Out of Place is an installation by Cambridge-based artist Maria Pesma, with an accompanying performance by in situ:
The installation is in the Cambridge Leper Chapel from Wednesday June 25 to Sunday June 29.
Artist Maria Pesma says about her installation
What was your motivation/inspiration for doing the installation?
As soon as I saw the chapel I knew that it was something important for me. I didn’t know exactly what, but I knew I had to explore it.
I was already working on issues of expulsion – due to various past experiences – but my first inspiration was the chapel. The installation developed from wanting to do something in it.
It feels as if the chapel chose me. I have this bizarre notion that I’m just a medium here. I’m doing a few things with my hands, but it’s something beyond me. It’s the chapel, the energy of the chapel.
Why the title Out of Place?
The title has multiple significances. Central is the idea that the space of the Leper Chapel was constructed for people who were placed outside society.
There is something more complex – the building itself is next to a road and railway lines from which it seems detached. It doesn’t have other historic buildings to support it. So the building itself seemed to me to be out of place – it came to represent the ‘out-of-place-ness’ of those people suffering from leprosy and who had been exiled there.
The title also connects to my personal associations and history. Not only because I myself am a person who is in a sense out of place because I don’t come from Cambridge or from England, but also because I came to Cambridge because of events which made me feel out of place in my own country.
Plus, in the installation, the title is clearly reflected by the images and 3-dimensional objects, representations of human bodies from which the actual body is absent, leaving only the skin. Something has been removed. Something is not in its place.
Are the artistic ideas you use in the installation new ones for you?
I have been dealing with the issues of how to present absence for decades. And I’ve been working with images, costume, installations, theatre design for many years. So some of this reappears in Out of Place.
The forms made out of strips of material had their beginning when, working in Athens about 15 years ago, I had the notion of constructing costumes as sculpture, not to be worn but to personify the roles the actors played. I put two or three of them alongside each other and was amazed at the effect – it looked like bodies in space.
That said, for Out of Place I also deliberately broke away from many things I was doing before. I also avoided anything which conveys a narrative and painted fragmented faces, often on an unconscious level without knowing exactly how or why. I also decided to use different materials and to use paint in different ways without aiming at a ‘polished’ result .
What do you hope that we, the audience, gain from the installation?
I certainly wanted to create an immersive experience for the audience to enter, to connect with the space.
I am not trying to communicate ideas, neither to put thoughts into words when I”m working.
But I do hope that the audience will experience some of the things I have experienced while making the installation, the unconscious stirring of something. I do hope they experience a sharing of common humanity – the installation is not just for the people who are here but also for the people who are not here.
Why did you invite in situ: to add a performance element to your installation? What are you hoping the performance will bring to the event?
Working with in situ: is an amazing coming-together of things. Meeting the in situ: people and their voice work just clicked for me.
I have always worked with actors, so it’s not surprising that I wanted this collaboration. That said, the installation is not a set for a performance. It is instead a statement that the images, the forms, all these people which the forms represent, have no voice. The voice is absent. They are absent. And when in situ: adds their voices, that’s fascinating – for the audience and for me.
New angles and potential arise from dynamic interaction. I’m extremely grateful for this collaboration and the warmth between us as it has developed.
What now? What is the future of the installation once this showing is over?
I find that, as an installation, it achieved a completeness in the context of this particular space with its historic significance. As far as the sculptural forms are concerned, I’m presently thinking of creating these out of metal to explore further the abstract aesthetic of the form itself. As far as the paintings are concerned, a lot of development is already happening and am looking forward to see where it leads me.
Richard Spaul, Artistic Director writes about in situ:‘s integrated performance
Maria Pesma’s remarkable installation explores ideas of exclusion and marginalisation, taking place in The Leper Chapel, a space that speaks eloquently of that marginalisation and exclusion. Maria is concerned with the gap, the void that is created when a person, group or community is excluded, eliminated or destroyed.
In response, in situ: has created a voice performance which seeks to explore and give concrete form to this ‘presence of an absence’. Something has gone, but the void left by its absence remains.
How can that void be articulated in the voice? That is the question we are attempting to answer in our short performance. There are many uses of voice which indicate, in a mysterious and uncanny way, the absence of the person or people making the sound.
Whispers, breath sounds, echoes, fragments of speech, speech blown away by the wind, incomplete words and sentences, gaps in speech. Ghosts.
The result is the extended vocal improvisation we present on the last two days of the performance, Saturday June 28 and Sunday June 29.
The piece takes two forms. One form is a continuing series of echoes and fragments throughout the weekend, in which one, two, three or more of the 10 performers perform certain moments, sometimes extended over time. These echoes and fragments happen at random but at 7pm each evening they cohere into a complete performance of approximately 20 minutes, presented by the whole company as the conclusion of each day.
Out of Place is a sort of haunting. Our voices are the ghosts.
What was your motivation/inspiration for wanting in situ: to do the performance to accompany Maria’s installation?
Maria’s a very good, powerful artist and I feel a great affinity with her work. So when I found out she was doing an installation in the Leper Chapel, I was very happy for us to collaborate.
This is the first time in situ: will be working with an installation artist and that will be a new and exciting aspect of our site-specific work. We will need to understand and respond powerfully not just to the chapel itself – we’ve done that before – but to the new and original artworks which Maria has placed there.
Over the past two seasons we’ve collaborated with two visual artists – Helen Cook in Master Builder Project and Melissa Pierce Murray in Bacchae. Out of Place will allow us to develop our collaborative skills much further.
It’s very exciting for the performers to work in this way with talented artists creating in another medium. And this seems to be a new direction in the group’s work.
Were there any difficulties or challenges in developing the performance?
One difficulty is that we will be working in an installation which is very powerful anyway. It could easily be reduced and rendered less interesting by performers fooling around in it,
So we face the challenge of ensuring that our work, our presence, enhances the artwork and doesn’t diminish it. For this we need to be very sensitive to the feeling which the work communicates.
We need to respect it, understand it, and engage with it to the best of our abilities. We’re confident that we can.
What are you hoping the performance will bring to the event and what do you hope that we, the audience, gain from the installation?
I hope that we will bring added power to what will be an impressive installation and that the audience will experience a remarkable vocal performance in a truly remarkable space.
I hope Out of Place will stay with people for a long time.
Installation and Performance details:
Out of Place by Maria Pesma
Opening hours:
Thursday 26th June and Friday 27th June: 12.00-17.00.
Saturday 28th June and Sunday 29th June 11.00-15.00 and 18.00-20.00.
On Saturday 28 and Sunday 29, members of in situ: will be present at random times during the day to perform segments of their work based on the installation. At 1900 each day the whole company will together perform the full 20-minute work.
Entrance to both the installation and the performance is free.
