Like many in our group, images help me to connect to a place. Here are photographs taken by Robert Polidori. His images are collected in a book entitled After the Flood. He went to NO in 2005 and 2006. I selected five of his images--all indoor shots. To me they function as records of the lives of those who lived in those rooms and records of the destruction caused by the storm and the water. [With no disrespect intended]: the way Polidori took these photos, the rooms look like stages. Or giant Cornell boxes. But, of course, they are not staged.The images work in two directions for me and our project: they help me connect to the recent situation in New Orleans and connect to New Orleans's history as represented in the series of postcards that Louise posted. Both collections of images present New Orleans to the outside world. They stage New Orleans in different ways and bring up the question of what constitutes the collective identity of the city.
These images also strike me as being amazingly silent--in stark contrast to the huge amount of damage evident in each photo. These images embody the oxymoron, still-lifes.
Shelley
2 comments:
I'm just riffing here, but maybe we can project these images and stage tableaus in them, picking up on this idea of still-life (no movement) and then use this to get into the stories of NO in the future still-life (life still persists). It might be very evocative to put our bodies into these rooms without bodies, drawing attention to the fact that we are outsiders, outside of the immediate trauma the rooms document, but hoping to forge a connection to them.
I LOVE this idea, Karen. I've been trying to figure what the performance will actually look/be like. Not sure what shape the script will take or what we'll have time to "memorize" as performers. If we opt for "reading" it could be effective to have people reading excerpts while others embody the stories. There could be a series of "still lifes" that reflect the stories being told.
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