Bologna in Lettere 10th
BĂBÉL
stati di alterazione
ARTE-FATTI CONTEMPORANEI
a cura di Maria Korporal
Jutta Pryor
The Clapping Tree
Jutta Pryor (Australia) seeks to create visual and sound immersive multimedia work, often in collaboration with writers, sound artists and performers, aiming to heighten the sensual journey and intrigue experienced by the audience. Pryor has worked in both the commercial and fine art sectors of the creative arts, combining acquired skills in art direction and photography to new digital media, moving image and projection for live performance. Pryor’s poetry and experimental film work has been included in international film festivals in both Europe and the US, at Melbourne Fringe Festival, Gertrude Street Projection Festival, The Victorian State Ballet, The Heffernan Project tour of the Victorian Goldfields and stage projections for performances by Alana Blackburn in ‘Re-Growth? by Ros Bandt’, funded by Creative NSW.
The Clapping Tree … Directed, filmed & edited by Jutta Pryor (Australia)
Written by Matt Dennison (US), Sound by Mario Lino Stancati (Italy), Starring Rebecca Page (Australia)
The Clapping Tree is a poetry film tribute to mark International Women’s Day, celebrating the strength, vulnerability and spirit of a woman surviving the rigors of life in a remote, male dominated, pioneering settlement. A film collaboration between poet Matt Dennison (Columbus, Mississippi, US), sound artist Mario Lino Stancati (Italy) and filmmaker Jutta Pryor (Melbourne, Australia). Filmed at the Tyrconnell Historic Goldmine in outback north Queensland, where several original buildings and machines remain testament to a goldrush that took place 120 years ago.
The Clapping Tree
I hope it’s worth it, this dying inside –
whiskey, salt, tobacco and then a moment
of hunger – flour and fat’s dour tickle.
My ovaries are crippled, my eggs
no good. I was life! the ball and
feather falling multi-crumbled
in the language of entropy, babies
so terrible they’d suck murder
from the sky, ranchers milking
moon-cows, soldiers reporting
to duty, little birds coin-spilled
across the table. I never complained.
I swept them off: clap fears, placentas
eaten raw, Gods’ and fathers’ rabid tongues
wobbling in ecstasy – all cause for exhaustion.
I am tired. Tired of this house. Tired of this ravening.
It has been so long since I studied life with fire.