HD video, 7 mins 30 seconds
All Rise explores acts of imitation across species. It is dominated by a soundscape of copies. All animals sounds are made by humans and all music is produced by animals. Machinic print/ reprographic sounds are foleyed, but the sound of wood and chain sawing at the end of the film is made by a lyrebird, relaying the sounds of its habitat being destroyed.
All Rise was made in collaboration with students and staff from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCSSD) and the Perdekamp Emotional Method of Acting (PEM). Students in their first year at RCSSD train to become various animals in partnership with London Zoo, learning a technique developed from Rudolf Laban. Instructors at PEM replace empathy and experience within their technique with physiological connections to the internal organs. Thereby they construct images of rage, lust and grief transferable to the representation of animals. Other participants include a dancer/researcher from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance who mimics human actions associated with mechanised reprographic processes. The Magna Carta is read through a fist by a Royal College of Art printmaking graduate. Apes are aped by humans who work with them day to day.
All Rise was first shown as part of the solos show My Previous Life as an Ape at Danielle Arnaud Contemporary Art, London and has since featured as part of a series of artists’ talks at the gallery, the RCA and LCC to MA and research students. All Rise has since been shown in Intersecting Practices of Contemporary Printmaking in the UK in China, during IMPACT 9 Printmaking Conference in Hangzhou at China Academy of Arts Museum, at School of Art & Design Hunan University, Art 9 Gallery and as part of “Conjunctively Evolving” Contemporary Arts from China and UK at Yun Contemporary Arts Center, Shanghai.
It has been screened as part of research symposia at Goldsmiths University (Potatoes and Stones) and at Glyndwyr – North Wales School of Art and Design (Art as Research) and presented in conjunction with a paper on mimesis at the conference Visualising the Animal, Cumbria University. In 2018 it was included in the group show Beast at OSG, UK.
All Rise features in a publication of the same title (text by John Harrington) and in Beast.
All images copyright © Nicky Coutts unless credited otherwise.