SWIM
A three fold - performance, sound and writing - project.
SWIM maps out routes by water using: canals, basins, rivers, creeks, bathwater, modern wastewater systems, bodies; as sloppy containers for sobriety. These bodies of water are not discreet; they spill into each other. Rainwater gullies surge underground. Combined sewer outfalls spew into the Thames. Canal water is rushed to the North Sea by the tide.
For the performance: I am sopping wet, in black jeans and hoodie. I move through the gallery courtyard leaving dark water stains on the thirsty floor. The audience separate and re-orientate themselves towards me, like water. I read from weathered scripts attached to leaky containers littered throughout the space: mouldy polystyrene fished from the canal, a 500ml bottle of piss, an overflowing bucket. I sit, lie, crouch and bend, often obscuring my face. Site recordings (drippy kitchen tap, gushing canal lock, suck of claggy mud) bleed into sounds in the space (seagulls, EURO 2020 fans, coughing).
In the version of SWIM for radio, the narrative is delivered through a series of site performances: on an Uber boat from Canary Wharf to Greenwich, in a public toilet cubicle at Lewisham Shopping Center, from the concrete culvert of the river Ravensbourne under the A20 motorway.
I performed SWIM live at Jude Browning’s event and publication series At Practise at David Dale Gallery alongside Nat Raha and Rebecca Lennon, 19 June 2021. Photos by Isobel Lutz-Smith.
Click here to watch the performance again as it was live-streamed in IGTV.
Click here for audio documentation of the full event.
There’s a beautiful At Practise series of publications designed by Maeve Redmond, riso printed by Sunday’s Print Service. You can buy them from David Dale Gallery, Yellow Back Books and Good Press. My contribution is a transcript of the mingling pre-recorded and live sounds in the space.
You can read Room for Folds, an audience member’s perspective, on At Practise by Sara O’Brien published by MAP magazine.
SWIM was included in Radiophrenia’s 2022 programme: 8 February 2022, 10:30am-11:30am.
SWIM is published in Prototype 4,, edited by Jess Chandler, 2022, with contributions from: ajw, Sascha Akhtar, Chiara Ambrosio, Charlie Baylis, Jack Barker-Clark, Natalie Linh Bolderston, Jo Burns, Nancy Campbell, J. R. Carpenter, Joe Carrick-Varty, Robert Casselton Clark, Rory Cook, Emily Cooper, Kate Crowcroft, Eve Esfandiari-Denney, Alisha Dietzman, Edward Doegar, Nathan Dragon, Laura Elliott, Alan Fielden, Clare Fisher, Livia Franchini, Jay Gao, Honor Gareth Gavin, Emily Hasler, Grace Henes, Martha Kapos, Annie Katchinska, Victoria Manifold, Samra Mayanja, Jessa Mockridge, Helen Palmer, Yannis Ritsos (trans. Paul Merchant), Rochelle Roberts, Kimberly Reyes, fred spoliar, Scott Thurston, Hao Guang Tse, Ralf Webb, Sam Weselowski, Chrissy Williams and Xuela Zhang.
