Performance in Southern France

Juste pour les oiseaux
Strictly for the Birds
(Uitsluitend voor vogels)

Click to view a 7 minute video clip
(NOTE: It may take up to a minute for the video to start)

Performance - installation, Taller, France , 2001
by Jacqueline Wassen, Sonja van Kerkhoff and Sen McGlinn

Tama began to play music and a crowd gathered.
at the edge of the forest.

Tama improvising on recorder in a tree at the start of the performance.

	Tama played for about ten minutes, then I explained that they had to follow Toroa. They were told to copy his actions. ...TEXT & LAYOUT TO COME...

Photo: C. Doucet. Images in the bath are by Julia Sorokina & Alexander Malgazharov

Click for 7 seconds of a video zoom in of what Sonja was planting. (700 kb)
This (video with no sound) avi requires QuickTime or Windows Media Player.

Click on the image on the right for a larger view of the work.
(74 kb)

click on this image to see an enlargement (52 kb)

Photo: Christophe Doucet.

"Soft eggs" by Jessy Rahman were propped in the branches of a tree. Beyond this a bright green piece of material seemed to grow out of the end of a thin branch and beyond that we had written a text on a piece of wallpaper on the wall of the shed. It read "I like my birdhouses with elaborations". To the right of the ladder two birdhouse shapes had been cut out of floral wallpaper and hung above two metal brackets.
The text was intended as a humourous reference to Christophe's new gallery with its birdhouse-like tower as well as a contribution to our theme of 'odd bird' references in our forest installation.

Toroa touched the plastic ball holding a minuature tree and then walked over to the shower block.
We sealed the doorway by wallpapering it.

Click for 9 seconds of a video of Toroa in the second shower. (900 kb)
This (video with no sound) avi requires QuickTime or Windows Media Player.

The walls of the second shower were covered in charcoal drawings mostly made by Sonja. I dug the charcoal from the inside of burnt-out trees lying nearby with the idea of making drawings suggestive of these once living trees. In the wall to wall drawings biird-human forms seemed to peep out from behind the trees. Above the window was a drawing of the silhouette of two birdhouses. It was messy drawing with the stumps of charcoal and so the floor was dusted with these irregular shapes. A bronze and wood sculpture "nature-tool" by Christophe rested in one corner.

touches of red -everywhere

The third shower contained numerious bird-form interventions
made by Jacqueline in ink, chalk combined with the found objects from around the area.They were fossil-like "relics", or remainders.

In the fourth shower Jacqueline had lifted up the wooden floor and placed a drawing she made of a bird in a cage into the pit underneath.

Click on the image for a larger view (39 kb).

Click on the image for a larger view (77 kb).

Each of the 30 or so birdhouse forms were cut out of patterned wallpaper. Each was about 40 x 15 cm.

Photo: Christophe Doucet

Outdoor works

Fruit, six hang cast resin forms, 2006.
Nga Hau e Wha (The Four Winds/Breaths), metal sculpture, 2004.
Generating Plant, custom-made birdhouse form, 2004.
The Wedding, intervention/installation during the 9 Dragonheads festival, 2004.
Inland Soul at Sea, 19 hanging forms, 2003.
Colonising Oxford, performances and installations on the streets, 2002.
Fruits of the Earth, installation/intervention, 2003.
With fire we test the gold and with gold we test our servants, wooden sculpture at a Sculpture Symposium in a park in Northern Romania, 2003.
Parking Spaces for Important Visitors, relief painted panels, 2001.
Inspiration, paintings on shaped canvas laid on the floor, 2001.
Just pour les oiseaux (Strictly for the birds), installations and performances during a walk through a forest setting led by a guide, 2001.
Onder vier ogen (Between you and me) , mask-forms hung on trees, with texts and images in the orifices, 2001.
Dans le jardin des beaux arts, 19 snail forms, (in various locations), 2000-2006.
The Living Creature, performances in a rose garden in a public park in London, 1999.
Change is a Law of Nature, 1996, performances on the streets, in Hull and London, U.K. (repeated in other locations in 2001, 2002, and 2004).
Memorials, ceramic tiles laid into the earth, 1996-2001.
Te Koru Iwa, fire drawing at the Oerol Arts Festival, The Netherlands, 1996.
Letters van de Levende :: Letters of the Living, 19 batiked flags, 1996.

the medium

c.v.
last things first