Brief Encounter With … Melanie Wilson
Melanie Wilson is a London-based performer, writer and sound artist making performances, installations and sound walks centring on the use of sound as a distinct, immersive agency. Her work is powerfully evocative of place and state of mind. Wilson’s collaborations include work with The Clod Ensemble, Shunt and Chris Goode.
She was recently selected for the British Council Edinburgh 2011 Showcase with Every Minute, and other work includes Always (with Abigail Conway), one-on-one performance The View From Here, Iris Brunette and Simple Girl. Her new piece Autobiographer tackles dementia and is currently running at The Toynbee Studios.
What is Autobiographer about?
The performance is a poetic portrait of the life of a woman called Flora. It
uses surround sound, a lyrical text and an intimate relationship with the
audience to weave together several key events in the life of the character
that she comes to revolve around in increasingly smaller circles.
What drew you to this subject matter?
Much of the work I make is interested in subjectivity and inner trains of
thoughts and consciousness. I am also really fascinated by perception.
Dementia insists on a very particular devolution of perception of the self
and the world around and as such was a really interesting starting point for
me.
Dementia is a daunting and diaphanous subject, were you intimidated by it
and by the need to get your facts and figures rights?
No I wasn’t intimidated by it, but I did underpin the making process with a
very rigorous and lengthy research period, to ensure I understood as much as
I could about it. Dementia is often spoken about in public arenas in very
heightened and often hysterical terms. It was keen to create a performance
that illuminated the experience of dementia without fictionalizing it.
Where did you begin in your research?
At the British Library and with the Alzheimer’s Society. Once I had secured
a grant from the Wellcome Trust though, I was then able to embark upon a
period of research under the guidance of Professor Sube Bannerjee and the
Croydon Memory Service in South London.
What was your process as you crafted this performance?
After my research was underway, I began to write and compose a script and
sound score, which lead to the presentation of an early scratch of the show
in September 2010. I went away and worked again on both the sound and the
script in early 2011, whilst still making visits to the Croydon Memory
Service and in the autumn of 2011 the final show was finished and premiered
at the Dublin Fringe Festival. The show then went on to tour a handful of
venues in the U.K, and this phase was when we really cemented the piece into
the shape that we are so pleased to be able to present here in London now.
What have you learnt whilst making Autobiographer?
So much! From the people I met with the disease and those who care for them
I learned about patience, compassion, stamina and loneliness and I saw those
qualities too in abundance in the doctors and social workers that worked at
the Croydon Memory Service. I saw new sides and nuances and awkward shapes
of those qualities, and felt extremely privileged and humbled to be able to
do so. I may say that something of those qualities I learned too during
collaboration with the team that made Autobiographer. A game changing
experience for me.
What would you like the audience to come away with?
Dementia is a set of processes that underpin the way in which Autobiographer
is shaped, but at its heart it is a beautiful and affectionate performance
about memory and stories and a life well lived. Autobiographer also equally
seeks to challenge and engage with the vivid possibilities of contemporary
theatre. As such, I hope the audience will feel that they have for a very
brief moment, brushed up against a state of being lived out by many
thousands of people in this country at this moment, but told in a highly
engaging, singular and thought provoking way.
Do you feel that science is a bedfellow of art or that the questions they
ask are oppositional?
I think that in dealing with a profound human experience such as dementia,
there are only really questions, and be we scientist or artist, we are all
with our different questions only adding to the sum of knowledge and care
about the subject. It has never been my experience that bio medical science
and art are oppositional, their root is the same one, that of interest in
the human experience. We merely have different valves for accessing that
experience. Neither needs the other to survive, but each is revealed and
illuminated brilliantly when either happens to turn their lens upon the
other.
– Honour Bayes
