Incubation 1
Initial Address
PW introduces itself to the incubation process, establishing expectations and guiding values.
The ‘Initial Address’ reflects a conception of how the Incubation process would unfold that was completely unrealistic and refuted in practice.
For further information:
N1 – ‘The Plan’
N2 – Incubation 1 Invite
Text Selection
PW were presented with a selection of texts. They voted to decide which one to adapt into a play. They chose the Grothendieck.
A central tenet of the adaptation academy was the use of radically non-dramatic source material, it’s motto :
‘Everything can be adapted into everything else’
For further information:
N3 – PW Theory of Adaptation
Text Dissassembly
PW introduces itself to a custom-built method of transforming texts.
For further information:
N4 – influences on method
N5 – pw_origins preparatory posting
Lone Annotation
PW practise the method, annotation a paragraph of the Grothendieck text each, and an array of completely new stories begin to emerge.
Synthesis in Pairs
PW split into random pairs and share what they’ve found.
Extrapolations from their individual paragraphs are fused and bundled together with varying degrees of coherency.
10 annotated paragraphs become 5 configurations.
For further information:
N7 – the first moment of intersubjectivity
N8 – gallery of annotated paragraphs
PRESENTATION
1
THE ORPHANS OF WATER
by the Grand Tour, Foam Necklace and Joe Fletcher
Minutes to presentation by Joe Fletcher
Setting is ‘of course’
Characters are orphans and arithmetic geometers
The action is them gaining access to ‘the category p.27 smooth’
‘Of course’ – river of life , a series of ox bow lakes that have formed the word ‘of course.’
The river gaining access through the landscape – characters as water that makes up the word ‘of course.’
Orphan made of water
The rivers form of course for a moment.
At what point does content becomes reality?
References
– humans are 70% water
– Escalators with shoes in
– Inside water-pipes- oesaphagus of a smoker, blue streams
– Moving on is easy but what you leave behind is what makes it hard
– No man ever sets foot in the same river twice (Heraclitus)
– infinite monkey typewriters and online community dictionaries
Minutes to presentation by The Grand Tour and Foam Necklace
Characters
Willingness – continues to trust
Instinct – marks the year, 1982
Thanks – derived categories, in a euphoric rush
Utility – made evident all domains of mathematics
References
– The tiny gap between beginning and continuing. WIllingnesses lifespan – a nanosecond, millenia. Dali crucifix
-Ellie Goulding – strip to thw aist, we walk into the river, on the wreck of the 82, that was the year the panic was over , anything can happen anything can happen
-Novelty theory
-Time is botox
-Ellie gouldings future albums
-Teenager thinks they’re writing bullshit but they’re actually writing the best song ever, singing comes from fear of the dark.
-Game of collecting assets but being judged based on what you do with your assets
PRESENTATION
2
PIECEMEAL
by Tanith Mab and Huzifah Mullah
Minutes to presentation by Tanith Mab and Huzifah Mullah
Pieces of ‘piecemeal’
Appears 12 years after
Piecemeal appears in a vacuum
‘Humble piecemeal’
Everythings floating around the piecemeal – the nucleus is the piecemeal
The people eating the piecemeal are quantum beings with mirrors on them
Piecemeal sent out into the audience
References
-Turtle with universe on its back
PRESENTATION
3
FIBER FUNCTOR FARM
by The Point and Fallen Lemon
Minutes to presentation by The Point
All takes place in a dream flashback to an impromptu party (mystery ‘motive’) in ‘field k’. There was beef between 2 people : ‘Serre’ (a woman) vs ‘algebraic pro-group’.
Verbal exchange
Audiences mind has constructed beef.
Play is a Reconstruction of what took place
Piecemeal grain is growing in the ‘field k’, the beef is part of the origin story. Piecemeal cannibalises itself. ‘Fiber functo’r is a disease on the crop of piecemeal that has psychedelic effects.
‘Serre’ comes on stage and the stigma is already there
References
– Field recordings – What is a field?
– Partitioned stage – one half abbey road recording studio other side is a field – with a porthole for piecemeal to be passed in between.
-The wind on mars grass installation
– Crop on the stage
-Dramatic Reconstructions
– Grey matter, rye bread, happy meal, carrot sticks
Minutes to presentation by Fallen Lemon
‘Manifest Incarnations’ – these are the pantheon of gods.
Everything is defined/everyone is ruled by ‘intuitions’ – these are the psychedelic interactants that rework people’s worldview.
Sexual revolution – new ways of thinking
‘Motivic galois groups’ – motivations, literally.
Everyone can be split into ‘motivic galois groups’ or ‘Fiber functors’ – another extreme group of people who have consumed so much of the psychedelic ‘fiber function’, they have become extreme, satanic – lots of porn, alcohol etc. Too much intuition, too motivated.
All of this is happening within the context of the gods
‘Cohomology theory’ is a religious teaching, the text that is encoded ? into this nexus.
End of 1950s time period
Everything before was ancient, the primordial soup. This is a following time period.
‘Serre’ and ‘algebraic pro-group’ from previous para are the adam and eve ancient history to this scenario’s present time
So the beef mentioned there is like original sin – the audience don’t know what happened but feel they are supposed to know
All of this new stuff comes from the introduction of the ‘fiber functors’ which bring in ‘intuition’, this new actant
References
– We need to be careful of Christianity (re-creating mythological archetypes but just with new languages/characters)
-Almost like wes anderson but not shit – this religion exists within a plug socket within the other world that we’re talking about.
-Robotic yoga
-Yoga: a healing technique used to avoid acting/encourage acting through intuitions. Yoga to farm to.
-Self- farming . Field K. Yoga is the modern version of the famer archetype, you farm yourself instead of the fields
-yoga/yogi over a matter of months and years – timescales
PRESENTATION
4
THE HODGE & I
by Simeon Edwards and Hope Valley Cement Works
Minutes to presentation by Simeon Edwards and Hope Valley Cement Works
Protagonist has a dynamic of continual conversations with this ‘hodge avatar of motive’. Speaking, guessing, formulating to this thing. It doesn’t speak, but the protagonist feels like it’s having conversations with ‘Hodge’. It’s like needing a secret password to get something out of the ‘hodge’, gets the truth of the ‘hodge’ out Silent dream-limbo esque state in this single vast painting – ‘the field’
‘I’ is trying to fix weights in place and thus turn them into a quote. Searching to do this in the same way as trying to get something out of the ‘hodge’.
Weights on your heartstrings, every artist is just trying to own an expression of that weight.
References
–Is this all part of a backstory to Serre, the Adam and Eve backstory. The two groups beefing? The heartstrings come into this? Or perhaps this is 1000 years after the 50s, experimenting, trying to recreate to figure out what the original sin was. It has these feelings but it doesn’t understand why. That’s kind of what science is no?
-Human desperately trying to project reason onto chaos, einstein definition of madness
-Trying to recreate the conditions of the organic, in a neutral void, but this is actually very difficult
-We owe everything we know from science to nature. Flight comes from birds, etc
installation
Notes
N1
‘The Plan’ :
‘The residency was designed to have 2 halves: a programme of performances, artist takeovers and interviews set along with a set of collaborative workshops. The idea was that the takeovers would attract audiences who could then be asked to join the workshop process – a ‘funnel’ of sorts. I was so optimistic about this that I had scheduled for three working groups to each be doing weekly Incubations which would lead to the development of 3 original plays over the course of the 2 month Residency period, parts of which would each be performed on the stage in the incredible Performance Space at Rogue Studios at a PW Showcase. It didn’t happen like this at all.’
– Simeon Edwards (Artistic Director)
N2
Inc 1 Invite
N3
‘The PW Theory of Adaptation’ :
‘In a page of Pierre Senges’ Ahab Sequels Ahab is described as having the ability to take a book, open it up and then instead of reading what he finds in there to extract whatever kinds of experiences he wants from it.
The aim of PW is to give everyone this ability. To turn it into a set of learnable practicable skills.
By getting them to adapt civic documents into plays. Over 2 months 3 ‘Incubation groups’ will devote themselves fanatically to the adaptation of radically non-dramatic texts (eg civic documents, academic papers, policy slates, Twitter threads, Wikipedia entries etc) into plays.
To un-pick the rules and associations tieing certain types of text to certain types or realms of sociality. To transform them into sample-beds for the development of completely different socio-material outcomes.
To take a set of operations that has been designed to sensibly transform one thing (a story) into another (a performance) and then apply it haphazardly to things (dead texts, un-narratives, jargon zones, legalese, formatted information, data read-outs etc) that it doesn’t work for and see what half-baked botch-job performances come out the other end.
Axiom – Everything can be adapted into everything else.*
*with varying degrees of success.
So in many ways it’s a reading group disguised as a theatre company. Adaptation is the use of literary criticism for social modification purposes.’
– excerpt from email by roberton_hu to Elsie Lappoh (Sep 11, 2024, 2:06 PM)
N4
Influences on Method, a Bibliography :
- Senges, P. (2021). Ahab (Sequels).
- I A Richards (1964). Practical criticism. Editorial: Routledge & K. Paul.
N5
pw_origins posting :
pw_origins was an Instagram account set up to ‘vibe-check PROCESSED WORDS into existence.’ The idea was that over a 2 month long course of weekly posting PW could develop a recognised identity for itself among a community. Not only building up a set of references and associations in the minds of its audience but also introducing certain key custom built PW-concepts and methodologies which would then be explored in practise during the Incubation sequence.
Below is a short introduction to some of those concepts via the original pw_origins Instagra posts.
PEOPLING
The PW List of Divination Practises
ANNOTATION
WORLDBUILDING
