Jessica Olivieri & Hayley Forward with the Parachutes for Ladies

Jessica Olivieri & Hayley Forward with the Parachutes For Ladies (PFL)

Last week we were all fortunate to see Olivieri and Forward’s latest work Small States at Art Space and also to hear Olivieri speak about it.
“The video uses the historically contested site of Berlin as a place of postwar legacy, once marked by the division of the Berlin Wall. Set in a public thoroughfare on the corner of Frankfurter Allee and Karl Marx Allee, this space is bookened by private entrances to architecturally grand post-war apartment blocks. Several men inhabit and map out the space, as they click their fingers to an inaudible tack - a reference to opening scene in West Side Story, where opposing street gangs mark territory through choreographed movement. Bodies move through space, in states of animated suspension and trapped in a loop where the repetitive finger clicking and swinging arm movement might erupt into dance at any moment.”
- excerpt from small states (dancellations) catalogue essay by Daniel Mudie Cunningham, 2008.
The two girls work collaboratively together to create interdisciplinary works incorporating performance, video, sound, and installation. Forward has done the sound engineering for this video while Olivieri was on set with the un-trained (PFL) actors who were another collaborative link. Olivieri said that The PFL’s made the video with their vulnerability and courage to perform what was asked of them. She said their performances were an integral aspect and that they ‘made’ the film.
I think these two girls work well together and have synced their ideas to create an outstanding piece of work, which I enjoyed immensely. I also like how they highlighted the PFL’s importance and role in the piece since this enabled the project to come about. Collaborative work is worth trying if it produces this standard of work.