Collaboration with poets and musicians continues, to explore the myth through the interplay
between spoken, musical and visual languages. These films use images from The Orpheus
Drawings (see ‘artwork’) and recordings and film made in and around Craig y Cilau National Nature reserve
and Eglwys Faen cave.
For more on the Orpheus Project click here
29 Jan 2011 ‘ Encounters beyond the page/screen/stage’. A one-day research workshop event and exhibition. University of Exeter, Department of English.
As part of the Orpheus Project, a presentation will be made of film and images by Penny Hallas, script by Lyndon Davies, with music drawn from Gill Steven’s composition ‘Sounds from Solitude’
In November Glasfryn Seminars played host to Border/Lines, a group of poets and academics who come together to discuss literature, critical practice and theory and to explore links, differences and new approaches to an understanding of their relationship.
The chosen text was Maurice Blanchot’s essay The Gaze of Orpheus, and people were asked to respond to this and to the general theme of the Orphic myths. The day commenced with a paper around these topics, by Lyndon Davies, and the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon was given over to discussion.
During the morning, artist Penny Hallas had created two drawings for the Border/Lines event in her studio upstairs, and people were taken one by one to the studio to record their pre-prepared responses to the Blanchot essay to camera. After each reading the guest was invited to change both drawings, one with a rubber and one with a piece of charcoal. When everyone had done this, people came together to improvise written responses to the day, creating brief sentences and word-patterns which were then torn in half, each part of the sentence acquiring a response and a completion by another of the participants.?Armed with these reconstituted sentences the participants returned to the studio where, with the use again of rubber and charcoal, they performed a mass intervention on the drawings.
The day was documented by use of audio and filmed recordings, as well as by individual written texts which have been uploaded onto a Wiki Site.
Present: Philip Gross, Alice Entwistle, Kevin Mills, Wendy Mulford, Samantha Wynne Rhydderch, Richard Gwyn, Jeremy Hooker, Graham Hartill, Anne Cluysenaar, Lyndon Davies, Penny Hallas
Essex University Conference: ‘Myth, Literature and the Unconscious’
2nd, 3rd, 4th Sept 2010.
As part of the ongoing Orpheus Project, a presentation was made of film and images by Penny Hallas, script by Lyndon Davies, with music drawn from Gill Steven’s composition ‘Sounds from Solitude’. Making of the film was supported by technical wizard Steve Groves.
For more information about the Orpheus Project, click on ‘projects’ under categories.
This Arts Council Wales Research and Development project involves collaboration with poets and writers, Graham Hartill, John Goodby and Lyndon Davies, and musician Gillian Sevens, (Composer, Crwth and Viola player).
The project is an exploration of why the Orpheus myth is still so potent today, informed by the interplay between spoken, musical and visual languages.
Work has focussed on the caving system at Craig Y Cilau National Nature reserve on Mynydd Llangattock, with artwork, films, readings, recordings and crwth playing in and around the caves.
