Falling Gardens part I: Angel of Histories
A four-channel immersive audio and video installation (81/2 minute loop)

by Michael R. Murphy and Róisín O’Gorman--In collaboration with:

Matthew Knight—Modular Scoring
Roksana Niewadzisz—Physical Performance
Regina Crowley—Vocal Performance

Artist’s statement:
We cannot tell anyone’s story. There are so many stories, so many voices… and silences. So many histories told by…whom? We tug on the image of the Angel of History described by Walter Benjamin. Practically, this comes through the capture of improvised performances and places–a river in flood, a woman in red, a garden in bloom, a staircase happened upon.  Words and songs and an improvised modular score unsettle the regularity of steady sequences. New experiences emerge for us when we drop in and stay, breaking apart our singular narrative or political lines of  thought  though sometimes interrupting our  sleep or weaving into our dreams. 

Walter Benjamin— from “On the Concept of History” (1940)

“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. 
His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. 
This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past.
Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. 
The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. 
But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. 

This storm is what we call progress.” 

Bios

Michael Murphy is a faculty member of the School of Visual and Media Arts at the University of Montana, where he began working after a career as an actor in theatre, film and television in New York City and Los Angeles. Since then he has worked as a director and creator across multiple disciplines, including theatre, film and opera, as well as interactive media design and installation work.

Róisín O’Gorman  is a Lecturer in the Department of Theatre, School of Film, Music & Theatre at University College Cork. From her background in theatre historiography, dramatic literature, theory, feminism and visual culture, Róisín's current research lives between embodied practices and theoretical understandings of performance. 

Roksana Niewadzisz is a polylingual multidisciplinary artist and a researcher with an academic background in Theatre, Translations and Art History. For over eighteen years she has been developing her skills as audio-visual artist, performer, stage director, actress and mover training, devising work and performing in dozen of projects in/across Poland, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Italy and the United States.

Matthew Knight is a composer based in Missoula, MT, with a passion for combining diverse genres, ensembles, and technologies to create unique musical experiences. He recently completed his degrees in music composition, piano performance, and music technology at the University of Montana, where his work focused on exploring the balance between classic and modern approaches.

Regina Crowley has worked professionally in Irish theatre since the late 1980’s and is a founder member of Gaitkrash Theatre Company in Cork. She is a Designated Linklater Voice Teacher and has led workshops both nationally and internationally. She has trained with Yoshi Oida, Enrique Pardo, Lorna Marshall, Bella Merlin, Fiona Shaw, Phillip Zarriilli and the Moscow School of Cinematography among others. 

“Terminal Moraine”, a third collaboration with Roisin O’Gorman, was first presented at the University of Montana in 2021. It brought together visual and performative elements from widely diverse sources, with a goal to fracture traditional narratives regarding systems of control and habituated understandings that have destroyed the lives of entire swaths of marginalized populations and perhaps the most marginalized of all beings, our planet itself. That work is an immersive four-channel video installation, which uses machine learning and randomization to break apart seemingly disparate areas of exploration, both in Ireland (Mother and Baby Homes) and Montana (Indian Boarding Schools), from glacial melt to genetic alteration capabilities and even Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” It creates an experience through which the participant/audience must assemble meaning in ways that challenged their traditional linear perceptions of the world.

sleepwalker no. 1 is a 2-channel video and performance installation, with improvised digital score, utilizing one actress on screen and one live. It premiered in March, 2012, at TDC, Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland. The actresses were Roisin O’Gorman and Mairin Prendergast and the score was created by Frances Heery.

The work is a collaborative attempt to build a portal that will serve as an entrance into memory, or a new space, like memory, but concrete and present, built from the materials of projected film, actors and an improvised audio environment.

Journal Entry, 2012:

“After working on Beckett for a period of time, particularly thorough performing in Krapp's Last Tape, I became interested in memory, identity, language, and the loss and decay of these entities—as well as physical decay—the changing of objects over time—their ongoing molecular shift into other states of being.

An object whose purpose existed no more, still might retain the ghost of the purpose floating somewhere, unseen. How could we bring that which is unseen or unseeable into a space—a real space.

It seemed that the conflict between the nature of film and theatre provided a place where an ignition could take place in the minds of the audience in a real space in real time. I've referred to it as a portal, but it could also be the surface of a lake, a skin. The surface molecules retain a connection, however distant, to what lies beneath.”

This narrative film follows Jennie, a nurse who has taken in her father, a veteran with dementia, through a day in which she deals with family legacy of alcoholism and the cultural effects of war.

Premiered at the Montana Film Festival 2018.

Written by Michael Murphy
Director Michael Murphy
Producer Jeri Rafter
Cinematography Mark Shogren
!st Asst. Camera Caelan Fisher
2nd Asst. Camera Laura Lovo
Production Design Tessla Hastings
Audio Design Jeramy Parker and Ryan Graham-Loughlin
Script Supervisor Gaaby Patterson
Makeup Nina Alviar

Cast
Jennie Kate Scott
Dan David Mills-Low
Frank Mark Metcalf

Originally produced by Montana Actor’s Theatre and represented at the Granary Theatre in March of 2012 the production was directed by Bernadette Sweeney with assistance during the Cork run from Ger Fitzgibbon. The production led to several collaborative works by Ber and myself, including the film be again, and the installation piece, without having ended.

be again is an experimental narrative film inspired by krapp’s last tape and the poetry of Samuel Beckett. It was shot in the Anselmo Mine hoist building and the upper floors of Harrington Surgical Supplies in Butte, Montana.

There was an event that happened and we cannot know what it was, but we can access it through the triangulation of artifact, language and spirit.

This installation was the culminating work in the series that began with Krapp’s Last Tape, and evolved into film with be again, then to installation work with sleepwalker no. 1. This final version used three gallery spaces running parallel to each other. In the first was a world of objects and artifacts, and during certain times of the day, two performers (myself and Salina Chatlin). The third space had no objects in it, only a six-channel video installation. It echoed the world of the first room but was meant as a mind/spirit-space where the physical could not be accessed. In between these two spaces was a third, whose walls were covered with the writings of Beckett and myself.

A modern take on the medieval morality play, with script by British Poet Laureate Carol Anne Duffy, this production was directed by Bernadette Sweeney. Video and Interactive design was accomplished by myself, Kurtis Hassinger and Drew Arrends. We used two projectors and one television set, a Kinect Infrared sensor and Isadora software.

This experimental film created by myself, cinematographer Mark Shogren and dancers Anya Cloud and Jess Mullette, was shot in an abandoned hotel in Butte, Montana. Each space in which we shot used the same parameters—shots would always be tracking left to right or on a vertical jib—I would offer a prompt to begin a sequence—the dancers would be free to improvise—there would be no music while shooting. Once the footage was assembled I edited it into five “movements.” Scoring was found at this point, which included Vivaldi, Ravel, Glass, Feldman and Haydn.

A traditional production of the Chekov classic except for the addition of three screens, two monitors and two live feed cameras. The premise of the work was to fracture the performances/characters into pieces and allow the audience to construct them from what was available. The disruption created by the juxtaposition of the image vs. physical presence was disconcerting for most audience members at first, but given time allowed them to enter the narrative space differently. The assembly of a character was often created by expanding or diminishing their scale on screen. The world of the characters also took on an isolating and isolated quality that worked well with the Chekhovian obsession with psychology and philosophy.

Set in a modified thrust space with three projectors, and translucent drapery that could be raised or lowered, this exploration of the Strindberg classic employed staging and construction techniques drawn from Viewpoints and contact improvisation. Video segments for the piece were shot after a week of improvisation driven by myself, choreographer Anya Cloud, and the actors. These were then edited and became psychological reflections of inner character states that hovered in the space during moments of transition. That the environment seemed to be an abstracted version of a asylum created a framing that allowed for an exploration that fused modern movement with actor’s versions of the period represented in the play.

Marriage of Figaro was produced in 2011 by Montana Lyric Opera and gave me a chance to work with one of my favorite designers, Denise Massman, who realized the wonderful set and costumes. An outstanding mixture of professionals, faculty and students from University of Montana with conducting by Luis Millan made this a joy.

This production for the Montana Repertory Theatre was staged on two revolving platforms that allowed for a traditionally static setting to become accessible to multiple framings and movement. Though there was no film or video involved in the production it was heavily influenced by my desire to have a stage be more responsive as though it were a moving camera. Walls we left as only frames to allow for a more psychological and interiorized view of the material.

The Stephen Sondheim musical was directed by Randy Bolton in 2019 for UM’s theatre season, with video design by myself and David Mills-Low.