| Tract Live A rt |
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| Site specific live art and performance in and around Penzance, Cornwall, over three weekends. Summer 2006 | ||||||||||
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| Information on this site will be updated as part of the Tract Live Art Programme | ||||||||||
Misha
Myers
Friday 21 & Saturday 22 July
Misha Myers, Hevva Hevva
takes its inspiration from the hue and cry of the huers that once
was sounded along the coasts of
Cornwall to announce the arrival of the pilchard shoals or, as a local
saying suggests, of ‘food, money, light, and all in
one night’. This cry, ‘here they are’, and the huers
gesticulations directing the fishing boats at sea, once drew crowds
to gather and wonder in anticipation of the spectacle of sustenance
that followed. Myers’ Hevva Hevva invites
us to remember
the crux of this cry of the human vocal tract, to mark its interrelationship
with the fate of a place and its inhabitants.
'Huer giving signals with bushes'
Semaphores
Originally, from Mississippi, she first trained as an anthropologist and dancer. She has presented
work and engaged in research world-wide including in Japan, Denmark, Romania, Guatemala and
USA.
Her recent works explore personal and cultural identifications and narratives of place, particularly
through the experience of cultural displacement. The events and processes she creates often invite
an active, embodied and self-determined participation, through which she hopes to enable creative
agency and a space for critical dialogue and reflection. Recent works include Yodel Rodeo, commissioned
by Spacex Gallery for the Homelands Exhibition 2004, which included the participation of a local line dance
company, and the web-based project way from home (www.wayfromhome.org), also shown at the Art in
the Age of Terrorism exhibition at the Millais Gallery 2005, which involved collaboration with inhabitants
of Plymouth (UK) who are asylum seekers and refugees, refugee support organizations and the multimedia
team limbomedia.
Archive: Misha Myers Hevva Hevva performed on Friday 21 July at Jubilee Pool, Penzance Promenade
Visitors to Jubilee Pool were greeted by what appeared to be a bulky weather beaten book bearing the title
‘Ledger of losses’ that was fixed to the railings. They were invited to disclose anything they had lost, and
did so frankly and obligingly. Wisdom teeth, mobile phones, and sandals were included, but so too were the
more emotive losses of parents, children and other loved ones, to the extent that reading the book was a
rather moving experience.
Micha Myers, wearing a dark anorak and sou’ester, then graciously offered to escort them to the side of the
pool looking towards the ocean, and express their loss in semaphore to the sea. Rather than use international
semaphore she used the messaging system employed traditionally by Newlyn fisherman following the shoal of
pilchards, together with the cry ‘Hevva Hevva’.
Mingled with the sound of distant gulls the intoned words had a spooky quality, as something resurrected
from the dead, and Micha herself took on the visage of a ghostly figure from the past.
Although the losses were those of contemporary inhabitants of Cornwall they also seemed to speak of the losses
of those that came before them, as well as the loss of customs and traditions and language.
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