Presented through Blindside’s gallery activation program; a chamber piece adaptation of Paul Celan’s matière de Bretagne, as understood through the lens of autistic shutdown. Performances with Andrew Huhtanen McEwan, Honor Webster-Mannison and members of the Merri Merri Choir, utilising urinal pots crafted from reshaped and decorated SodaStream bottles.
This project begins with a consideration of Paul Celan’s poem, matière de Bretagne, through my experiences with autistic shutdown. Celan describes a moment when fluency runs aground, a desperate moment from Tristan and Isolt, the arrival of the False Sail. He tells of ‘the Nothing’ which ‘rolls its seas toward devotion’. Could the immobility which grips me during shutdowns be this Nothing? Surely my words and hands turn blank. Or is it that my body folds in and away from the catastrophe of False Sails in order to preserve devotion? Anne Carson asks: where is the human store to which words are gathered? She proposes that, in matière de Bretagne, Celan locates this store in ‘you’. But if shutdowns moor words deep within the body’s archive, do they remain there, literally intact, or are they subject to incessant translation? Periods of shame and solitude inevitably succeed my autistic shutdowns. Clarity of communication and social attendance are cultural imperatives and their failure is difficult to bear. I keep a SodaStream bottle near my bed to pee in, so I can hibernate for longer. My SodaStream bottle is a contemporary urinal pot – a type of receptacle which has existed since ancient times. I keep it hidden. This project aims to invert cycles of shame: to celebrate the form and acoustic potential of urinal pots – utilising them to perform an adaptation of Celan’s matière de Bretagne.