Jacky Puzey

NB these are diary pages and reflect work in progress or ideas Shade artists are currently thinking about….

July 17 2010 – thinking about migration, dress, Shade Home parades…

Shade Home is about dress, culture, food, migration, and what it takes to make a shared space of home in a new country or community. I found this quote in another art/research project, called the Mahgreb Connection by Ursula Biemann, that documents the journeys undertaken from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe over the Northern African countries of the Mahgreb – about the creation of new allegiances and communities, about strategies to migrate.

‘Migrants’ strategies of escape from state repression, or of simple survival, are innumerable and in permanent re-invention. Mehdi Alioua described to us a few, such as: 1. travelling to Rabat by night with another’s identity documents, hoping that the darkness will hide the subterfuge; 2. Renting passports for the day from fellow sub-Saharan students; 3. dressing hip in order to escape the tarnished image of illegal migrants and thus go undetected’. (Biemann and Heller 2006)

Shade is about migrating, as the performers lead tours and set up encounters, but its also about making home together, coming together for food – strategies for community….dressing to pass across borders…

Paddington graffiti that I keep seeing all round Easton - if its yours, its brilliant...

Sunday July 25 2010

I’ve been thinking about how Shade works, as a collaboration with performers and audience, not having those boundaries, making a piece that’s about a conversation weaving in experiences. A few months ago I went to see Susan and Darren, by Quarantine Theatre. Quarantine’s website had this really nice description of a way of working….

“We work with both experienced performers and people who have never performed before. Using their personal histories and experiences, we invent a theatrical form that’s tailored to each piece – from intimate encounters to epic events. We often make theatre that blurs, exchanges or even removes the distinction between spectator and performer.”   http://www.qtine.com/about/

I’ve been thinking about movement, rehearsing and our Shade suits, the process of making a collaboration across cloth, person and movement; creating a bespoke suit as a collaborative democratic act, to be worn as a great outfit at social occasions, to be already wearing your visas on your cloth… its like the movements of the performers and audiences start from the collaboration between suit, tailor and wearer.  As the suits do affect posture and movement – which is what’s so nice about bespoke – its a collaboration with wearer and garment and tailor, and you can see people growing into their suit as the fittings progress. the more I learnt to tailor the more its a process of stitching cloth and culture…
Also, there’s a brilliant Cab Calloway song, from the old Jewish original – Utt Da Zoy sings the Tailor – thinking about music and dress and shared histories, East End/Easton migrant communities, there used to be a haberdashers on Bellevue Road in Easton… thinking about using this to introduce Shade. Dressing to pass..borders? cultures? communities?

Utt Da Zay is at 

August 30 2010

Thinking more about Shade themes…how the ideas behind the art piece work, how it creates a sense of shared space, food, culture…like a really nice alchemy…. talking to Fol and China made me think about setting clear themes, how we explain the Shade stories, as its so rich… And also today very excited about the new Shade suit, the Landowner/Romantic Poet suit for Baljinder Bhopal, which now has lovely peacock feathers embroidered instead of military style braid…walking through land rather than acquiring it to change…

So, thinking about clear themes, and the stories behind the Shade project and the suits…

The key theme of Shade Home is about making Home collaboratively across cultures – its about how you get to Home. That includes making home, sharing home, journeying to home, collaborating to make home. It can but doesn’t have to include the home you left that was made for you; its about an idea of sharing home, and Home being the end of the migration, or not, maybe…dressing to pass, crossing borders, the radical familiarities of sharing a home space across cultures.

The Dandy crosses borders through style. – street style, radical tailoring, dandy style, gender/public place politics
The Hostess crosses borders machiavellian style through networking and contacts, suitably dressed but using shared dinners and collaborative tailoring to find new connections – tailored suits made for performers – fittings – thinking about patterns across culture
The Activist is an idealist – transcending borders through activisms – but also thinks about practical ways to take people with her – activisms are inclusive and resonant, otherwise she finds herself without active helpers. Deep ecologies – what makes a community…
The Explorer crosses borders through claiming shared territory this time – this time the glamorous stranger in town is exploring her locale, the things that make a shared local space
The Landowner that has become a Romantic Poet – crosses borders by ignoring ideas of land ownership – land is culture, culture is temporal, borders will change, the land will remain – the Poet prefers birdwatching and walking to fences, and is making a new book of land deeds that are about different spaces, cloth and culture..

The Shade Home is about the shared space of Home; as a space of genuine hospitality and exchange and the journey to Home – can we ever get there – hence we always ask on events if people will migrate with us, or if there is a pass, knowing that we intend everyone to come but not making that clear to begin with. Being good hosts and guests – the characters are not neutral, but as we take them on and their resonances across histories we can shift that in different and complex ways. (China talked about transformative activisms).