Page 26 - Coverage Book Festival of New BPA

rough floor in one of Snape’s derelict spaces, to create booming “dirty” sounds that will one day be
part of an artwork called “Fractured Punk”.

These little glimpses into the artists’ workshop were interesting, but often the work was at such an
early stage it seemed like the kind of “play” we can all indulge in, but with more technically
sophisticated gear. This pre-creative doodling is no doubt enormously instructive to the artist, but
soon palls for the viewer.

As if aware of this, the film-makers bolstered the content with lots of earnest interviews with the
artists. The amount of talk far exceeded the amount of art, and in most cases it felt as if the little
bits of work were there just to provide an interesting colourful backdrop to a point the contributors
were making.

Black singer and composer Nadine Benjamin talked about her fractured identity and the healing
power of art. South Indian singer Shruthi Rajasekar and Chinese zither player Reylon Yount also
talked about identity, and how their work (one of five which so far are only at the planning stage)
could touch on issues of gender fluidity. By the end, we knew nothing about their proposed

artwork but all about their ideology.

Not all the films were so unbalanced. We got a strong sense of what folk singer Maz O’Connor’s
music drama about an Irishwoman murdered for being a fairy-spirit might actually look and sound
like.

And it wasn’t all impenetrable. In the film about the theatre company Ulita the participants simply
gave straightforward accounts of their aims and methods with no self-serving ideological
justifications, and even – miracle of miracles – a touch of humour.

Best of all were dance duo Thick and Tight, who spoke not a single word. Instead they gave us four
minutes of witty dance, cleverly filmed in black-and-white, and executed with virtuoso precision
and grace. Amid the acres of verbiage, it felt like manna from heaven. IH