A Horse Bleeding Shakespeare (2010)

In the spring of 2010, multimedia artist Deborah Claire Procter set out to investigate ideas about landscape and its representation in performance. Her performance search was based around questions of how to make a song of a space, and how to make a portrait of a landscape. 

This period of research and development called “What if? / Beth os?” was supported by a project grant from the Arts Council of Wales.

In part it was geographically based in West Wales around the Pafiliwn, in Pontrhydfendigaid which is a large performance space nestled in the hills between Lampeter, Devil’s Bridge and Strata Florida monastery - an area incredibly ripe with history.

​During the working process Oscar Edelstein came up with the title “A Horse Bleeding Shakespeare.”  

The photos capture an afternoon of filming for a short video. You see a number of relationships - two men, two women, and a horse - and a sense of interconnections in a continual state of shift, caught in a spatial geometry where you cannot be sure who is dreaming whom. Or “if wishes were horses” - then perhaps it is all in the mind of the horse - this symbol of mystery, power, elegance, intelligence.

“I wanted to see how theatre, music, dance, and video could blend to form a performance-sketch about our sense of place and a feeling of national identity. During the project I brought together different collaborators - all of whom I had previously worked; namely the Argentinean composer Oscar Edelstein;  performer-director Jane Lloyd Francis (founder of Equilibre Theatre and director of Carreg Dressage); dancer and choreographer Sean Feldman (former dancer with Siobhan Davies), rider and trainer Georges Dewez (Carreg Dressage); musician and photographer Anthony Griffiths; and ceramist Angharad Taris.

I was returning to West Wales after a large amount of time spent in Argentina. So it was as if as well as the voice of Dylan Thomas in my head, I had added the labyrinthian words and world of Jorge Luis Borges. Thus I began this work thinking about the strange mirror that exists between Patagonia and Wales, where despite a separation of 13,000 kilometres and many years, there still persists a community of Welsh speakers. I was thinking of landscape and travel where the horse has been a key to our development. 

This on-going fascination with horses is somewhat irrational as I am not a rider, yet like most children my childhood was filled with stories of these strange and elegant creatures which are considered by some as messengers who relay information from the unconscious to the conscious, and from the spiritual to the physical.  The sense that they can carry you off to another world intrigued me and coincided with my attraction to hypnosis which offers a way to re-think, re-feel, re-see and re-know. 

Artistically my work is always to a process of going to that place which I call “the place where the words don’t live", where meaning is expansive and plural. 

In Greek myth horses are associated with Hades, the underworld and death. Some say the dream of a horse indicated that you will receive good news from a distance. Wild horses were viewed as symbolic of a sense of freedom, lack of responsibilities, and uncontrolled emotions. The dream of horse indicating you will receive good news from a distance.

In these photos the empty space, the relationship between culture and nature, the presence of a horse next to a human, the sense of false starts and getting lost - they capture the essence of the relationships in this "somewhere land." There is a play with scale and perspective. The sea mist that rolled in to cut the brightness of a sunny May afternoon perfectly suspends the protagonists just as I had dreamed. 

Imagining those first steps that someone makes when crossing to new lands, I was thinking of the longing, yearning, nostalgia and loss that is wrapped up in the Welsh word “hiraeth.” Yet also there is an epic-ness that brings the world of Shakespeare - the microcosm and macrocosm - that sense that Harold Bloom describes where it is almost as if Shakespeare is somehow the inventor of the world. This was a connection that I am grateful to Oscar Edelstein for sensing.

The freshness of an artistic image comes from the resonance of the materials and choices, in this sense I was incredibly lucky to have such a strong team of intuitive and sensitive collaborators. 

DEBORAH CLAIRE PROCTER
(MARCH 2016)

Visit gallery of complete set of 55 images
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​PHOTOSHELTER

The images in this series of 55 are available as limited edition fine-art archival prints sized at 375 x 500 cm each limited to 15 plus 5 Artist's Proofs. All prints will be hand numbered and signed by the artist. They will be also supplied with Provenance Certificates authenticating the type of paper, date printed and number in the edition. In addition there is a PDF explaining more about the work.

Team

• Oscar Edelstein - composer from Argentina known & respected for his originality & his evocative concept of “acoustic theatre” which explores lines between memory & imagination 
• Sean Feldman - dancer & choreographer who worked with Siobhan Davies (contributed to Procter's Creative Wales Award “Choreographic Conversation” in 2005)
• Jane Lloyd-Francis - performer-director of co-founder of Carreg Dressage & Equilibre Horse Theatre (collaborator with Procter in 2002 on the site specific performance "Seapiece")
• Georges Dewez - Master horseman & trainer of excellence who studied with Maestro Nuno Oliveira & co-founded Carreg Dressage (collaborator with Procter in 2002 on the site specific performance "Seapiece")
• Anthony Griffiths - Musician & landscape photographer (collaborator with Procter musically & on "The Clockhouse" 2011) 
• Angharad Taris - ceramicist & art educator (joint awardee of Wales Arts International grant in 2003 to visit Argentina)

Pre-project research

• Rebecca Woodford-Smith - performer working predominantly with Japanese theatre group Gekidan Kaitaisha & lecturer Glyndwr University
• Alun Owen - ariel photographer & designer

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