Since January, me and Owa Barua have been developing our new collaborative work ISLA, a screendance performance installation exploring memory, place and presence.

ISLA uses footage that we captured during our travels in Southeast Asia last year on various devices over a period of 4 months. The practicality of working with so many images combined with our interests in really experimenting with our combined practices encouraged us to edit for a 3-channel display, creating a triptych of screendance. We were also very interested in integrating live performance with our video work and felt this project which deals with our personal experiences, was the right time to explore our first ‘expanded cinema’ creation. More about the project here. 

We were really excited to be selected for Edinburgh’s Hidden Door Festival with the work only at proposal stage. We were really attracted to Hidden Door’s ability to support local and international, early-career and really established artists (like proper famous). Knowing we had this platform whilst a little daunting, was a great push for us to move this project forward. 

Despite our efforts we received no financial or in-kind support for the first stage of developing this new work, so every rehearsal outside of editing at home was important and time was precious. It’s definitely not ideal to work under the pressure of hourly hire rates but we were really pleased to find space really close to home at Out of the Blue Drill Hall. (Hidden Door came to visit during one of our rehearsals there and made this lovely wee film). Another added pressure was the inability to tech and rehearse the work to scale. The nature of Hidden Door, which completely renovates abandoned and derelict spaces (super, super cool) meant that our first time really understanding and seeing the work from an audience perspective was going to be on the day of the performance. 

ISLA was presented twice at the Old State Cinema in Leith as a work-in-progress on Sunday 27 May and we are in so in love with how the work came together there, despite a very nervous and painfully quick technical rehearsal. The feedback we received from audience members was so great to hear and now we are really excited to develop the work on our more intimate, immersive scale.