The Passion of Joan of Arc:
an Installation Performance

This task called to me the first time I saw it. It rests on the line between the possible and the impossible. Isn't the creation of art the ultimate affirmation of consciousness? What is art without intent?

There seems to be a continuum of responsibility possible for sleeping people involved in art. For example, a still photograph of a sleeping person is as much a creation of that person as a painting of a landscape is a creation of the landscape.

As Yeats asked, "How can we know the dancer from the dance?"

It seems like movement is the way out of the problem: breath and movement are two of the only externally identifiable "creations" of a sleeping person. I (twine) spent almost a year thinking about a best way to allow a sleeper's movement to map onto some art-- for a long time I played with the idea of making a bed of clay that could be fired after a person slept on it, but it wasn't satisfying.

While talking to Otter and Formal Log about the problem, we came up with the idea of a puppet show that was controlled by sleeping people. This was exciting for us because puppets would allow the sleeping people to create art that was not strictly about sleeping.

This quickly evolved into an enactment of the life of Joan of Arc. After thinking more about it, and watching the incredible silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc, the idea turned instead to Joan's death by fire.

The project turned into a long one, taking several months from the time we first began to work on the papier-mache figures to the night that we finally performed the piece.



We started by creating small figures that would represent the priests/soldiers (and horses) that condemned Joan to death for heresy.




The hair for Joan was donated by our ally Catcrush, and Otter sewed her cloak.



Hair for the horses' manes was provided by twine.




Joan, the fire, and the priest-soldiers were suspended from a rod running from an upstairs room (backstage) out through an opening into the downstairs area (the house).



Additional lines were tied to the ankles of Otter and Formal Log. Each line was attached to a point on Joan or the fire. Otter controlled Joan, while Formal Log controlled the fire.



The performance ran from approximately 1am to 6:30am. twine was the "audience," and slept on the couch downstairs. A camera also recorded the performance in its entirety.

Watching the performance was an interestingly voyeuristic experience; waking up to Joan or the fire allowed me to see interpretations of movements that the sleepers/performers didn't even know they were making. The performance worked on two levels: the "intentional" level of interpreting a historic/mythic event in ways that are mirrored in the work, and the "random" level where coincidence is the only force at play.

The performers took a minimalist approach to the subject. The movements of both Joan and the fire were not consistent, but had a jerkiness that emphasized the violence of Joan's suffering. Toward the beginning of the performance Joan's movements were more pronounced, but as she approached death the fire asserted its own dynamism until the fire, left with nothing else to burn, also died.