'...A KIND OF MACHINE'

Below, project photographer Stuart Dodd at work:

(Images by Donna Fitzgerald, 2023)

20th February, 2023

Since our performance of 'Vivienne Sometimes' at Bruce Castle Museum on October 15th 2022, we have continued to develop new projection work for the show (we will be presenting new projection work on 12th March at the Stade, Hastings).

Eliot said that in order to survive his marriage to Vivien, he had to turn himself 'into a kind of machine'. Taking the mechanics of the typewriter as the starting point for new projections, I wanted to explore Eliot's presence in Vivien's story using abstracted typewriter images, presented as a series of looped stills and film sequences.

To that end, this morning I collected an old Underwood typewriter from Waterstones, Canterbury, where it usually sits on a high shelf in the cafe area, above - appropriately enough - a citation from Eliot's 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock': 'I have measured out my life in coffee spoons.'

I then met with photographer/videographer Stuart Dodd at UCA, to create visual material for the performance in March.

The first of Stuart's images:

05 March, 2023

Below, an exciting first edit by Stuart of some of the typewriter stills and footage captured recently, which we are re-editing as part of the new show projections.