Clea Minaker will be using the Project Room for creative residency, creating a Research Laboratory with kids and interactive experiments using ‘phenomena’.
Perception is the working title of an installation/performance for very young audiences being developed by Clea Minaker (Company Clea Minaker) and collaborators; dancer/puppeteer Stephen Quinlan; musician/composer Gabriel Lambert. The show is to be performed for a small audience consisting of children (0-5 years old), and their caregivers. The performance will have an approximate duration of 25 – 40 minutes.
Synopsis
A bird’s nest, says Gaston Bachelard in the Poetic’s of Space, is the centre of an entire universe, and, a seat of cosmic confidence. Taking inspiration from the nest as both a metaphor for the time/space of early childhood, and as a physical ‘life-giving’ home, this installation proposes a space for its’ audience to ‘nestle’ into: a communal perch from which to look out and wonder upon the world.
Perception is a journey of experiential art for very young children. The performance explores perceptions of the physical world through the eyes of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, interacting with the abstract rules that we adults take for granted (gravity, depth, cause and effect, the relationship between image and sound…). It is an investigation inspired by notions of phenomenology in art, the ‘light and space’ movement, and experiential learning approaches to early-childhood education.
Summoning natural phenomena into the theatrical space (light, water, air, mirrors, prisms, rocks, and other natural materials) to interweave images with movement and sound, two performers and one musician, lead children through a simple progression of manipulations, and collective choreographies. Human interactions with the material and immaterial world then become the raw material of storytelling.
This installation/performance explores experiences of being in the world, through different perspectives and points of view. It invites looking out, and, through the eyes of others, seeing in. For example, when children see rainbows from prisms landing upon the faces of the others in the room, they soon understand their own face is bathed in joyful colour too.
Perception: Seeing you, seeing me, dressed in a rainbow garment!
Artist Bio
After graduating from L’École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette (6th promotion, 2002 -2005) in Charleville‐Mézières, France, Clea has carried the language of contemporary puppetry to collaborations across multiple disciplines: theatre, music, opera, dance, film, visual installations, and community arts.