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      Richard Layzell – Ordinary Movement      
 
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Ordinary Movement StillA performance for the National Review of Live Art in Glasgow
8.30pm, 16 February 2000

It combined elements of Movimento Ordinari, Move Differently, Industry and Process Tracking. The performance included:

  • targeted approaches to audience: performative, intimate, discursive, humorous and closed
  • face markings
  • padded shoulders of corporate life
  • video projection including –
    pig roped up on Nevis
    Berlin crossroads
    catching the breeze
    walking in circles
  • “Can you do something while you’re talking to camera” (media-speak)
  • adhesive tape demonstration [from Chinks and Fissures, Nunnery Gallery London, 1999]
  • 'squeakinge lisards' (extinct animals from the Caribbean)

I placed my video camera in a fixed position on a table to give a raw, objective view. The performance was also recorded by a video crew. When looking over the two versions, I found the 'fixed position' more revealing.
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video still
Ordinary Movement
Fixed Camera
2 mins 20 sec
video still
Ordinary Movement
Video Crew
2 mins 14 sec
performance transcript

 
 
       
the Look

Source material:
Squeakinge Lisards

Source material:
Text for NRLA Catalogue

 
arrow the Look
 
Ordinary Movement – Source Material:
The Look
  So how can you get that rich-bitch all-year-round colour sans the private jet?

And while we’re on the subject of unglamorous bodily afflictions, body hair seems to be something the modern celeb is born without. But these guys aren’t superior beings – they just know how to foil their follicles… get it?…So, now you have the same stellar skin as the catwalk crew and the screen sirens, you’ll want to invest in a few glow-boosting products. Remember, the look of hair today is relaxed, modern and uncomplicated, reflecting individuality and minimalism. The focus is on texture created by contemporary cutting techniques. There’s also a rainbow of new colours, which Herzog plans to introduce gradually over his ever-so-proper palette. “It has to be classic enough, but every season we’ll be able to introduce more secret colours. I’m basically sharpening everything up to beat those body blemishes”.

 
 

 

 

 
arrow Squeakinge Lisards
 
Ordinary Movement – Source Material:
Squeakinge Lisards
  1649 Caesar Rochefort – French naturalist

A creature, long extinct, found on Nevis (a very small Caribbean island next to St Kitts, where some of the video footage used in Ordinary Movement was shot)

This passage read out in the performance:

“called by locals ‘squeakinge lisards’…they move on land like snakes rather than regular lizards…instead of fins they have four feet, which are so weak they can only crawl along the ground, and move their bodies as snakes…the largest are not above fifteen inches in length and proportionately big…their skin is covered with little scales which shine extremely, and are of a silver-grey colour…in the night they make a hideous noise from under the rocks, and the bottom of the place where they are lodged… they were kept by some locals in their closets as curiosities”.

 
 

 

 

 
arrow Text for NRLA Catalogue
 
Ordinary Movement – Text for NRLA catalogue
 
In the lift again, long enough to be noticed. Up down up.
Fifth floor private offices. Ground floor elastic and webbing.
Slow rotations on the Eye. Circular motion, keep it tight.
Internal and external perceptual shifts. Leaning into the wind, crows wheeling. It’s all there. Repeated gesture at the Templehof.
And again opposite the Minsk Palace of Culture. Barely visible.
Back norm quick. Roped up in the Milton Keynes Shopping Centre.
Riveted to the Peace Pagoda. Glance at me. Don’t take me in.
 
 

 

 

 
 
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