Julia Bardsley & Aldona Cunningham 12/stages2 [a forensic mnemonic]
UK 2000
35:00, black&white and colour, stereo
This is indeed one video with a story behind it. It all started in the theatre, in 1994, when Bardsley and Cunningham collaborated on a production of Hamlet and decided to place themselves inside the play as a magician and his assistant. Hamlet, with its play-within-a-play, marked the end of their hitherto briljant career in the theatre and the beginning of a new existence with different personae. It was around this time that a pair of dark-haired, partially deaf indentical twins (Bard and Ham Cunningsley) began to be sighted at theatres around the country that were staging productions of Hamlet or related theatrical events, appearing to be investigating some tragic events that happened some years before. Transformed by the artifice of wigs, make-up and costume they enter an authentic city - London. The sisters become the sole dramatis personae in a monochrome dumb show, embarking on an investigation into the nature of theatre, until it was time to perform the ritual murder of the two principal players. Five years later, the artists emerge, more than shadows of their former selves. The video offers sort of a condensed narration of the entire project -that was also presented as a 'memory theatre' installation with video projection, photographs and Ėtems of evidence- and is full of references to Shakespeare and Hamlet and also full of playful hints at all kinds of dichotomy, duplicity and mirror-like images. 2B or 2B, as it were.
Leo Reijnen
Live and work in London, UK
Camera Andrew Poppy, Adam Colyer, Kate Moyse. Editing Julia Bardsley. Music Andrew Poppy. With: Julia Bardsley, Aldona Cunningham
Julia Bardsley ° 1962, London, UK. Aldona Cunningham ° 1965, Paris, France.
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