A Circus of One
Duration
of film: 16 minutes
16mm
film transferred to video
A Circus of One is a 16 mm black-and-white film
directed by visual artist Alison Crocetta in collaboration with composer Jason
Treuting. This film records Crocetta as a clownish figure within a one-ring
circus completing a series of eight acts that run the gamut from feats of
daring to absurd gestures. These performance actions form a filmic garland with
Treuting’s score that draws inspiration from historic circus music and the
tradition of musique concrète.
DIRECTOR’S
NOTES:
The
making of A Circus of One began with
the process of building a 16’ long and 3’ high wooden seesaw. I wanted to walk
the plank of the seesaw and use it as a tool for seeking balance. The
subsequent objects constructed for the film were designed around issues of use
and structure, resulting in a rather stripped down aesthetic. The scale of the
wooden seesaw helped me establish an old metal hay barn as the backdrop for
filming this circus. As is usually the case in my work, the site for filming
began to inform and form the work in rather important ways. For example, the
final action is my nod to the notion of a “disappearing act”. I wanted to film
myself in this act of displacement as I stepped into a tub of water and
seemingly disappeared at the end of the film. The metal tub used in this action
was actually found at the farm. I was amazed by how many of these moments in my
making came about, where the site gave me what the film needed.
During
my research phase for A Circus of One I
saw an Eadweard Muybridge exhibition and was inspired by the strength and
simplicity of his films. Muybridge employs the grid as a method to mark time,
record scale, map action and analyze form. When I found the side of the metal
barn as a potential site for filming, I knew that its structure harkened back
to Muybridge. The vertical lines at regular intervals in the hay barn are a
constant reminder of what is straight. It seems that those lines help to site
everything including the decisive moment when I perform a headstand in the
middle of the film. It is the building that reiterates and measures the body’s
ability to sustain a perpendicular position to the wooden plank.
A Circus of One was recorded on October 2, 2010. While I
directed and performed, Jason Treuting was engaged in harvesting sound samples
from the site. Jason describes his approach to the score in the following
manner, “As the music for this project has come together, I've researched the
history of the music for the circus: the march forms, the slower waltzes and the
"ta-da" B-flat triad that accompanies the completion of a trick. I
have attempted to combine elements of this circus music sound and tradition
while also giving a feel for the place where this one-ring circus occurred as
well as the nostalgia I feel from the performance in A Circus of One. I have mixed in sounds sampled at the site of the
filming, including sounds of the props used in the performance and the barn at
the site.” I wanted the film to appear that it was happening as a seamless
event, where one action moved smoothly into the next. Jason’s compelling score
both facilitates and disrupts this fiction.
