'Agnes' & 'Elephants'
A Project Auske Initiative
Joseph and Bridget are thrilled to be undertaking research and development on two new works, ‘Agnes’ & ‘Elephants’. This project expands the way Project Auske works with subjects of environment, ecologies, ancestry, and community.
‘Elephants’
A geo-poetic performance meditation, conceived, directed and choreographed by Joseph Lau
ABOUT
Centred on vibration and frequencies, and with a focus on South East Asia, ‘Elephants’ is a contemplation on spiralling dialogues encompassing: the industrialised exploitation of resources, economies and communities they create, damage and loss, choice, the human species dependence on land and the earth’s complex ecosystem for survival, sacrifice, and our climate crisis,. It is a meditation on letting go. ‘Elephants’ is a multifaceted contemporary choreographic work created through immersive sound, video, and performance.
Audience join and witness a herd of Asian elephants following a dry river path in search of the water source. Along the path that their ancestors had traversed for generations, the herd navigates both changing terrain and unsteady ground, encounter shrines, and experience unfamiliar frequencies.
BACKGROUND
Joseph's father recalled to him of a time when elephants worked as beasts of burden to industry in timber and logging. This recollection along with, memories and complex emotions from his time in Malaysia and Singapore, has remained with Joseph to this day.
Prior early stage research was made possible through a remote residency secured with Dance4 (Nottingham) that gave Joseph an opportunity to formulate a scaffold of the themes into a structure, and spend time in creative discourse with Tony Yap, an award winning artist who is exploring and creating a dance theatre language that is informed by psycho-physical research, Asian shamanistic trance dance, Butoh and psycho-vocal experimentations.
'Agnes'
An eco docu-fiction ghost story, conceived, directed, choreographed, and written by Bridget Fiske
On the 1st of January 1881, the Descendant (Fiske), the Companion (Lau), and the Collaborator (Voris), return to Agnes’ home in Liverpool. On this day, Agnes, a former workhouse orphan, and now a young woman married with two children, is awaiting the return of her husband John. John, a ship's Cook originally from the country the British called Burma, has been with the steamship Bristolian on a trade voyage between the UK and Canada.
Prior to this, on December 23, 1880, the readers of the New York Times, woke to read of the wreck of the Bristolian, and the perishing of four of its crew. This article also noted Agnes and her children, now widowed and fatherless, unbeknownst to them.
Moved to understand the tragedies of these events, to know those unknown, and consider the inseparable futures that have unfolded, the Descendent, the Companion, and the Collaborator, investigate and channel this story to remember the ancestors, Agnes and John.
ABOUT
‘Agnes’ is a contemporary choreographic, cinematic, and exhibition work, which is equally intimate and austere, as it is epic and surreal.
The work traverses across temporalities, histories, places, and realities - it is an experience of hauntings and spectres, created in the gaps of an archive of oral history, newspaper articles, family accounts, factual data, and historical, cultural, embodied, scientific, and land-based knowledges, which spirals through time and stories of gender, class, labour-risks, migration, colonisation, a shipwreck, family, corporealities, extinction, and environments. It is a work of reckoning, repatriations, healing, and reverberations.
It is a documentary, a forensic study, a channelling, a provocation, and a dream.
BACKGROUND
This vision for developing, and creating ‘Anges’, was formed via a 2021/2022 Arts Council England supported Developing Your Creative Practice grant focussing on the development of a writing practice in relation to Bridget’s Choreographic and Directorial practices.
Parallel research on ‘(sketching) Artefact A: The shipwreck - or - A short performance of the death and birth of the body of John Edwards’ has occurred as part of the project ‘Sufi In The City’, where Fiske has been developing a performative score about the decomposition process of the human body. This research has also been supported by Dancenorth Australia’s Artist Residency in the Tropics (A.R.T.) Program. Fiske also created and shared a short experimental video work on this research as part of Supercell Festival of Contemporary Dance 2021 Instagram programming.
With Communities
Via recent research and development Project Auske have been developing new practices and methods, for working with communities on subjects of ecologies, environment, and embodiment. This adds to their existing and extensive care centred co-creative, and collaborative approaches. At the centre of current research has been a focus on ways to work with communities to tell their own eco-stories.
During current research Project Auske have: contributed concepts and choreographic processes to a Lunar New Year community performance in partnership with Movema, and facilitated workshops for artists and young people in both practices of working with vibrations and frequencies, as well as using the body as a site of material to start to create eco-story.
More information coming soon...
Project Team
Bridget Fiske
Director, Choreographer, Writer and Performer, 'Agnes'
Dramaturge / Performance, Choreographic and Movement Researcher / Video Artist, 'Elephants'
Project Co-Producer
Joseph Lau
Director & Choreographer, 'Elephants'
Dramaturge / Performance, Choreographic and Movement Researcher, 'Agnes'
Project Co-Producer
Clare Courtney
Community Evaluation Consultant
Andrew Crofts
Moving Image and Lighting Designer, 'Elephants' & 'Agnes'
Stelios Manousakis
Composer and Sound Artist, 'Elephants'
Dr Gunjan Sondhi
Academic Advisor, Open University, 'Agnes'
Michèle Steinwald
Audience & Engagement Dramaturge/Curator
Environmental Responsibility Strategy Consultant
Shahn Stewart
Botanical Costume Consultant, 'Agnes'
Pei Yee Tong
Performance, Choreographic and Movement Researcher, 'Elephants'
Amy Voris
Performance, Choreographic and Movement Researcher, 'Agnes'
Follow us on Instagram (@projectauske) to find out more information about the project as it develops, and engage with research and development.
If you are interested in discussing partnership and programming potentials, please be in touch with us via email: projectauske@me.com
DR GUNJAN SONDHI / OPEN UNIVERSITY
PEI YEE TONG
BLOSSOMS FLOWERS
HULME GARDEN CENTRE
Across 2024, and early 2025, we have be undertaking research and development into thematics, subjects, dramaturgy, as well creative processes and their outcomes for both 'Agnes' and 'Elephants'. Below is a collection of images, and video from this period, both in the studio, and in moments where we invited others to participate in, and witness, our process to date.