(re)tethered
(work in progress)
An exploration of anchorage and entanglement, (re)tethered is a project woven together through a shared process of investigation into contingent sonic and gestural vulnerabilities. The work you see here is just the start of an ongoing artistic research endeavor. It is an accumulation of creative threads blowing in the wind, that has captured our imaginations and which we are increasingly finding ourselves tethered to as we conceptualize further possibilities for this vibrant selvaging of materials.
Shira Kagan-Shafman – choreography/dance
Nathaniel Otley – violin
Ihlara McIndoe – composition, film editing
Jiayi Li – videographer
This funny weather, these silly little things
(2023)
four performers with an assortment of instruments and playthings
27 minutes
Taking its inspiration from the uninspirational, this work is an exploration of the ordinary. I am interested in the vitality of the apparently uninteresting, the significance of the seemingly banal, the beauty of the reputedly tacky. Part sound-art, part theatre, part poetry, this work is a coming of age reflection on growing up in an extraordinary ordinary little city at the bottom of the world. A study of rhythm through the bread from my favourite bakery, a sonic mosaic crafted from years of Otago Daily Times headlines, a lesson on abstractionism from the seagull droppings on Robbie Burns’ head: these are just a few of the Ōtepoti offerings explored in the work, and which the foundation of my identity as a Dunedin artist is built upon.
This is a work deeply rooted in a sense of place, which draws on archival materials, homemade and toy instruments, and fragments of individual and collective memories, to explore themes of Scottish colonial settler heritage and identity in Southern New Zealand.
Written for the Sælvage Collective.
See more about the Sælvage Collective here.
Ihlara McIndoe. 