on second thoughts
A screen poem for slide and video projection

on second thoughts has been transcribed from a live dance performance for a solo dancer and slide projections. Thematically the work deals with ideas of time, memory and journey. The work explores notions of biography and performance. It uses time to reveal time. The text was written in an almost improvised way with very little restructuring. This installation version attempts to elongate the sense of time and to arrest notions of the ephemeral nature of dance performance. Text and images overlap to take the 20-minute performance piece to a longer duration, hours and possibly days. The editing make use of fade-outs between scenes, a cinematic device that reinforces the sense of passing time. Filmed in a one-take 45-minute sequence the performer is placed in a room with the intention to use naturalistic, non-codified movement to suggest the passing of time and the thoughts that surround. The performers body is documented in contemplation and as a site that embodies thought, a history, a gender and an experience. The video component makes reference to the early cinema of Andy Warhol; Sleep (1963) Kiss (1963) Empire (1964) etc. It also responds to Auguste Rodin's "The Thinker". on second thoughts intends to heighten the experience of the spectator in considering the past and the present, thought and memory. To view, as with the Rodin sculpture, over an extended time-frame, a body absorbed in thought. The nature of the video component, with its use of saturated colour and its television monitor quality, amplifies the notion of watching, it becomes almost voyeuristic: to become absorbed in a performance and performer in the intimate experience of thought.
on second thoughts has been presented at the Palma Rosa Gallery, Brisbane and the Performance Space, Sydney.

For further information of technical details and availability for exhibition please contact John Utans.