Damaged Goods
Damaged Goods is a solo project that explores the frailty and unpredictability of being human.
Through metaphor and imagery the work delves into the experience of living and surviving in a world that sometimes throws everything at you, and at other times leaves you completely alone.
It searches through ideas of endurance, vulnerability, unknowingness, revelation, cycles, repetition and the absurdness of a hopeless task.
Length: Approx 20mins - potentially on a loop
Venue: black box, gallery or hallway
Content: physical performance, pre-recorded text, soundscape, butchers paper, chairs, black ooze
Sound: Azariah Felton
This solo is envisaged as a trio with Aftermath and Hammer.
Images: Tim Standing
Example Text
There is a greek myth of a man named sisyphus… who is condemned to forever push a boulder up a mountain, only for it to roll all the way back down again just before it reaches the top.
The idea fascinates me.
It’s a fruitless task. A meaningless task. An absurd task. Repeated over and over again. Yet never given up on.
Why doesn’t he leave it? Why would he not have stopped the first time that boulder rolled back down the mountain? What is it that drives him on forever… and ever.
Is he aware of what he is putting himself through? Or does he not even mind?
Does he perhaps enjoy the self-righteous pedestal that it places him on? That he alone, could continue when all others would fail and fall behind.
But at what cost? Has he asked that question of himself.
When all worth is placed in something that only goes back on itself incessantly, then how are you supposed to move forward? There is no advantage to be gained from that repetition apart from the ability to say that you did it, which is impressive in the moment, but holds no true value beyond that.
Or does he have no other choice than to complete that endless task? Because if he stopped then he would have renounced that small ounce of purpose that he is able to call his own whilst he continues it.
What if without it he would be truly lost? Perhaps he knows this. So the best option is to continue, because the only other option is to cease everything. To cease to be altogether. And that would seem to defeat the purpose of him existing in the first place. And so the meaningless task is given reason, given weight, because it gives him purpose and therefore allows him to continue onwards.
The only thing left to do is to reconcile this with himself. To recognise that the task carries no meaning in itself, but that the fact that he relentlessly repeats and repeats it actually imbues it with purpose because it gives him purpose.
And so the cycle continues on forever.
The weight of the repetition grounds him to the earth.
He knows the absurdity of the pursuit, yet is content to pursue that thing because without it there would be nothing, in every sense of the word.