourself as a contact or follower of me through the following web site: ACADEMIA.EDU

Bobby Whittaker

The documentation of Psychosis from Winter 2009 is now live on this web site.

This was taken by the talented artist & photographer Bobby Whittaker - whose work work I urge you to seek out & relish.

Clarification

Psychosis was an experiment. It has been about the focus and examination of the self in the moment of the 'performance' of live art. What is the performed?

The work is problematic and therefore worthy of enquiry and development.

If one is to take two modes of delivery and place them side to side what is the result. The first uses a stylised method of movement derived from Butoh - yet it is the not the homogenised form of Butoh that dominates today - it is improvised, not choreographed (yet admittedly it does hit certain bullet points or cues). The second is an act of mutilation - where the first section appeared controlled this action is not, there is no method in the design of the cutting yet the area [head] which is cut is set for it represents the self. However the lack of design to the cutting is a self imposed construct so does this paradoxically counter itself?

What half is 'performed'?

Perhaps the connotations of the word performed as being a dirty concept within live art is a wrong or incorrect one to impose - and far too large a subject to be broken down here in this blog entry - so for the sake of argument lets use the taboo word 'theatre.' I do not believe that Psychosis is theatre as I created a piece of live art. But could it be perceived as theatre?

The work has initially been performed in a theatrical [end-on] setting and uses elements of light and sound but these 'constraints' were incorporated into the work in order to assist the question of what is the performance in this context?

By re-staging the work twice in the same space one has been able to start to question/examine what happens to personae & self of the live artist when live work is restaged - as the act of re-staging alters and reshapes the work, its growth and the experience of actual for the self of the artist in action.

These are just a few of the routes of enquiry that were posed prior to Psychosis and have begun to grow out of it. This work will act as a potential practical starting point in the growth of my doctoral research into the self within live art...

Happy Holidays

Season greetings to you all - have a wonderful last week of 2009.

2010 already looks set to be busy and I'll be back in the New Year with documentation taken by Bobby Whittaker of Psychosis.

Best wishes - Thomas x

9

If my soul should sink,

will my body float.

Tickets on sale NOW

Tickets for Psychosis are now available to buy online for £8. Click HERE to purchase. The performance is at 9pm on Saturday 28th November at the Camden people's Theatre in London. Psychosis is not suitable for those of a sensitive nature.

8

Connected to the ground I fall.

Psychosis at Scenepool - November 2009

"Two sides to my self, you make me betray myself."

Putting his body at the centre of his work, Thomas uses a minimalistic structure, Butoh based based methods of movement & focus, and a respect for the symbiosis between body and space to explore the self.

Psychosis was first shown as part of ScenePool in February '09. At this point it initially began as investigation into the muted self, taking Sarah Kane's "4:48 Psychosis" as a springboard before becoming a far more personal experience through use of automatic writing and beats from the original playwork. Today the connection to 4:48 seems a long way away and has become a personal journey into self destruction and depression.

"In the company of the self - what does one have left when that starts to erode."

Continuing to use a mix of Butoh, shadow, and live art - the work now crosses between the internalised action and the external action. Therefore the sense of 'destruction' by the end of the work seems colder and lacks a sense of 'performance' in comparison to the journey to it. Now, as the body rises from the floor, the act of cutting has become disengaged and somewhat methodical. The action here is the slow bleed; the engagement (or potential disengagement) between artist & audience during this is open to investigation.

Purification

Double click the video to view an uncropped image.

A reason to bleed?

"There is nothing more crucial to existentialism than the belief that we can know only what we live: we know we are free because we experience our own freedom in anguish. We know that we fear the "sticky death of the For-itself in the In-itself" because we know, or are open to persuasion, that vicious things horrify and fascinate us... For Sartre... it was of no use to tell people that something was true; they had to feel that it was so, and accept it for themselves."

- Mary Warnock

Psychosis returns to Camden

The Camden People's Theatre in association with the Scenepool festival have announced that they will be premiering the new version of Psychosis on November 28th at 9pm. More details to follow soon...

Kanae collaborative Tattoo with Thomas John Bacon

Kanae is a fantastic Tattoo artist from Japan who currently works at The Family Business in London. In the first of what will be an ongoing collaboration between myself and her, Kanae completed work on my backpiece in july 2009 which had taken inspiration from Japanese Sumi-e (ink Brush painting). It depicts bamboo that runs across my back and represents, in essence, a sense of life and growth. Several Asian cultures believe that humanity emerged from a bamboo stem. Japanese folktale tells of a princess from the Moon emerging from a shining bamboo section. And interestingly flowering bamboo is seen as an omen of famine. As my own work centres around concepts of self and existence this collaboration will continue into other pieces that look at the conception of 'being' and the essence of 'life' in its varied forms. The next work will be based around the turmoil of life and its 'struggle' with death and will take the form of a sleeve that we hope to complete by the end of summer 2010.

purification documentation

Images from the since titled, 'purification' piece that was shown as part of the Rifrazioni Festival in Italy are now live to view. There are only a few pictures but it captures an essence of the how this 90 minute durational saw a body covered in local sands & clay move slowly through a fine mist of spray as the sunset gently illuminated the figure and the body was washed into the ground.

purification [Gallery]

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