Bodywork

Bridger, Barbara (2004) Bodywork. [Project]

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Abstract / Summary

In the making of Bodywork, an 18-minute digital film in black and white, Bridger collaborated with a producer (who also directed and operated the camera), and an editor. Bridger was responsible for script, overall direction, and the paper edit to which the editor was required to work. The film features two performers: one trained in physical theatre, the other with formal dance training. Both were chosen for their familiarity with techniques of physical and vocal improvisation.

Bodywork was first screened at Exeter Phoenix and Devon Arts Centre (November 2002) as part of an evening of short digital films commissioned and funded by Devon Arts Centre. Subsequently, it was screened at the Johnson Centre Cinema, George Mason University as part of a small film festival (November 2004). Other artists presenting work included: Edith Pasquier, Anya Lewin, Claire MacDonald and Pete Brooks, Kirsten Lavers and chris cheek.

This film project forms part of Bridger's research into language, gender and identity and is one of a series of works investigating women's relationship with mourning and grief. The script was adapted from Don DeLillo’s novella The Body Artist (2001). In De Lillo's text, the partner of the central female character (‘the body artist’) commits suicide. Returning to their former home after the event, she embarks on a ritual cleansing of the house and a rigorous regime of exercise, which extends and tests her physical strength, stamina and resolve. The central character embodies her grief as part of a process of transcending it. Bridger endeavoured to employ strategies of embodiment and improvisation in an attempt to find forms of physical and vocal expression appropriate to the process of grieving.

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