The period of lockdowns, were for many people the moment the clocks stopped*

It was an unexpected pause that changed everyones life.

I was able to mobilise energy and throw myself into a period of experimentation and research that followed resulted in eighteen months of intensive and explosive workshops.

This cumulated in a series of segments, sequences and phrases that were small sketch pieces that could be played and performed in different settings.

I had free use of the Quarterhouse auditorium and the dance studio, and with the support of an arts council grant I was able to pay performers and dancers to engage in a series of experimental workshops under the umbrella title Walk Stand Still and from that grew a range of works that exist somewhere between performance art, dance and theatre, what I call performance based-actions.

During this time i looked closely at many choreographers from Merce Cunningham, Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, Anna Thersa Keersmaker, Pina Boush and the Judson

There were a number of works that came out of these sessions that were more or less complete pieces, and others that were small episodes and moments. There were twenty three sessions each one recorded and with something like eighty small phrases and segments.

During these sessions I was able to experiment with a number of pieces that i hade been thinking about for years. These include, Intersection-interaction a piece designed originally for the crossways junctions of New York, Bedlam, Audience, Ghosting, Performance, Chair, Mirror Mirror and Command-control-shift. There is also a work designed specifically for non theatrical space Between Walls.

The series Between Walls were specifically aimed at gallery and museum and non theatrical space. These performance based-actions could be presented in various settings and with a cohort of performers that could be drawn from the community. This is not community art, this is art that engages the community in the process of creativity and allows them to author and be responsible for their own actions.

I collect material from many different sources, from music, poetry and film. Each of these components feature either within the framework of the piece or form part of the background research, so they may inform the work but not be necessarily evident.

I was commission the writer Mel Gooding to poetic texts for two projects Site Unseen in 1997 and The Foundling in 2010. I asked Mel to start from the same starting point as myself so the poetry was not a reply to my work but a response to the building in Site Unseen and to the situation of the foundlings in the Foundling museum. So we both started from more or less the same point.

*For the emergency services, transport and delivery workers, cleaners, refuge collectors we realised what essential work actually is. The health services around the world did the best to keep us safe and were not on pause.