The Egg

What:

The Egg (working title) is a narrative performance and exhibition that follows a man’s sisyphean attempts to achieve flight by absurd means including using balloons and a skateboard or trying to hatch a genetically mutated bird's egg. The Wrongs Brother is about the hubris of humans, about naivete , more subtly, this artwork seeks to satirise (space/neo) colonists and delusions of grandeur.

I am trying to deconstruct and rearrange the narrative of humanity’s discovery of flight. I want to turn it from this mythical story of human determination and turn it into a clownish cautionary tale.

The character listens to the mystic egg, hearing a soft pulsating heartbeat. He hopes that he can hatch the egg into a winged guide that may help him achieve flight. The Cuckoo bird lays its egg in the nests of other birds who incubate the egg and raise the Cuckoo's young as their own. It is known as a brood parasite.

Perhaps this character has been fooled by a brood parasite. Perhaps he thinks he is raising a giant bird but in reality it is a poisonous basilisk.

How:

The exhibition would include a video of the quest, alongside this there would be photographic and installation works. A live performance would happen within the gallery space. This performance will be highly choreographed, interactive and musical. Within the performance the sensation of human flight is simulated through collective movement and noise making.

Within the core narrative I would like there to be a strong structural elements; crisis, struggle & resolution but perhaps I also want to try and subvert the meaning of these western narrative blocks.

Timetable

1.Storyboarding
2. Prop-building - shot prototyping - costume making - location scouting.Research by making
3. Kermis

Why?

This work came to my imagination in perhaps a similar way to my previous video. It feels in my mind to be in the same wheelhouse and fits well into a larger body of work. I want to make it because I think there are interesting avenues of thought to explore while researching. I do not want to back myself into a corner with a defined ending. I want to find the ending through research, I think this image of an egg has potential to develop into something personal.

I remember my grandparents used to have a wooden chickens egg. A surrogate egg to encourage hens to lay. My grandparents were farmers in rural ireland in the 1960s.

I imagine a retelling of the Wright brothers story but instead of this flight happening in North Carolina’s Kill Devil Hills it happens in the irish midlands above a peat bog. I do not think it is possible to make this artwork in ireland right now, but this imagined alternate history is a source to draw from for this Rotterdam based artwork. +

An egg is a layered symbol. Birth, fragility, food, reptilian,

Who can help me? Camera person. Sound person maybe. Tutors. Keremis. Sometimes I need a person behind the camera who can give me direction even though I am the maker. Sometimes I need someone who has their own ideas and is willing to help me piece together a shot. My friend & designer Lorcan Rush. Tape recorders. Record Player.

Relation to previous work. Similar ambience, a fool’s errand. I seek the same emotional response as Gravy the Clown. Using musical motifs in a similar method. Evoking or playing with nostalgia. Using literary and theatrical references. A one man show. This I think will be different because there will be dialogue or narration but hey I said this last time too. Two weeks after writing the original outline for this project my research has taken me downb different avenues of thought. My

Relation to a larger context. I think I need to carve out this artworks relation to its wider context. This vaudevillian method of video and performance making I think is often demoted in status because of its absurdity or its kitchness but it has a rich and authentic history and speaks to many different cultural reference points. I am trying to say that making this kind of work matters and that you can do it, that performance art doesn’t have to be all misery and pain it can and should be performative .

Bibliography

Youtube Ad music
Lamisil - It's Alive (2003, USA)
07 Domex 'Marenge'
SELF-ISOLATION - DAY 56
eatcarpet 98 The Mongreloid.Dir.G.Kuchar
Justice - Stress (Official Video) i
12 ways to make small talk | How to with John Wilson - BBC
Limmy: Requiem

Inventory Ingredients/locations/Scenarios

Kite Flyers - go somewhere windy where people fly kites

Flight simulator - is there a large to scale simulator that I could use as a test sight?

Kermis - fair ground great location for B roll and make some photos too, perhaps ride a rollercoaster that simulates flying

Sensory deprivation tank/egg?

Plastic bag/litter in the wind

Toy paratroupers

More References https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2010.263 (teaching a stone how to fly) https://www.clevelandart.org/exhibitions/kim-beom-objects-being-taught-they-are-nothing-tools (teaching a stone how to fly)