Mark Ware: interview
Still from video The dog that barked like a bird, painting by Mark Ware
Mind Games is a play, a film and an exhibition that is influenced by Mark Ware's life after a stroke at the age of 39. Colin Hambrook talked to him about his creative journey.
Mind Games consists of: The Dog that Barked like a Bird - a 36 minute large screen video composition based around a diary; Free Speech - a one character play; and an exhibition of digital photographic prints taken from the Mind Games series.
I asked Mark about the inspiration behind The Dog that Barked like a Bird: After the stroke I was all smashed up. I had the desire to create, but couldn't even see clearly enough to write words down on paper. And so I drew the shapes of words from memory in the hope that I would later be able to decipher them. I created untouchable words in the sense that specific turns of phrase took on symbolic meaning.
The diary forms the body of the narration - a series of short stories reflecting Mark's experience. He was suddenly forced to live in the here and now - to experience everything with a freshness. He lost temperature sensation down the right side of his body. In his words he is now 50% ectothermic - half reptile. I feel drawn to lying on warm rocks during Summer months these days
, Mark says. He has a completely different sensation of pain from one side of his body to the other. Taste sensations have been altered. His eyesight functions differently - one quirky benefit of this is that it creates an impression of 3-D when he watches tracking shots on TV. The stroke has also dramatically affected Mark's emotional and intellectual experiences. Often I feel like I'm acting in a foreign film, but can't understand the language that's being spoken
.
The narration in The Dog that Barked like a Bird sometimes plays alongside and sometimes against the exquisite visual composition - made largely from animated digital stills. I have a different sensory and intellectual interpretation of the world now, which I wanted the work to reflect. It was about finding meaning. Eventually the meaning I found was that there is no meaning. This may appear to be a negative conclusion to a journey, but I found it to be truly liberating. The Surrealists attempted to enter this world of randomly rearranged life-elements. Their films were frequently of interest, but their paintings so often failed dreadfully with their cartoon-like, self-conscious constructions.
There is an authenticity about Mark's work. He experimented with using an actor to do the narration, then rejected the idea. He also refused to use an elaborate sound track. Both would have detracted from the intensity of the experience he wanted to communicate. He asks What is it like to have a stroke? He can only answer from his own understanding.
The Dog that Barked like a Bird is a raw, funny and at times disturbing testament to the will to create a place, in a world which is on the one hand frightened and on the other, pitying and dismissive. It contains a refreshing honesty, as does Mark himself: The film is deeply flawed. It contains a continuous use of dissolves, which I would have scorned in days gone by when I was involved in film and video production. But like Bauby in the The Bell Jar and the Butterfly I could only write in short spurts and so the film reflects this. It is interspersed with music of varying styles and genres. The choice of music was very important. Ranging from Carl Orff's Opera, Der Mond, to Mario Lanza's Drink, Drink, Drink, its purpose is to contribute to an atmosphere of general, gentle surreal anarchy and confusion.
I could have worked at creating a slick commercial film, but that would have been wrong. It wouldn't have expressed the stumbling, flawed and frequently pathetic efforts I made to form a new life after my stroke - it would have been dishonest.
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last updated: 2004-12-01 00:00:00
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