Turret and Snout photoreport

Last night we did the magical Tagtool session at the Freie Internationale Tankstelle, right next door from us. We had been passing by the place every day for years, curiously checking out what was going on there and trying to think of something nice we could do there. Then Ilan got the idea of doing a Tagtool collaboration, where I would draw images and Ilan would move them around. We had only collaborated on something once before, and since a bit of drama and conflict and schlepping around huge projectors is always good for maintaining a healthy relationship, I said why not.
So after living here for four and two years respectively, we finally said hello to Dida who uses the old little gas station as a studio and art space, and he thought our idea sounded fun.

We actually don’t have any documentation of the main show, where we told the story about the wee wild piggy who finds a tank in the forest, set to the tone of all the songs I could find about pigs and/or tanks that I liked.

We do have some photos from the second show we did, though, which was entirely improvised, and even more fun, anyway.

The following photos were graciously made by the very sweet Hermano Silva:

Ilan suggested I draw “Pig Island”, as described in the song by Sandra Boynton, performed by Scott Bakula(!) – my new favourite song ever …

“All over Pig Island there are piggies galore, you know that there must be a million or more. They sing piggy songs as loud as they please, and wiggle to sleep in the coconut trees …”

Then I had enough of that, and drew slightly stormier seas … Below, as projected on the huge empty wall behind our block.

This wall was what originally inspired us to make this performance. It used to have a nice, decrepit old advertisement for coal briquets, but now that it’s been fixed up and insulated, it’s all white and boring and literally screaming for projections.

Anyway, in the stormy seas, which Ilan was heaving quite convincingly, I drew a ship, and a flying piggy …

(Still image from video shot by Hermano Silva.)

Then I drew some kind of seal, and then pink tentacles, with which Ilan pulled down the ship into the abyss.

Then he kept the piggy around, and I drew a winged skull and a wolf howling at it, while Ilan rotated the skull and the piggy in the nightly sky, to which I then added stars.

(Still image from video shot by Hermano Silva.)

Then, if I remember it right, I drew a landscape around the wolf, which turned into the surface of a lake, with water lilies and a massive and very disturbing toad (which later received positive feedback from the audience). Then for some reason Ilan put the wolf upside down under the surface of the water, so I drew the fabled city Kitezh likewise upside down under the water. Meanwhile Ilan twirled it all around in some magical way.

(Still image from video shot by Ilan.)

At some point we started to see lightning in the distance, so we ended the show with rotating little planets with houses and trees on them and a sleepy piggy saying good night. I hauled the big projector off the roof like ten minutes before it started to rain. Whee, perfect timing!

The artists:

Ilan (still image from video shot by me) …

… and Tinet. (Still image from video shot by Ilan.)

Big thanks obviously to Dida, to the very nice manager of our favourite restaurant Donath across the street, who let us store the huge projector in their kitchen over the day and then came over with his little labrador puppy, to iink who built the Tagtool box, to Maki who helped us with our n00bish technical problems, to Henne from Beamaround who hooked us up with such great and inexpensive projectors, and not least to all the people who dropped by to see our pigtures.