CABULA6 ARTISTIC STATEMENT

Our work is concerned with exploring the borderlands between what is real and what is constructed and the ways in which fact and fiction interpenetrate each other in our everyday lives. We like to play with the fluidity of these borders to see how much trouble we can get into; to see how far we can bring audiences with us to accept and do things we all never thought we would do; or maybe to simply become aware of the disparities between what we say and what we actually do. Our border-crossing is often playful and cajoling as opposed to coercive. We see this game-playing as a type of corrective that attempts to subvert arrogance and the power structures that are constantly reinforced between all of us -- especially in the gatherings of our own pieces. In pushing several sources against each other (Rachel Ingall's story, Susan Sontag's thoughts, James Nachtway's life, and our interviews with people) "Other People's Pain" will try to crack open the image world that thickens our environment and to meditate on how we engage with the violent photos of pain and suffering that bombard us daily. To what extent are these images portals into the "reality" of the moment in time and space captured on film and to what extent and how are they woven into the narrative "reality" of that moment in which the photograph is being viewed elsewhere? How are the two spaces connected? What are the power dynamics at play? Susan Sontag writes, "The camera makes reality atomic, manageable, and opaque. It is a view of the world which denies interconnectedness, continuity, but which confers on each moment the character of a mystery." What does it mean for all of us to live in a world so thoroughly conquered by the camera?

JEREMY XIDO ARTISTIC STATEMENT

I travel a lot for work. I fly a lot and buy magazines in airports. Sometimes I just pass by newsstands and look at images. I've become a sort of photograph junkie, and the more barbarous or peculiar they are the better. The bar I find myself measuring them against is to what extent they can penetrate the hard shell of purpose that surrounds me in airports and make me stop moving from one gate to the next. How easily do they dislodge me from whatever I think I'm doing and remind me that I'm alive in this moment and that one day I will be gone? I live in a state of over-stimulation and the effect is blunting and suffocating. I think looking at these photos might shake me, but the more I look I seem to sink further into unreality. About 2 years ago, I came across something Susan Sontag wrote that hit me like a brick: "The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own." Why do I look at other people's pain? What do I want to elicit in myself? Something that can jolt me out of a vertiginous spiral into apathy? But then, "So far as we feel sympathy we feel we are not accomplices to what caused the suffering." The link between my existence and the reality behind the image world around me is severing. Reading letters Ehren and I wrote each other while developing "Other People's Pain," I'm struck by my underlying tone of distress, a sense of helplessness. The core impulse that ties me to this project is a need to figure something out that seems nearly impossible; something about the way I live. In what ways are we inextricably linked to the pain of others surrounding us? Those in our homes as well as around the corner and across the sea? And more importantly, what should we do?

EHREN FORDYCE ARTISTIC STATEMENT

My background is in experimental re-stagings of classic drama and opera, and more recently in documentary film.  While dramatic literature still matters a great deal to me, I feel increasingly drawn to the complex stories of people's lives.  My reasons for wanting to work with cabula6 to create the piece "Other People's Pain" are partly aesthetic and partly ethical.  Artistically, I want to build on some of the work I have been studying in Europe for the last year and half, work that plays with mixing reality and representation.  Doing documentary interviews with people whose lives intersect with the themes of Ingalls' "Correspondent" are especially important to me in this regard.  Ethically, I want to try to come to some personal understanding of experiences like war and suffering; of the conflicts that can occur in intimate relationships; and of the way that we need the shelter of intimate relationships to sustain us in the face of a world that includes such difficult things as war and suffering; and at the same time how such shelter sometimes desensitizes us, blunting our openness to the world.  For me, the modest and somewhat romantic aesthetics of Daumkino in "Other People's Pain," when set against material dealing with pain, will hopefully create an opening for audiences to face suffering calmly, actively, and with clear eyes.