https://hannahsullivan.co.uk Hannah work Fri, 10 Jan 2025 17:46:20 +0000 https://hannahsullivan.co.uk en https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/NIGHTWALKER-1 Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:55:44 +0000 Hannah work https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/NIGHTWALKER-1 NIGHTWALKER A creative essay on women walking at night, the night body and darkness in the city. A personal report on research project with Brigstow Institute. Preamble - In the 1700’s a frenzied arrival of street lighting completely rearranged our cities and our night. Overcome with the spectacle of engineering, street lighting was rolled out at a pace, becoming a symbol for this age of enlightenment. It also marks the beginning of a nyctophobia that has persisted ever since. With the eradication of darkness, it’s qualities and associations are also dismissed. That is to say; the mythic, mystic, ancient, supernatural, and all that is deemed unwanted in the day or in society. The night was already a place of policing and surveillance, and any one out at night was questionable. But the introduction of lit and un-lit areas tightened the framework of what is good or bad, accepted or not, lawful or criminal. Darker areas become places of preserving nighttime cultures. This treatment of the night reveals what values in societies are hardened, but also tells of an unwillingness to let go of our chief sense – sight. Darkness requires us to rely on other senses, ones we are more vulnerable within. At this time walking at night was seen as a symptom of ill mental health. That it did, in fact, bring about ill mental health. It was believed, or told, that the night held a dark vapour that could poison you. That demons circulated at night, eventually possessing those who are out too long. About 6 years ago, living in the countryside, I started walking at twilight. With so much space and quiet, I could experience the transition from day to night very clearly. It started to feel important to witness, and so I would walk at the last hour of the day regularly. I was initially drawn to the beauty of this handover, but ultimately, I became very fond of the dark. I found the countryside to be darkness rich: thick complete woods, mirrored silky rivers, an observable galactic sky. I had wandered around at night before; circling estates as a teenager or getting myself home from a night out. But this new walking was no longer practical, or a way to socialise. It was a solitary dark-bathing. At this time in my life, I was freshly grieving. I was often very restless indoors, where my feelings compressed. There was a softness to the night, and my own meandering within it. It offered what I needed. Something kindly dim, non-demanding and spacious. After a different kind of emotional upheaval, I moved back to the city in a state of constant vibration. It was a ferocious energy. It was probably anger. I did what I knew and walked at night. This time, however, I found darkness hard to locate. And so, my walking became a search for darkness. I found it (or variations of it) in the water, under the bridges, down the alleyways, in the graveyards, in the long grass of the park. This began a few years of dark mapping a city I already knew. Experiencing many tones of night walking; from euphoric to haunting, sketchy to peaceful. Now, I mostly walk to listen to music, to dream and think. I find myself almost dancing, I meet a lot of wildlife (or what seems like a lot). What I know is that the night is its own world and a fragile threshold to others. That the darkness is a potential refuge, one that is hard to access. And as a woman walking at night, I am acting against domesticity and in defiance of what is considered safe. These experiences led me to talk and walk with others, a creative report on which follows. <img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9525b5ee-0a25-4ffc-83e5-cd94134981b6_1195x965.jpeg" width="1195" height="965" style="width: 736.422px; height: 594.684px;"> NIGHT WALK Within a recent Brigstow &nbsp;project (research institute at the University of Bristol) I discussed the feminine nightwalker with two night historians; Dr Eleanor Rycroft and Dr Andy Flack. Following these conversations I designed a performance score (set of instructions or prompts) for a night walk. These walks were undertaken by four night-interested artists; Jan-Ming Lee, Nina Santes, Katsura Isobe and Ann-Marie Fairbrother, as well as myself and Eleanor. Each woman recorded herself speaking before and after the walk, quotes from these recordings are included, and have been used as prompts for writing. 1. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ALLEYWAY We all spoke of another self. A night self. We spoke of the ‘every-day self’. She is tiresome, tired, bound up. She is allocated. She is project-heavy. The ‘every-night self’ is less known, but full of desires. This self is closer to the body, is a body. A night body, that we would like to know. This is what I heard them say, above the sound of footsteps, taking them to a starting place for a night walk. I heard them changing, already changing. ‘I am up for being changed’, I say. Could this night body be an equal? When this body spoke it’s first words were ones of longing. To be cloaked, to disappear, to be quiet, to skulk. I will walk at night to see another part of me that is hidden - beneath the mask - of my everyday self - myself that is – deep – quiet – hidden. I will walk at night to be away from hustle and bustle of everyday life, hustle and bustle of people. I will walk at night to escape. - &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Katsura She wasn’t the only one to say escape. Everyone left things behind them. Left them willingly. Dropped them quickly so they wouldn’t snag. I saw it happen like a clay shell cracking and breaking, then falling back on the pavement in bits. Is this where the night body lives - encased? Seek darkness, was the instruction. Under trees, behind vans, stored in the underpass. We had trouble finding darkness, we could only find very small patches of dark, but when I was in them, I wanted to bathe in them, and feel the darkness like a space, which my body could inhabit. - &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Eleanor The intrusion of light is abhorrent, a pest. A constant disturbance to our shadow bathing. Disappearance disallowed and uncared for. We found what we could. Any scrap of darkness, to sustain a night body. And like disgruntled vampires we frowned and complained at all this light. 2. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; LONG GRASS She spoke of adventure, and I was so glad she did. That sparky sense, that secret wink, for going out with no proper purpose. To seek - to find- to see what’s up. Get into some trouble, or some beauty – her agency and receptiveness, her up-for-it-ness rippling in her voice. And I feel so relaxed in my body, excited and part of something. I felt refreshed as I turn back now. - &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ann-Marie I watched her walk backwards, into the woods. Walking plainly, strangely, in reverse. It seemed to me that she had walked out of these woods, and was now on rewind. Her image shattered with passing light. We were giddy under the long tree branches that we were hiding behind. We ran across the field hand in hand and laughed the whole time. All grown women, knocking about like teenagers. Teenage; a template of loitering and pissing about. Of being awake. Of using public space like it’s yours. Or like it could be. The night eyes returning all blissed out. Ready to sleep. Can you be lulled and stirred at the same time? I will always love the sense, the possibility, of strangeness. - &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nina So strange, those women, lying on the ground. Blending into shadows. Trying to see a monochrome world. They had paws and soft ears, they had tentacles. The language for the body moved into animal territory. Listening when we don’t usually listen. Feeling when we don’t usually feel. The body becoming sensorially different – we welcomed this. We acknowledge and appreciate that it is a more tender self. And the felt sense, I still feel it now, as I am padding out of the tunnel of trees and back into the streets that my feet are very awake, listening to the ground, attentive…and now in my walk another little fox trotting by, I’ve seen three tonight, quiet young foxes. - &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Ann-Marie All we want is to see is an animal. Hedgehog, Badger, Fox, Cat, Rabbit. No report without an animal. A success story – we did it - we managed to not be alone, or separated. We were seen by someone other than ourselves. Is a night gaze an animal gaze? She was just thankful that the hedgehogs are still here. That we haven’t destroyed everything already. Do we feel blessed by the gaze of an animal? Is it sacred to be in the presence of another and not be ‘read’. Is this night body sanctified by being witnessed by another nocturnal being? I walked in the night with my tentacles and antennae out, wanting to meet those that aren’t human, the humans got in the way sometimes. - &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Jan-Ming 3. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; BRIDGE Too much can come out of the dark. It is hard to hold its blankness. To accept nothingness. What is placed in the nothing? Why do I feel I am being watched? What hostility is in my room, in my house, in the street, in the world? A monster? A man? Can I practice not dragging this hostility with me...can I leave it where it lives? In these softer moments can I recognise and hold fear like an object before me? Can I build new knowledge of the night, and of fear? Can this navigation help me make new choices, ones of trust, ones of hope? There’s a quality of darkness that feels a bit like a void. There was this tunnel, and we walked through the tunnel and on the left there was a rectangle shape, dark shape, and it felt like there was space in it but I wasn’t sure how big it was and I was scared of this hole in the wall, I was really scared, I could notice my breath becoming short. - &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nina In the edges of the cemetery, we saw a shadow moving too quickly. I have my story, and she has hers. More are developing. Stories that have been experienced by many – weaving into a universe, a parallel universe. And like those who have been abducted by aliens – we come back from this universe but can’t remember it properly. I said it was ‘too weird’, I said it was ‘disorientating’. She said that it ‘darted’, that it ‘crouched’. There are tricks of the dark. Best to cut and run, best to, and anyway, I won’t tell you about it because I don’t want you to think that I’m mad. Walking into an edge of fear and kind of merging into a liberation, dark pool of freedom, expansion, maybe the fear is the gateway. - Ann-Marie 4. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; GRAVEYARD We walk in pairs and meet each other as dark company – peripheral, silent, suggestive – alone in the dark is one thing, together in the dark is another. I will walk tonight because I can. - &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Eleanor We made circles of intention, boundary walking, backwards, as witches do. In a story of the curtailing of witches, he said that there were not enough men and so all these women were roaming around freely, something had to be done. Nighttime suspicion is old; what are you up to? Now fostered by todays tensions – it continues, wriggling with questions - are they one of ‘those’. We squealed into the darkness like an exorcism. We shook our hands vigorously under the bridge. She let me disappear and she let me come back. We lay next to each other in the middle of the path. She looked up at the canopy, transfixed, I don’t know what with. We turned towards each other and rested, in each other’s arms, I felt like an otter, no – that’s not it – I felt like myself. I walked in the night and I’m still walking in the night, so strange, so strange that people don’t walk in the night. - &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Jan-Ming I am bored of safety, I am bored of safety, I am bored of safety. But when I walk, I imagine, in my periphery – women in different positions; lying, crouching, standing, smoking on the balcony, walking, running, dancing, hiding in a bush. I thank them for being and staying peripheral, for allowing me to feel both safe and free. . With thanks to Dr Eleanor Rycroft, Dr Andy Flack, Jan-Ming Lee, Nina Santes, Katsura Isobe, Ann-Marie Fairbrother, and the Brigstow Institute. I have recently received Arts Council Funding to develop a new audio work on night walking, with support from MAYK in Bristol I aim to share this as a work in progress in April 2025. Some related reading: Why I adore the night by Jeanette Winterson (essay) Wanderers, a history of women walking by Kerri Andrews Strangers, essays on human and nonhuman by Rebecca Tamas Notes from the gloomy city: rethinking the relationship between light and dark by Tim Edensor (essay) At Day’s Close; a history of nighttime by A, Roger Ekrich Pit Murk (a collection of short stories about the dark) by Hannah Sullivan Some related art: 1999: Janet Cardiff (audio walk) – ‘Missing Voice Case Study B’ 1981: Sophie Calle (performance/photography) – ‘The Shadow’ and ‘A Woman Vanishes’ 2014: Ana Lily AmirPour (film) - A girl walks home alone at night. https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Inis-Mor Sat, 07 Sep 2019 12:43:15 +0000 Hannah work https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Inis-Mor To write Aida, I visited Inis mor. The big island of the Aran Islands in Galway Bay, Ireland. I decided to go to Inis Mor when I listened to the BBC Radio programme ‘Songs for the dead’, a show exploring the tradition of keening in Ireland. In this programme the narrator travels to Inis Mor, believed to be the last location of professional keeners. Brigid Mullin of Inis Mor was the last keener recorded by the song collector and archivist Sidney Robertson Cowell in the 1950's. I came across this programme when looking into the research project Keening Wake. Introducing people to Keening in Scotland and Ireland, through archive material, oral lore and informed opinion. This website has some really great sound clips of interviews with people describing what it was like to listen to a Caoineadh. I stayed on Inis Mor for three nights and was treated to glorious weather. I hired a bicycle, visited the cliff edges and wound my way through the coast roads. There was an huge rusty fishing boat leaning in the harbour, orange speckled gravestones and grey veined beaches. I took pictures and made copious notes on the landscape, which was beautiful and barren and atmospherically inspirational. <img width="4032" height="3024" width_o="4032" height_o="3024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d5a2e2e55dbaa9bc80d6996e76ffb3e40b1b954416860b2c6d3d1d8f4494c5fc/IMG_1190.JPG" data-mid="50069469" border="0" data-scale="60" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d5a2e2e55dbaa9bc80d6996e76ffb3e40b1b954416860b2c6d3d1d8f4494c5fc/IMG_1190.JPG" /><img width="4032" height="3024" width_o="4032" height_o="3024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c7812786a51f0020bd4463d301cd52d5fa8bd9c66c90922976ac4b3423e99ee0/IMG_1235.JPG" data-mid="50069560" border="0" data-scale="60" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c7812786a51f0020bd4463d301cd52d5fa8bd9c66c90922976ac4b3423e99ee0/IMG_1235.JPG" /> <img width="4032" height="3024" width_o="4032" height_o="3024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/468f29f27e7ab0f21cbcb55fd0f59477a7227bb393f375b811af7d82a2c7998b/IMG_1248.JPG" data-mid="50069572" border="0" data-scale="60" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/468f29f27e7ab0f21cbcb55fd0f59477a7227bb393f375b811af7d82a2c7998b/IMG_1248.JPG" /><img width="4032" height="3024" width_o="4032" height_o="3024" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bbcd0a40bc3f1533eadd36d8d9c8a08cc7a09981c65703532aa05b39e398887d/IMG_1225.JPG" data-mid="50070048" border="0" data-scale="60" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bbcd0a40bc3f1533eadd36d8d9c8a08cc7a09981c65703532aa05b39e398887d/IMG_1225.JPG" /> On a rainy morning a coffee shop screened the 1934 film ‘Man of Aran’.&nbsp;A documentary and fictional narrative on the everyday trials of life on Ireland's unforgiving Aran Islands. Carrying seaweed, catching basking sharks, and making fields atop acres of stone. Watching this film was so informative and poetic, it filled me with new images from a time I could never have reached without this amazing cinema. For me, being on Inis Mor was completely essential to writing this short story. The trip taught me how visiting a place gives me the vision I need to write. <img width="500" height="307" width_o="500" height_o="307" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3be3826e521544962b23c798383e4ead1d9f1ca148b4346976cd59b1ea31441b/man-of-aran-on-the-shore.jpg" data-mid="50070133" border="0" data-scale="100" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/500/i/3be3826e521544962b23c798383e4ead1d9f1ca148b4346976cd59b1ea31441b/man-of-aran-on-the-shore.jpg" /> Extract from Aida:The Island now slopes sandywards on the bay side. Grey scree and fragmented bogs harbour seals. Docked like metallic canoes, they flop steadily, in snotty rockpools. On the west side, the Island climbs to great heights that suddenly drop in knife edge cliffs, black, barnacled and fringed with forests of seaweed. The seaweed swims as tongues lolloping a wet talk underneath.- Hannah Sullivan, 2019. https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/No-Clear-Pathway-A-residency-in-Taiwan Mon, 24 Jun 2019 12:25:55 +0000 Hannah work https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/No-Clear-Pathway-A-residency-in-Taiwan NOVEMBER 2017 No Clear Pathway – Notes on an artist residency in Taiwan. Here is a collection of notes, descriptions, thoughts, reflections, and links to others on the residency project; ‘Tree Tree Tree Person’ – a 6 week international residency in Taroko National Park, Taiwan, in which artists stayed within the homes of the Truku tribe and were asked to create new work inspired by the experience and place, for two gallery events elsewhere and one final event in the Taroko Mountain. —– The sound is traffic, the smell is food and garbage. The rains fall unforgiving and brings in the surrounding forest. – Taipei, Notebook. I went to Taiwan for an artist residency. I went because I wanted to put myself in a new place and I wanted to think about and be in the dark. During my 6 weeks staying in Taroko (The home of the Truku tribe) I did find myself in very new places and spent hours in the dark, both literally and metaphorically. I met a community of indigenous people with stories to tell me, which uncovered the historical and current trauma of this place. A place of rising and falling clouds and turquoise rivers, a place being farmed and worked hard upon, a place being stolen for tourism and excavated and sold for concrete. I also met a family who took me in with immense heart and kindness without much language or understanding who became my sisters, my mother and my father, our dogs. And I met a collection of artists, from different places with different ways of engaging, processing, reacting to place and people, but all together trying to consider how art can be made here. Here we all were on an international, site based, community engaged art residency….and we were all like, what the fuck are we going to do? We sit out for the moonrise, for the weightless star. The place is awash, black, blue, silver. My moon shadow is long and the dogs are flat out. – Taroko Mountain, Notebook. Our time was split between the town (where the Truku tribe were resettled once forced to move from the mountain when it was turned into a National Park) and the mountain itself in the old villages of the Truku people where some people run guest houses. Whilst in the mountain I put my head and my experience into my chosen topic: the darkness. I will write a separate blog on this and link it here when it’s finished. Fed by the isolation and outstanding feeling of living somewhere in the sky – I could get some focus. This is my usual residency goal – some dedicated time and focus. But this residency was different – it was confronting, this became the actual focus for us all. Whilst in the town, I put questions to myself on my being there, the relevance of my work, is it possible to work with any of this new information, to respond to this place, does anyone want me to, should I? This thinking was triggered by many things but inspired by the group of artists formed through this residency, who were dedicated to honouring the true situation of this residency and what our presence means. For me some of the absolute central concerns of what it means to be an artist came up through this questioning – the role of art in society, the difference between aesthetic and purpose, the value of friendship, companionship, camaraderie, facilitated through event, the failure or pointlessness of art as social tool, the impossibility or poetry of translation, the artist as human – as friend, the artist as work – as information generator/communicator, the artist as present and interested – the impact of attention. None of this got answered, but it all got thrown up, tossed around and basically resulted in some depression, confusion, learning and heart wide open. A meal cooked in the mountain: boiled eggs with bitter gourd cooked with garlic and chilli, courgette and carrot stirred fried in stock, greens cooked with rice vinegar, steamed chicken and fish, pork and bean soup. – Taroko Mountain, Notebook. Here is a note I made when trying to plan a performance for the end of the residency, a performance to be done in the mountain for a visiting group of tourists; I am met with a feeling of responsibility in the opportunity to expose something or inform an audience about this place with the stronger want to say thank you, or goodbye, or make a gift, to the people and the place that have hosted and cared for me. These two tasks are complicated by other feelings of not being informed enough due to short time period and subjective nature of information, along with being an outsider and not committed or connected enough to this place in order to represent it, or its communities experiences, to others. It is impossible to make a clear pathway through this. But this is true all the time. We cannot make a clear pathway. The context of this place meeting the context of me is resistant and filthy. On returning people have asked me questions… WHAT DID YOU ACTUALLY MAKE? (most common question) I made work about the dark. A topic I brought with me, a love I’d fostered the previous winter, on letting the dark season bloom, enjoying the qualities that darkness brings, investing in developing night vision, developing a distaste for torches and the bent will of humans to light everything. I brought this with me, but I also brought with me an intense grief, I lost my mother one month before arriving in Taiwan. I found relief in the dark, there was a lot to place in the dark, I wanted to be outside of life, I stood in the dark to look back on it, its light spilling to the edges of my feet. From this I made a small one-on-one performance for pitch black room, some writing and a 4am walk in the city of Tainan. I also made a fire in the mountain, for the end of residency programme, I made a fire with my friend Ania for our friend and Truko mother Simat…we made a fire because ‘Last night Simat told us how she wishes there were more people living on the mountain, so that everybody could gather around the bonfire at the end of the day and talk about what they have done. So this is what we do’. We made a fire and we sung songs. That is what we made. What did they think of the work? They – the indigenous people who hosted us, the community we met, the family we made. Well they didn’t really see the ‘work’. We presented in galleries in others cities, far away from them. Then we returned to show some work in the mountain, but they were working – cooking the meals. Our relationship with them had nothing to do with the artwork we were making, it seemed like it was much more important to them that we were just there, as people, interested, caring, listening or watching what they had to say or show us. Leaving was hard, we cried and they cried…little said about any ‘work’. Do you think what you did in the mountain succeeded? I think that the situation we were invited into was flawed, and that we dealt with it with intelligence and spirit. In a way no, there was no success – success is weird and hard to measure. But we did get our heads together as a group of artists and decide on an agenda for the final showing, that pointed the invited tourists towards the Truku people in resistance to using the site as an aesthetic of nature, because if we had done so this would have been a major disrespect to the people and the place. WHAT ARE YOU LEFT WITH? A love for Taiwan. A heartstring to Taroko.&nbsp;A determination and interest to learn and develop a form of working that is much more open in aesthetic, responsive, able to collaborate with community. &nbsp; ‘What we’ve found is a town divided’ –https://www.facebook.com/sheafandbarley/posts/1168941376544611 – Sheaf+Barley (other participating artists) post, an excellent description of the historical and contemporary situation of Taroko National Park and the Truku people very well. ‘I start with the place I come from’ – https://charlie49613017.wixsite.com/artist-home-swap/single-post/2017/11/06/Artist-Home-Swap-2017-ethical-and-ethnic-gaze-how-art-making-process-take-part – Howl Yuan’s (organiser of Artist Home Swap, that brought us to Taiwan) blog, explaining the context of the residency and his reflections and learning. ‘We show solidarity by being there as human beings’ – https://www.facebook.com/dorothywongg2/posts/10155834662460746 – Article from other participating Artist, Ben Ryser, on behalf of collective Island, including Dorothy Wong and Eva Lin. Brilliantly describing the questions we faced as artists and the relationships we made with the Truku people. <img width="5152" height="3864" width_o="5152" height_o="3864" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/832e838d26a4d4b16b2d0491e6e9b44a2f6024b39e9e065a1b9cf6d531e5ac47/IMG_0419.JPG" data-mid="45334583" border="0" data-scale="80" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/832e838d26a4d4b16b2d0491e6e9b44a2f6024b39e9e065a1b9cf6d531e5ac47/IMG_0419.JPG" />&nbsp; Ania, Simat and Myself <img width="5152" height="3864" width_o="5152" height_o="3864" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9a07d5e24ab5f155612cced77e95b29663f3253b244883835d5afec246fb6fbb/IMG_0317.JPG" data-mid="45334404" border="0" data-scale="80" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9a07d5e24ab5f155612cced77e95b29663f3253b244883835d5afec246fb6fbb/IMG_0317.JPG" />&nbsp; Taroko/Mountain <img width="5152" height="3864" width_o="5152" height_o="3864" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/964c2805474a84f9683cfe19fb9d07662755db6c1a0d7d1966696521179975bd/IMG_0354.JPG" data-mid="45334443" border="0" data-scale="80" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/964c2805474a84f9683cfe19fb9d07662755db6c1a0d7d1966696521179975bd/IMG_0354.JPG" /> Taroko/Town https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Draw-to-Look-blog Mon, 24 Jun 2019 12:23:01 +0000 Hannah work https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Draw-to-Look-blog MARCH 2017 DRAW TO LOOK I usually draw landscapes; a river through a moor, a mountainous horizon, a quiet harbour. I draw to dwell in a place and out of affection. Observational drawing to me seems like a practice of attention, that has little to do with skill and everything to do with looking and time. What do we cultivate when we pay attention? when we spend time with someone? when we choose to look? I wanted to make a performance on drawing that brought out its sense of occasion. For ‘Draw To Look’, a new one-on-one performance and evolving exhibition, I am currently building a bespoke drawing desk made for the particular drawing exercise; draw without looking at the paper. I love this exercise and do it all of the time, it’s common place within life drawing and allows you to pay attention to the subject by letting go of your pressures, doubts and niggles about what your drawing looks like. I feel that so much is lost when people are told they can’t draw, and this exercise frees us from the judgement that crushes creativity. For this desk I will make a short one-on-one performance where myself and an audience member will draw each other, in the main gallery at the RWA…the rest is a secret. <img src="https://intervalbristol.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/img_0054.jpg?w=316&amp;h=316" width="316" height="316" style="width: 207.36px; height: 207.36px;" data-scale="32">&nbsp;<img src="https://intervalbristol.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/img_0047.jpg?w=316&amp;h=316" width="316" height="316" style="width: 207.36px; height: 207.36px;" data-scale="32">&nbsp;<img src="https://intervalbristol.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/img_0046.jpg?w=316&amp;h=316" width="316" height="316" style="width: 207.36px; height: 207.36px;" data-scale="32"> Ink leads to liquid looking. It falls and glides with pleasurable ease. My look pools in the dip about your eye, loiters, Then rolls of the edge and follows fast the curve of your chin. You become a surface to scramble over, And I am the mountain stream. Lead leads my looking to be sharp and keen. It seeks out cracks and nooks, details to study. My look is committed and close, You are microscopic. And this unravelling look, feels like choosing a pebble from a pebble beach, Rolling it around in my hand, then putting it back. Charcoal drags my look about. It pushes up the climb of your forehead and pulls down the scale of your nose. It scoops you out like clay, so I see weight, shape, shadow. You are moulded, malleable but resistant, like the cliffs shaped by the sea. My notebook, January 2017, at Cove Park. https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/The-Song-The-Singer-and-The-Listener Mon, 24 Jun 2019 12:14:53 +0000 Hannah work https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/The-Song-The-Singer-and-The-Listener AUGUST 2016 The Song, The Singer and The Listener. For the last three months I have been deep in books and documentaries researching song and singing, alongside dabbling with my own folk, soul, punk song creations! This began in 2015 at a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and resurfaced this year as a collaborative research project with academic Dr Una Mcllvenna supported by The Exchange collaborative research fund. My main questions during this time have been; what is the purpose of song? and how does singing transform the singer and the listener? This blog is an attempt to pull together some of the thoughts and findings I have come across along the way. THE SONG: What is the purpose of song? Chant, mantra, ballad, recital. There is a constellation between the voice, the word, and the belief. We turn over the words, they grow with our voice and are expelled into the air. The song allows the subject to be renewed.&nbsp; The song is the ritual maker; a condensed format to contain emotions, vac-packed and ready for release. The song is a particularly good ritual maker, crafting out a time and a focus, inciting or even requiring participation. The song is there to lead us through. These are two introductory ideas on song, that particularly interest me. Through research I have encountered several other thoughts on the purpose of song, which I have grouped here into; conjuring, carrying, comfort, and chronicle. CONJURING ‘The voice conjurs what it speaks’ – &nbsp;Brandon LaBelle, Lexicon of the mouth, poetics and politics of voice and the oral imaginary. To conjure is to evoke through spell or magic. It is to call up, to summon and to command spirits. In the above quote LaBelle is reflecting on the very power of voicing. Throughout time the voice has brought ‘things to life, and named them’ (Brandon LaBalle, Lexicon of the mouth). It is by announcing what is that we create the world. We summon, we command. This can be understood conceptually, or physically. We lend great power to our vocal imagination. If I sing the word sea, do I not conjure that sea, does it not thunder through the walls and swell about the feet. If I sing death, over and over and over, do I summon it here, do we all feel it’s claws our skin. – notebook The practice of keening (traditional irish lamenting over the dead) is not sung anywhere but at a funeral, for fear of conjuring death. The special sounding of the voice through song is like a spell affecting our spirit. We often speak of the spirit and the soul in relation to song, the voice being an invisible part of ourselves, therefore capable of dwelling with those other invisible elements. Spirit, is understood as the vital principle of conscious life, that which animates the body. What spirit actually is, is debatable; blood, energy, electricity. Either way, a song can lift or lower the spirit. The song possesses us, it takes up roots in our own body. It occupies us. I have often been overcome with a distinct emotion of joy, grief or sadness, quite uncontrollably. It’s like the song has pierced me very cleanly, found what it wanted, and pulled it right out, so my self is on the surface rather than buried inside. – notebook It could very well be empathy that leads to this experience. Often a song is written from the perspective of an individual, and through singing the song we inhabit this individual. We speak their words, a direct practice of embodiment. ‘To sing in the voice of the criminal was to embody the experience of one entirely subjugated before the will of the lord’ – Dr Una Mcllvenna, Ballads of death and disaster: the role of song in early modern europe news transmission. Possibly due to this ability to bring up the emotional and be possessed by the experience of another, song is extensively used as a means of spiritual engagement. Spiritual leaders; such as the Jewish Chazzan, will lead prayer through song which sustains a journey for the congregation, a climbing up or sinking down. Outside of religious contexts, the motivation of the spirit as that which animates the body is present in work songs. The work song, having parallels with prayer songs; is led by the caller who sets and maintains the pace and intent of the song. The rhythm of a work song is made by the rhythm of the work needing to be done, to sustain that works rhythm in the body of the worker. To become physically better at the work, perhaps enjoy it, or to withstand the drudgery and hardship, to sustain the soul.&nbsp; To conjure can be to exorcise. But to throw out the devil you have to grapple with him first. Song is used to cathartically exorcise, share or process grief and hardship. A song makes public what can be cruelly felt in isolation. The creation of songs on the difficulties of life, share them as a public concern and through singing can expel them from being personally harboured. CARRYING ‘Calls and other signals function best as a kind of singing (or shouting with modulated tone) because they carry over large spaces better than speech.’ – John Potter and Neil Sorrell, A History of Singing. A song carries over space and time. The expanding of our voices through singing hurls the song across the room, across valleys. The catching, exchanging and selling of that song carries it across towns and countries. The survival of that song, through singing over years, carries it across time. The format of a song is the original mass media construction. It is a simple method of containing information within a memorable structure that can be passed about orally, originating in our preliterate world. Non-literate culture is essential to the creation and sustaining of songs. In early modern Europe a song would be written to inform the non-literate masses of the news; crimes, deaths, natural disasters. These songs would be pasted on the pub walls and sold by ballad vendors on the streets. And once one person was singing it, the song could spread throughout the public, and straight into people’s homes. Imagine life today, hearing a song about the Sports Direct 1m pound back pay through a song in the street that you then sang at dinner to your family. Songs in this way are tools of memory, using melody and repeated phrases to remember a story. Allowing information and belief systems to pollinate. But they can also be warped, within their oral public life words can be changed and misplaced at will. Such as newspapers today, a new song would publish information – when to publish meant to make public by crying aloud rather than putting in print. A song compresses a statement of intent into a transferable form. A form that requires no written document, can be easily smuggled or transmitted in secret. Songs are mobilisers for revolution. The singer and activist Vuyisile Mini managed to sustain the revolution against South African Apartheid from within his prison cell, through the creation of new freedom songs to be sung on marches. Revolutionary songs are essential to the holding together of a committed group. The song embeds the intent of that revolution into each individual voice, they speak and therefore become that intent. The song figures the body as a carrier of that revolution, as an active part. ‘To be within speech, is to stand up within language’ – Judith Butler, within Lexicon of the mouth by Brandon LaBelle. The voice is provoked to engage through song, to draw yourself forward as participant. This is the same for the establishment of religion through recital and Gospel, allowing an ideology to pollinate outside of literate communities. A song is a commodity, many folk through history have built a living on song and verse. A new song can be a very attractive purchase, a 16th century street seller would only sing part 1 to incite interest from a buyer to pay for the whole item. A ballad vendor with a fresh copy of the lament of the criminal just about to be hung, might stand beside the fatal hanging platform, and on the drop sell their last words in solemn verse. But the true value of a song is created by the culture. The belief that the unwritten word is sacred, or that verse resides in the person rather than the score. An account of female keeners in Ireland tells of the possible nomadic life of those who carry verse; ‘A description of a keener, describes her wondering life, meeting a welcome everywhere with numerous invitations, based on the vast store of Irish verse she had collected and could repeat.’ – The Irish Funeral Cry, The Dublin Penny Journal, Volume 1, 1833. Here verse is sufficient exchange for a bed, food and drink, because it is withheld by the culture as a necessary service and valued resource. COMFORT ‘Learn this song and learn it well because you never know what tomorrow brings’ – A.L.Lloyd lecture on tape at Charlie Harper Archive, Birmingham Library. A shepherd may sing, hum or whistle alone on the hill, as a source of comfort. A comfort created through a familiar tune or the creation of their own acoustic environment, to not lose themselves. The private (alone or within close relations) function of singing is often one of comfort. A woman croons to her cow when milking, to ease the cow, she believes the cow knows the song, and settles her. The use of singing to settle children, enfolds them in an sonic space; ‘Psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu suggested that this ‘envelope of sounds’ contains the emerging ego of the infant like a skin, becoming a replacement for the womb’ – Case 4, This is a voice exhibition at The Wellcome Collection – quoting The Skin Ego by Didier Anzieu The creation of this familiar acoustic chamber can be applied to romance or other tender relations. The song is a tool to acquaint us with a particular voice, to recognise the prosody of their voice, and know that it is safe. LINKS – http://sounds.bl.uk/World-and-traditional-music/Music-from-India/025M-RKDATX0078XX-0100V0 – Indian Lullaby, Olli Geet, featured in This is a voice exhibition at The Wellcome Collection. CHRONICLE ‘Singing leaves no fossils’ – John Potter and Neil Sorrell, A History of Singing. Songs chronicle history, detailing the events and feelings of human life, often specific to time and place – containing its language and attitudes. These chronicles then live on, as personally held by those who know the songs. Thus, creating a network of living history, that does not exist in fossils or the study of the dead, but as a practice of the living. Songs are history makers, capturing the story around an event and crafting it into a song, like inserting it into a time capsule. The accuracy of this may be skewed by rhyme or reason, but it will travel the distance. Current song making is chronicling the time we live in presently. A reportage in song of 2016. The use of song in relation to history, is a kind of archeology. Calling up the past to see how it looks in the present. This process dramatises our approach to history; to dig up and chart change. Songs as pieces of history often stimulate the need for collection and preservation, folk archivist Alan Lomax collected ‘out of fear that humans creation will be wiped of the face of the earth’ (- Saga of a folksong hunter). Song as a creative act in itself, but also containing the spirit and information of creation in all trades or lifestyles. To sing an old song is an event of re-enactment, like a reconstructed battle or a restaged play. Song inherently binds history, story and memory. THE SINGER Each person has an a unique voice print, as individual as a fingerprint. Nobody sounds like you do, and nobody can sing like you do. Our voice is constructed through mimicry and environment. Accent, volume, pattern, rhythm are acquired like scars, affected by where and with whom you have been. To sing in your voice, alerts to this uniqueness, it is pronounced (as long as you sing in your own voice). But what else happens to us when we sing? The action of singing is an aerobic exercise that uses the whole body as a sound chamber. It also animates several areas of the brain, including our motor neurons and emotional centres. Singing engages the whole body and mind in synthesis with our voice, rhythm and melody (and language if the song include words). In this way, singing is embodiment of a song. Singing physically shifts the energy of the body through distinct breathing patterns and vibrations. This synthesis of song and performer, leads to the common phrase the song sings the singer. An idea similar to possession, a kind of taking over. Chanting is a good example of how singing transforms, repeating phrases to achieve deep concentration or calm. ‘Singing monks huddled together as if for support, hardly opening their mouths’ – A History of Singing Singing isn’t a means of projection, but an event of rendering the chant or song, becoming it, personifying it. In Indian traditional singing, such as folk singers of Rajasthan, the singers hands and arms will be very active. The shape of notes are physically drawn with the arms, and the end of a phrase is cut by the flick of a wrist. Within this tradition there is little separation between singing and moving, the song is supposed to be seen as well as heard. Singing is understood as a physical manifestation. The song transforms the body into a particular physical rhythm or melody. In oral societies, where songs are kept in memory, the song resides in the person. Such as, traditional Finnish rune singing, the songs are up held by members of the community that commit to learning and maintaining them. The songs need to be passed on before the person dies, at risk of the song dying as well. The song and the person share life. The person is the carrier of that song, transforming them into a body as vessel, as something made for storing, a safe. This person also becomes a particular figure within a community; the one who knows the songs. Often this leads to, or is essential to, becoming a chief of ceremony. Such as the Irish Keener, who leads the funeral party through a lament, they become emotional guide, and in this particular case a conduit between the living and the dead. This kind of role acquires status and power within a community, which can be disagreeable. For example, keening became a female practice, but the church didn’t agree that women should be conduit between this world and the next, they should not be spiritual leaders, and so banned the practice of keening leading to its extinction. ‘the mouth expands to widen its social horizon; broadening its reach’ – Brandon LaBelle, Lexicon of the mouth. Singing makes us larger, expanding our scale. To make known and heard, puts the individual into a state of presentness and agency. A singer is transformed into an individual of social affect, as they use their voice to spread a message that can carry beyond themselves. This message may be critical, creative or inflammatory. This voice may be in chorus with others, transforming the singing into a participant who puts themselves in alliance or agreement through the act of singing. LINKS: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/32053/137835083 – Beautiful documentary on finnish rune singing in which artist, Hanneriina Moisseinen, becomes a student of an old rune singer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CSHeWsFyLo – example of Rajasthani folk song with hand gestures. THE LISTENER To listen to singing, is to sing along internally. The neurological process of listening to a song is very similar to that of actually singing. The same areas of the brain are stimulated and connected; emotional centres, motor and memory areas. Also, a series of dopamine shots are released affecting our pleasure centres. Both singing and listening, are some of the most neurologically active and stimulating activities we can do. The listener is a loiterer in the song. The listener tags the with emotional meaning, based on melodic and vocal cues. In the womb the first information we receive is acoustic and hormonal. We hear sounds through the womb wall, and our mothers’ hormones (effectors of human emotion) seep into our bloodstream. In this way, the listener’s ability to connect voice and emotion is instinctive, and done without conscious thought. We are our mothers music? Listening to a song, and feeling its affects, recognises the body as porous. There is an invasive quality to song. The song finds its way into the body. Music reveals our bodies into permeable and absorbent, opposed to sealed. LINK: Some of the ideas in this section are based on lecture ‘benefits of singing in a choir’ by professor Graham Welch &gt; http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-benefits-of-singing-in-a-choir __________ With thanks to Dr Una Mcllvenna for discussing with me and sharing her knowledge and expertise. During this research time I have been running ‘Sing for your Supper’, a participatory dinner where each guests sings one song in exchange for a hot meal. See event here &gt; http://www.hannahsullivan.co.uk/Sing-For-Your-Supper Now, I aim to use this research as stimulus for new performance work, currently titled ‘I’ll sing from where I’m sitting’. For this piece I intend to adhere to the opinion of Sean Nos singer Joe Heaney, that ‘the real audience is around the fireplace’. https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Radical-Craft Mon, 24 Jun 2019 12:20:58 +0000 Hannah work https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Radical-Craft FEBURARY 2016 Radical Craft – collaborating with costume Over the last month I have been collaborating with costume designer Annelies Henny to develop new performance work ‘With Force and Noise’. This project has been about exploring the emotion of anger and has taken me too many places, costume and radical craft being a particularly inspiring one. PERCEIVING ANGER THROUGH COSTUME Through working with costume I was led to a world of craft and textile that opened a whole new angle on the emotion of anger. This angle is that anger motivates us to make something visible or witnessed, a possible route for this is what I am calling radical craft. I have been particularly inspired by Chilean Arpilleras, an applique craft that documents the life of Chile in bright colour and fabrics including the torture, disappearances and imprisonments they suffer.Craft techniques such as embroidery, weaving and applique are associated with the domestic female. Through using them to document and disseminate violence suffered, the reality of anger and hurt present is witnessed. I also became fascinated with tapestry, and the writing of history in thread. I find that tapestry carries a sense of grandeur and finality, I think this comes from its size and usual depiction of grand battles. It seems to be that history acquires a literal weight when transformed into a fabric. This weight of history in relation to anger is something I have been experiencing personally. A feeling of being under or surrounded by a long story of anger and its consequences, that switches been a stimulation or suffocation of ones own agency. Alongside these inspirations and thoughts also lies the use of craft and costume in punk and protest, the inventiveness of rebellion that embeds radical ideas and images into clothes and banners, again to make the unrest visible. The creative design of protest is something I came across at the ‘Disobedient Objects’ exhibitions at the V&amp;A, and this became a key place of referral for me and Annelies to discuss the relationship between anger and a resourceful use of textile/material/costume. Another angle on anger that came through exploring costume is transformation. By looking into costume made for ritual performances, I came to understand the use of costume as a way of accessing the spiritual, an interconnectedness that goes beyond the recognisable. Anger has been understood as a kind of supernatural force, a change of the soul, or a possession of sorts. I feel that our use of costume within ritual performances allows us to summon something spiritual out of ourselves, which suggests to me that there is a constant source of emotion that lies dormant until it is unleashed, pulled out, or simply allowed to be. And it is the very experience of transforming from the recognisable to the other that we respond to. An inspiring reference for this is the Mamuthones of Sardinia, where the moment of transformation is serious and sacred. This process has led us to make an embroidered tapestry suit, currently being made by Annelies, and some transformation prototypes to work with in the studio. COLLABORATIVE WORKING Working with a costume designer has been fascinating, fun and challenging. I found that we work best when we can talk through images and examples. It was by looking at the work of Nick Cave and his Sound Suits and the Chilean Arpilleras that we could form collaborative visual ideas. Without these images as reference points the matching of minds would of been problematic. In conversation we found that one of us would understand one word differently to the other, this made conversation really intense but worthwhile as we unpicked what we each understood. I generally would speak in concepts and purpose of costume, and Annelies would speak in real materials and images. Persisting with checking what we actually meant by the words we were using became really important. Testing things out is key to costume design, the craft comes through translating concept into material, colour and tackling logistics. Keeping an eye out for anything that may mislead the reading of the costume, what shoes, what collar, made me realise how much knowledge is held in these details, the choices completely craft a story and a set of references that will lead a viewer in a certain direction. DRAWING A TAPESTRY To create a costume that is essentially an embroidered tapestry I embarked on the task of drawing that tapestry. This was unexpected but extremely enjoyable. There is a fluidity to drawing that I find very freeing, the images created came with little thought or interrogation, they became responsive translations of all the research I had gathered. It offered me another mode of expression within what is already a multi-channel project (also work with film and creating a bookwork). Through drawing I was allowed to fulfill my more abstract reflections on anger, or just allow the images to remain abstract. The drawing process allowed for the myriad of thoughts I have gathered around anger to fall out as a multitude of sketches. I feel that this outcome is very true to the experience I have had around investigating anger, I am not interested in one definition (I don’t think this exists or is of any use) I am interested in the multitude of sketches that create a mass – because it is this ‘mass’ that affects me. The very variable and personal nature of emotion. WHAT NEXT After a month of being based at Annelies’ studio drawing, talking and creating a design I will now go into the studio at Bristol Old Vic to look at how the text collides with the costume, and with my dramaturg decide how they intersect and what potentially leads the performance – the text or the costume? This project is currently being supported by Arts Council England and Bristol Ferment. https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Kicking-it-up-making-a-show-about-anger Mon, 24 Jun 2019 12:18:16 +0000 Hannah work https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Kicking-it-up-making-a-show-about-anger SEPTEMBER 2015 Kicking it up and letting it settle (making a show about anger) Over the last year I have been trying to get my head and my heart around the emotion of anger, with a vision of asking an audience to sit with me, and spend some time with a possible representation of this particular emotion. During that year I have come across many inspiring texts, films and songs, but somehow I have held on to this extract from a happy ditty of a folk song; ‘What a pity it is to tease me to sing When it does not lay in my power to do such a thingbut since you have teased me to try’ I started to sing it to my own tune. I sung it over and over again. Singing it higher and louder each time, I would reach a pitch of strength where I am full of force and noise, my voice would soar high and hit the hard notes, but as I keep going my voice starts to break and fail, it no longer carries and it starts to hurt. For me, these lyrics and this singing task are expressing something complicated about the emotion of anger. In order to be angry something has to provoke you, but before that you have to allow yourself to be provoked. Taking notice, caring, listening, watching, so you can see when you or others are being dismissed. But then the toxic visions that our anger stimulates, the impact that we wish to have, may in reality be unachievable, making us feel disempowered and immobile. But if you push by this, allow yourself to be fully motivated by the anger that has surfaced and keep moving with it then suddenly what felt unachievable before starts to become achieved. Dangerous, yes, but this level of anger can be extremely positive and affect change. But to regulate this ‘level’ is not very straight forward, I am not sure that we set our own dials like that. Which is why an urgent surge of anger can overspill into something inarticulate, chaotic and destructive to the self as well as everything in its surroundings…which could be perceived as a weak flailing animal threatening to ‘why I outta…why I outta!?!’…or maybe, just maybe, an eradication of everything because it is so totally and utterly…wrong? In your opinion…now I feel like I am in very dark woods…Anger, like other strong emotions, is an extreme clarity of feeling. It drives us to correct what we believe to be wrong. Which leads to the question, what is wrong, what the hell is wrong with everyone??! When I start to get angry about one thing, it tends to spiral very quickly into an undirected rage at the whole of humanity, and then I feel ridiculous and defeated and, like, maybe I just shouldn’t think about any of this. And there we have it, a full circle of disempowered to empowered and back again, the plight of anger which I see in that little ditty of a folk tune that I keep singing over and over again. At this moment, I am half way, of maybe two thirds, through a process of making a show. I have been fed with a lot of information and opinion, excavated my own experiences, answered questions and listened back, felt something change, felt different from where I started, I have sang and marched and shook bells and kept quiet. Now, I am taking a pause, I am making a plan so that I can finish this piece with my dramaturg and costume designer, together. I am not scribbling in my notebook, or rehearsing my lines, I am letting it settle. __With thanks to Alice Tatton Brown, Annelies Henney, Lou Cope, Sue MacClaine, Jo Hellier, Rachael Clerke, Ria Hartley, Dr Misri Dey, Dr Thomas Dixon, Dr Anna Bull, Dr Aurelien Mondon, Martha King, Shoreditch Town Hall, Bristol Ferment, Flare Festival and all of Interval for helping me get this far. For more thoughts on anger, you can buy ANGER by Hannah Sullivan and Joanna Waterhouse here https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Catching-sight-of-my-reflection Fri, 10 Jan 2025 17:46:20 +0000 Hannah work https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Catching-sight-of-my-reflection ,<img width="5892" height="3744" width_o="5892" height_o="3744" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/2acfc3e183abd5d07db3032d7f9c21d069db724b888a26d3871b996c577ed922/DSCF2350.jpeg" data-mid="224523326" border="0" data-scale="82" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/2acfc3e183abd5d07db3032d7f9c21d069db724b888a26d3871b996c577ed922/DSCF2350.jpeg" /> Kamina dances while Hannah reads Hannah reads while Kamina dances Hannah and Kamina wrote to each other about age for a year, when Hannah was turning 35, and Kamina recently 60. During this time they meet in the studio to explore dancing to their evolving text (A series of letters, or shared diary). Working with the themes of the text, they created a shared improvised movement practice to accompany its spoken delivery.&nbsp;“When I write about age I sense I am in the language of magic; tricks, surprises, amazed, loop-de-loops, how and where you look, or place attention/value, what you are choosing to see.” Hannah “Speaking to you the other day about the link between age and invisibility, particularly as a woman, made me wonder when I realised that I’d become invisible. I think it might have been somewhere in my forties…” Kamina Made in collaboration with artist Kamina Walton, this process was shared as a work in progress performance at Arnolfini Arts, Bristol, in Feb 2026, and documented by&nbsp;Khourie Allen.&nbsp; <img width="3583" height="2866" width_o="3583" height_o="2866" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/c115aeadd001096eb915f62f6dd85ba910897a4812f8155c75251e666e5d3681/Catching-Sight-34.jpg" data-mid="246662468" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/c115aeadd001096eb915f62f6dd85ba910897a4812f8155c75251e666e5d3681/Catching-Sight-34.jpg" /> <img width="4147" height="3318" width_o="4147" height_o="3318" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/05e8482a7e208da1280c2a67f5fcf27fce725a168acda9d0a922309815322d01/Catching-Sight-25.jpg" data-mid="246662483" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/05e8482a7e208da1280c2a67f5fcf27fce725a168acda9d0a922309815322d01/Catching-Sight-25.jpg" /> <img width="4112" height="3290" width_o="4112" height_o="3290" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/61c01e79bda514155b23cfb9d0618f8689ce5cb53340f9aa7e5e4fd931f653fd/Catching-Sight-16.jpg" data-mid="246662491" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/61c01e79bda514155b23cfb9d0618f8689ce5cb53340f9aa7e5e4fd931f653fd/Catching-Sight-16.jpg" /> <img width="2378" height="2972" width_o="2378" height_o="2972" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6d93d51d03c0fd5b206d78bc32caaa0f169d4157835136ebc710271106dd7412/Catching-Sight-48.jpg" data-mid="246662450" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6d93d51d03c0fd5b206d78bc32caaa0f169d4157835136ebc710271106dd7412/Catching-Sight-48.jpg" /> <img width="2554" height="3193" width_o="2554" height_o="3193" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d415f4455f2dd709ec2a22ad29dd23523f3e5ddc6af274344e23c445a0620b88/Catching-Sight-36.jpg" data-mid="246662453" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d415f4455f2dd709ec2a22ad29dd23523f3e5ddc6af274344e23c445a0620b88/Catching-Sight-36.jpg" /> <img width="2330" height="2912" width_o="2330" height_o="2912" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/474c23f4f13bd8948a2bdd15cbc8db1ceb81f42d060c73b191fc203d4597d902/Catching-Sight-13.jpg" data-mid="246662494" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/474c23f4f13bd8948a2bdd15cbc8db1ceb81f42d060c73b191fc203d4597d902/Catching-Sight-13.jpg" /> Audience responses:‘This was such a beautiful, connected, trusting piece’ - Em‘An enjoyable and moving performance’ - Annie‘A tender, beautifully held, poignant performance. The simplicity of the form and gentle pacing gave so much space for personal memories and associations to bubble.’ - Ruth‘Loved the combination of words and movement in what for me was a powerful acknowledgement and exploration of aging, what it means to be human and mortal’ - Valda <img width="3168" height="3960" width_o="3168" height_o="3960" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/b40a82de28ad02355d3628a45ea3607f572496bf7273e1ff6f0cf4cebea5bb32/Catching-Sight-10.jpg" data-mid="246662495" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/b40a82de28ad02355d3628a45ea3607f572496bf7273e1ff6f0cf4cebea5bb32/Catching-Sight-10.jpg" /> <img width="2503" height="3129" width_o="2503" height_o="3129" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d1cd789a5382b6524507a7eac70052d0ac07b5a5b4f5ecd43731c69feb28bcd7/Catching-Sight-27.jpg" data-mid="246662479" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d1cd789a5382b6524507a7eac70052d0ac07b5a5b4f5ecd43731c69feb28bcd7/Catching-Sight-27.jpg" /> <img width="2918" height="3647" width_o="2918" height_o="3647" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/5f9ef4d1bac718d29b731558030afd36562bcd9e0434b785a6fb83e1cc9258fa/Catching-Sight-1.jpg" data-mid="246662500" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/5f9ef4d1bac718d29b731558030afd36562bcd9e0434b785a6fb83e1cc9258fa/Catching-Sight-1.jpg" /> https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Afterpartyafterpartyafterparty Thu, 21 Sep 2023 18:22:56 +0000 Hannah work https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Afterpartyafterpartyafterparty AFTERPARTYAFTERPARTYAFTERPARTY (work in progress)Dance/DJ performance Research and Development phase supported by Arts Council England, MAYK, and Falmouth AMATA.<img width="3495" height="2337" width_o="3495" height_o="2337" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/30c423e36d78b674385b7d2128424f310e07b7cc6b8e4c1c2b3942da8ae7c911/000013.jpg" data-mid="239602746" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/30c423e36d78b674385b7d2128424f310e07b7cc6b8e4c1c2b3942da8ae7c911/000013.jpg" /> <img width="3637" height="2433" width_o="3637" height_o="2433" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/719ce0df770d7e4b04e458bdfeffebe13997312a71b3b04826ce244da900cd31/000015-2.jpg" data-mid="239602816" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/719ce0df770d7e4b04e458bdfeffebe13997312a71b3b04826ce244da900cd31/000015-2.jpg" /><img width="3528" height="2309" width_o="3528" height_o="2309" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3d29fec25c46f6a6a7e3fa559400a7f8a03bf6eecd44efa1532840a589ee242c/000014.jpg" data-mid="239602912" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3d29fec25c46f6a6a7e3fa559400a7f8a03bf6eecd44efa1532840a589ee242c/000014.jpg" /><img width="3637" height="2433" width_o="3637" height_o="2433" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1800de5e09bd3cf61e89dccce4553eeaf0ca3f073fe41dcf4b67e2709aa91776/000018.jpg" data-mid="239602896" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1800de5e09bd3cf61e89dccce4553eeaf0ca3f073fe41dcf4b67e2709aa91776/000018.jpg" />AFTERPARTYAFTERPARTYAFTERPARTY is a hybrid performance project in development, working with DJing, dance and experimental theatre processes to create a reflexive and captivating performance about Nightlife.&nbsp; This R &amp; D process included: - Interviews with DJ’s: Sol Service (Nottingham), Ella Brandt (Bristol/Birmingham) and Julie Brown (Birmingham). - 5 weeks of studio development time with dancers; Linzy Na Nakorn and Kit Hall, and DJ; Daisy Moon. What we have now: - A set of movement prompts inspired by interview material, and related reading on the history of dancing, clubspace, nightlife and parties. These prompts include states of rest or quietness, display or dance, connection or independence, and work together to generate an active and flowing performance of many intricate parts. - A DJ set designed by Daisy Moon through studio improvisations. This DJ set takes us through three different sound worlds, and is performed live within the performance. - A score for a performance that works with these movements prompts, stage instructions and sound worlds to create an improvised, visceral and captivating performance on Nightlife. - A female perspective led project on Nightlife that is pro-party and pro-nightlife, centring the significance of this space and time for women. We ended this process with a small sharing at the Mayking space in St Annes, documented beautifully by Nightlife photographer Sinag Yuson. Audience quotes from work-in-progress’ sharing: ‘Everything is a bit blurred, and your body and your mind are a little bit disconnected because your not supposed to be awake at that time so everything is a bit strange but then other things are possible’‘It was really visceral and atmospheric’‘It was funny, I laughed a lot, and some of the dancing was just really joyful, euphoric. You were both really locked in to your zones and the music and that felt really carefree.. like zero fucks given, just having it’‘when the DJ set up came closer, then I could really see what you were doing, and I kind of forgot about everything else, and I was fascinated, as I’ve never watched someone so close up, do that’ ‘It captured really well what happens to time, after a certain time of night, at an afterparty, it stretches and goes weird, and I felt that, and I lost track of time’‘I felt like it related to my feelings of being introverted, moments of hiding, or wanting to be more covered and shy, and then other moments of wanting to be expressive, that takes me to moments on nights out when I wanted to be more closed and head down rather than those moments of being connected with others’ ‘oh wow, when a DJ has been making a whole room move all night and then everyone has fallen asleep or gone... I really got that in you sitting there and just taking a moment for yourself, it was quite strong, and really emotive’‘It does really encapsulate so many things that are hard to put into words of being in that space... when your in that experience you don’t want it to end and then as soon as it ends you feel sad, and I’ve experienced that through watching this.’ <img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9249985589e1aba01fbd412f144e914e89d49f71af1e193502c434381a93aa9a/DSC08792.jpg" data-mid="239602833" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9249985589e1aba01fbd412f144e914e89d49f71af1e193502c434381a93aa9a/DSC08792.jpg" /> <img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/769ca7343038897a2e4ac832c2cc5988ca343e2b55f24014a7b653fe085116ec/DSC08806.jpg" data-mid="239602834" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/769ca7343038897a2e4ac832c2cc5988ca343e2b55f24014a7b653fe085116ec/DSC08806.jpg" /> <img width="5605" height="3760" width_o="5605" height_o="3760" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e6acc3e66b2f57fec9f593dc2a186e8fa86d5858ec8e5352c52660ee6046d6f5/DSC08760.jpg" data-mid="239602832" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e6acc3e66b2f57fec9f593dc2a186e8fa86d5858ec8e5352c52660ee6046d6f5/DSC08760.jpg" /> <img width="5833" height="3838" width_o="5833" height_o="3838" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/79973bd05ae410a1a8fdba6e4f28a3c85113d851bd1ccdebd92e743e2f23aa77/DSC08740.jpg" data-mid="239602826" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/79973bd05ae410a1a8fdba6e4f28a3c85113d851bd1ccdebd92e743e2f23aa77/DSC08740.jpg" /> <img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a4ebab86d16d8f4d5c12485edf7c9397aa29720633dfb31db073ca562a9849a5/DSC08699.jpg" data-mid="239602822" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a4ebab86d16d8f4d5c12485edf7c9397aa29720633dfb31db073ca562a9849a5/DSC08699.jpg" /><img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4ae06956a1873fdd398b19005ccdce565eb7582f7d74ce4f36b747416dd4644d/DSC08822.jpg" data-mid="239602823" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4ae06956a1873fdd398b19005ccdce565eb7582f7d74ce4f36b747416dd4644d/DSC08822.jpg" /><img width="6000" height="4000" width_o="6000" height_o="4000" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/64414529d745b330299ed79a88a9d9660d5fbe6ca74ff9e0623da668016906e4/DSC08735.jpg" data-mid="239602824" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/64414529d745b330299ed79a88a9d9660d5fbe6ca74ff9e0623da668016906e4/DSC08735.jpg" /> Creative Team Lead artist and Director: Hannah Sullivan DJ: Daisy Moon Dancer: Kit HallDancer: Linzy Na Nakorn Dramaturg: Tanuja AmarasuriyaProducer: Ellen Booth Photography by Sinag Yuson <img width="2427" height="2677" width_o="2427" height_o="2677" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/75bc02d58aedb80e487aefafb49796c0846dd15aba6cf199adc7bd921bf67ccb/000019.jpg" data-mid="239602818" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/75bc02d58aedb80e487aefafb49796c0846dd15aba6cf199adc7bd921bf67ccb/000019.jpg" /> https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Nightwalker Thu, 14 Sep 2023 09:37:38 +0000 Hannah work https://hannahsullivan.co.uk/Nightwalker <img width="2268" height="1702" width_o="2268" height_o="1702" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/4ed19d8a46489acfbd9b62537c378d109cf39588f5d5f1b8cfa228f0b5ba0873/PHOTO-2025-10-23-13-40-11.jpg" data-mid="240189255" border="0" data-scale="76" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/4ed19d8a46489acfbd9b62537c378d109cf39588f5d5f1b8cfa228f0b5ba0873/PHOTO-2025-10-23-13-40-11.jpg" /> NightwalkerA woman goes for a walk at night.A 25 minute audio piece available to listen and download on bandcamp (Part 1 and 2).&nbsp; Nightwalker was developed whilst exploring new ideas for art work about women at night, seeking new narratives that bring out the beautiful qualities of nighttime and women’s lives at night.&nbsp; Nightwalker is set within an fictional city, made of aspects of many real cities. The text and the sound were written/composed at the same time, informing each other to create this sonic journey. Whilst making Nightwalker Hannah spent time in Bristol, Newcastle and Gateshead, Barcelona, Marseille and Edinburgh, and spoke with women about walking at night in Stoke-on-Trent. Two inspirations (of which there are many) for this work include the ‘Feminist City’ by Leslie Kern, and the inspiring urban design work of Publica. Nightwalker lives within a body of work aiming to foster a postivie relationship to darkness, and generate alternative narratives for women at night. The piece includes solitude, relationship to the built world, nocturnal animals, transformation, fantasy, memory, sound, freedom, relationship to the body, altered physical states/experience, darkness, agency and returning home. For more thoughts on the process and thinking behind Nightwalker visit my substack article. ‘I became very fond of the dark… The night is its own fragile world, a natural phenomena, under threat. The darkness is a potential refuge, hospitable, but one that is hard to access. As a woman walking at night, I am acting against domesticity.’&nbsp; - Quote from article. <img width="2474" height="1514" width_o="2474" height_o="1514" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/cb714eac91543b64a6d0a5c76c79a0f7c691bfe89913ba99bdfcac65c59bff4e/Cube-Nightwalker.png" data-mid="240191608" border="0" data-scale="87" alt="Nightwalker first performance at the Cube Microplex" data-caption="Nightwalker first performance at the Cube Microplex" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/cb714eac91543b64a6d0a5c76c79a0f7c691bfe89913ba99bdfcac65c59bff4e/Cube-Nightwalker.png" /> Performances of Nightwalker: Launched at The Cube Microplex, 1st November 2025. This live performance of Nightwalker, included the text being delivered live and sections of the piece being delivered in total darkness.‘When it ended, I sat wanting more darkness, to feel the possible and impossible feelings...epic and eternal...to dare to have the audacity to take space in the dark, to melt into the corners’ - Audience responseWork in progress sharing at GIFT, 4th May 2025 This sharing of the audio in development was followed by a 30 minute night walk in the local area directly following listening to the audio together. The nightwalk was planned by Hannah, bespoke to the area and crafted in relation to the audio piece. _ Nightwalker was made within a research and development period to make new work on women’s lives at night. Afterpartyafterpartyafterparty, was developed alongside Nightwalker, a dance and music collaboration exploring female DJ culture and nighttime dancefloors. Creative Team: Composed and Written by Hannah Sullivan Dramaturgy by Tanuja Amarasuriya Creative sound mentorship/collaboration from Sally Pilkington, Daisy Moon, Yas Clarke, Christina Hardinge. Final track mastered by Dylan MallettResearch and Development produced by Ellen Booth Made with support from:The Brigstow Institute, MAYK, GIFT, ReStoke and Arts Council England. Project Image taken by Jan Ming Lee during a night walk with Hannah in Bristol, 2024.- Within the process of making Nightwalker,&nbsp;a research project supported by Brigstow, at University of Bristol, created an intial space for conversation and academic research. With Dr Eleanor Rycroft and Dr Andy Flack, we brought together three perspectives; historical, environmental and performative to consider the feminine contemporary nightwalker. Typically our perception of a woman walking at night is shrouded in danger, this project seeks to examine and alter the narrative of women’s presence within the urban night. And In doing so identify what treasures or transformations are being lost through women’s exclusion from certain spaces and times. Both walking and the night time environment have significant impacts on our physical health and wellbeing. This research will pay close attention to the effects of nightwalking on our emotions, physicality and imagination, and how women's wellbeing may be intrinsically connected to the practice of nightwalking This research will also include artists, Nina Santes, Jan-Ming Lee, Katsura Isobe and Ann-Marie Fairbrother, to test and discuss nightwalking scores developed. <img width="1436" height="1428" width_o="1436" height_o="1428" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3a406a6fe03e84d27b997b1221072a1104b212b3a12868203a6fd8527adfa1b8/Arts_Council_England_Logo.svg" data-mid="240192305" border="0" data-scale="20" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3a406a6fe03e84d27b997b1221072a1104b212b3a12868203a6fd8527adfa1b8/Arts_Council_England_Logo.svg" />