Infinite Temporal Series 2005
Site-specific works have played an important role in the history of Chunky Move. Infinite Temporal Series continued to explore the shifting relationship between audience and performance. This choreographic installation was created by Prue Lang and inspired by the writing of Jorge Luis Borges, exploring performance via experimental narrative structures of simultaneous temporalities. The set was a self-contained performance space consisting of a row of five adjacent rooms with two corridors along each side. Each room contained a bench for audience seating; while each spectator was situated in an intimate relationship to the performers in their particular room, they were also afforded a view beyond that room’s immediate confines that penetrated the multiple layers of space and movement in subsequent rooms. Spectators could move freely from room to room during the performance to construct their own individual and multi-perspectival experience of the work.
Creative Team
Direction & Concept Prue Lang
Dramaturgy Rebecca Groves
Text Jorge Luis Borges
Rehearsal Assistant Amy Raymond
Original Performers Kristy Ayre, Fiona Cameron, Antony Hamilton, Paea Leach, Jo Lloyd, Ryan Lowe, Carlee Mellow, Byron Perry, Clair Peters
Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek
Executive Producer Vivia Hickman
Stage Manager Briony Leivers
Lighting Technician Jenny Hector
Produced Das TAT/ Bockenheimer depot & Kunstfest Weimar
World Premiere
6 April 2005 Melbourne
“The rewards in this transfixing 25-minute work, with images of bodies in a field of seemingly limitless space, are glorious, enduringly so.” The Australian
A note from Prue Lang
For this piece I was largely inspired by the writings of Jorge Luis Borges, in particular a short fiction called "The Garden of Forking Paths". I wanted to explore performance via experimental narrative structures of simultaneous temporalities and consequently designed a performance space based on the literary device - mise-en-abyme. While each spectator is situated in an intimate relationship to the performers in their particular room, they are also afforded a view beyond these immediate confines that penetrates the multiple layers of space and movement in subsequent rooms.
I developed the choreography from the memory of dreams in which the flow of consciousness gives an altered sense of time and chronology. The circular choreographic structure exists within this intimate environment and discontinuities of perception emerge as the pursuit of form becomes a technical inquiry of time. The spectator has the possibility to change places throughout the performance to construct their own individual and multi-perspectival experience of the work.
L-R: Paea Leach, Ryan Lowe, Fiona Cameron Image: Adam Harrington
