A Site-Specific Collaboration by Judy Gordon and David Barnett

Struggle For Utopia is a 10-minute site-specific performance art project, integrating live digital art and manipulated image projected onto a street and parked car, and live performance on the roof of the car. It was created in two-days in a spontaneous challenge to live art and in response to the re-generation developments in our local area as the various transport programmes were taking place, with great structures for the Millennium not too far into the future...

The show folllows the fortunes of a couple of local characters in the community,
that of an unemployed person and a busy commuter. As their lives change with the promise and development of the new 'Brockley' underground station, built by the workers' bare hands and transforming a simple Brockley Victorian terrace house into a central station - a utopia is achieved beyond all dreams...

Filmed around the streets of Brockley and Lewisham, with local newspaper headlines manipulated and traditional icons and imagary from futuristic films, music and Russian Revolution posters and paintings, a video is projected onto the house to true scale. The performer works high on the roof of a car, raising her from the street onto a pedestal and all at once the street, car and house becomes a canvas with which to draw on live.

 

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The piece captures the immediacy and energy which reflects that of the activity in the borough and with a local audience viewing, the issues are absolutely relevant. Struggle For Utopia aims to reflect the spirit and hope of those involved, both of the community and the authorities, with not a little irony.

Struggle For Utopia was originally commissioned as part of a six-month Artist Residency with Lighthouse, Brighton and the University of Brighton where both Judy and David devised and led a digital art/performance in a rural school in Maidstone.
It was performed in July 1999 in the company's street, Chalsey Road, with those living in the street and local friends of the company invited to watch.

 

 

 

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