During the course of one week, the artist Matt Copson worked with a group of local performers and artists who answered his calling. This performance is the outcome of that workshop.
Matt Copson is a visual artist living and working in London and Los Angeles, graduate of Slade School in London (2014). Matt’s work often involves animation, laser, drawing, text, and music. He has collaborated with musician Caroline Polachek, for which he directed a number of music videos. His works are exhibited in museums and galleries across Europe and the US. The opera “Last Days” for which he wrote the libretto and directed, has recently premiered at the Royal Opera House in London. The opera, which is based on a film by Gus Van Sant concerning the final days of Kurt Cobain’s life, was widely praised.
“My calling (from which the workshop stems) is a text I wrote, a script which we will expand upon using light, our bodies, animation and a large canvas surface,The script is with no words, a set of instructions. A play with light. A mundane musical. A painting as a prop, a landscape, a character. The participants will receive the script, and it will serve them as a baseline, interpreting and negotiating the instructions. The work will be divided between three groups, each of them being responsible for a different part, different layer, of the script. The groups are titled: “the painters,” “the animators,” and “the musicians”. The people assembling each group do not necessarily have to be painters, animators, or musicians. I hope to create something which is mythological and contemporary at the same time. What interests me is animation and magic – as in early cinema, or cave paintings. Using light, music, voice, the body, puppets. I am interested in the means in which things come to life, how they move, how a story is told.”
Photo: Mark-Blower