PERFORMING PARENTHOOD 2017 OFFICIAL SELECTION:
Beatrice Jarvis (Ireland, Donegal)
A Conversation between Absence and Fern (2015)
Original title (gaelic): comhrá idir neamhláithreachta ague raithneach
Filmed Performance
ARTIST STATEMENT:
“Pregnancy initially was a very daunting process and as a land artist and a choreographer my first concern within my practice, which often involves extreme endurance work in isolated terrains, was how do I progress in this new state. This body, my home, a shared space, how can I develop my movement practice to explore this and how can I explore my relationship to film as both truly intimate and also public?
My reaction and response was to seek to return to the earth, sensing in this new state and shifting form that I needed to ground, earth and root. Movement, meditation and the practice of the Four Dignities were essential within my pregnancy, from the very early stages to birth and now through my daughter’s life and in collaboration with my daughter and partner. In continuous dialogue with landscape, body and screen, I am able to translate the plethora of emotions which carrying a new life force brought up for me, fusing authentic movement and improvisation in specific sites of personal importance; I am able to explore how far my body and mind were changing within the developing stages of gestation.
The process of walking long distances at both stages partum and post partum was an essential measure of my emotional development and stability. This film forms a part of series exploring and documenting changes in the body, landscape and ecology, exploring how parenthood functions as a continuous dialogue for reevaluating the world in which we live through the eyes of our children. All works were filmed in Donegal, our home, working with the landscape in which my partner and I and now our daughter are rooted, taking the same walk throughout each month of my pregnancy and now walking this route with my partner and daughter.”
Beatrice Jarvis received distinction for her MA in Photography and Urban Cultures affiliated by Arts and Humanities Research Council within the Department of Visual Sociology at Goldsmiths, and has recently completed her Practice Based PhD (Belfast School of Art) fusing a strong mixture of practice, research, experimentation and exploration to create a unique approach to urban socio-choreographic research. Her movement work and research has been profiled and lectured at universities across Europe.