Borrowed Prey seeks to unveil spaces of connection/disconnection around death in our culture.
Borrowed Prey is a multi year project conceived by choreographer Carrie Ahern. It has several public components: A live, multidisciplinary performance diptych, Borrowed Prey Part I ⅈ an installation-Swaddling , a hands workshop comparing pig anatomy to human anatomy with a butcher of and a participatory fantasy burial workshop--entitled The Art of Burial.
Borrowed Prey: Part I is an investigation of our relationship to the animals that most of us consume. Bringing together 4 strands of research: hunting, butchering, and slaughtering of animals, plus the work of animal behavior scientist and autistic Dr. Temple Grandin, I am attempting to illuminate more about the true “farm to table” process and our human capacity for empathy.
Conceived, directed and performed by Carrie Ahern, Original score by Anne Hege and New Prosthetics, Text written by Temple Grandin and Carrie Ahern, Dramaturgy by Vanessa DeWolf,Set and Lighting by Jay Ryan, Costume by Naoko Nagata.
Video Excerpt by Harrison Owen, photos by Sarah Sterner
“The (Borrowed Prey/butcher) demonstration has been spectacular.”
—Jack Berkowitz
“Fascinating. I think it is really important for people to see where their food comes from and not just see a piece of bacon on a plate.””
—Manhattan resident Sarah Chiapetta
“You are the voice of the animal.”
—Jennifer Hilton
“Anyone who believes there are no meaty roles for dancers should check out “Borrowed Prey,” starting Thursday. Performed for just 20 people at a time, it’s the rare dance piece that takes place in a butcher shop. “Butchering is not all that bloody,” says Ahern, who’ll take orders for lamb chops to go, “but decomposing flesh, blood and bone does have a special smell..”
—Leigh Witchel, NY Post
“Borrowed Prey ….brought me to my knees. An engaging, boundary-pushing, and highly personal work…Ahern is a clever and highly emotive performer. Her confidence, kind calm, and earthiness fortify the inherent authority that enables her to guide the audience through the unexpected, invasive, and sometimes unpleasant elements of her show. Borrowed Prey is an ambitious, thoughtful, site-specific performance art experience. It’s a must-see …. but is not for the faint of heart.”
—Joseph Samuel Wright /Theateronline.com
“That was one of the most provocative pieces i've seen in a long time. It made me completely rethink what it means to be human…your channeling of Temple Grandin was pitch perfect; i desperately wanted to be swaddled and your cradling of the lamb at the end was an image i will never forget”
—Bob Stein
“Yet in very sensitively and skillfully absorbing and physicalizing the animal’s responses, isn’t Ahern making the animal seem humanized simply because a human is portraying it? (She must know that there’s no easy answer to that.) Her final image brings the ambiguity into sharp focus. She doesn’t rise and bow as we clap and get up to leave. She’s sitting on a stool at the rear of the workspace, holding the dead, carved-up lamb in her lap and looking down at it. Madonna and Child. The Lamb of God. Life as death. If you look behind the obvious sentimentality of the picture, it can keep you awake and thinking hard for some time”
—Deborah Jowitt—Arts Journal
“(Ahern’s) roles as researcher and dancer became fascinatingly intertwined…The result is a stunning work in which Ahern embodies both predator and prey” —Erin Cassin, Brooklyn Bugle
photo: Julie Lemberger
photo: Julie Lemberger
Borrowed Prey: Part II is the second part of Carrie Ahern's diptych about death and modern life: focusing on human beings.
Adapting video game technology to create a symbiotic relationship between movement and sound, Borrowed Prey: Part II, addresses the complicated relationship of the body to medical technology.Where cultural dying ritual seems lacking in the Western world, Borrowed Prey: Part II reveals communal rituals that promote connection. The live ensemble, dancer and choreographer Carrie Ahern, Bessie Award winning dancer Carolyn Hall and composer/musician Anne Hege use their personal experiences of the dying process to inform the rituals. The work is supported by immersive original video by Harrison Owen, set and lighting by Jay Ryan and costumes by Naoko Nagata. An intimate work viewed in-the-round, Borrowed Prey: Part II presents a practice that supports life-affirming interconnectedness as an alternative to our culture’s current sanitized end of life processes.
Premiered in NYC at Alwan for the Arts Dec 2013
photo by Julie Lemberger, video excerpt by Harrison Owen
“Borrowed Prey: Part II should be a cleaner experience but promises to be no less provocative as Ms. Ahern takes on the subject of human death, specifically its relationship to technology and the seeming lack of rituals surrounding it in the West.” ”
—The New York Times
“A long-held taboo becomes a source of transformation in Carrie Ahern’s newest piece, as the dance and performance artist invites her audience along on an odyssey through death, daring to navigate its darkest depths and chart a new course of celebration and connection”
—Erin Cassin, The Brooklyn Bugle
“It is striking how vulnerable and alone Hall seems at the beginning of the performance. But as the piece progresses, it moves from a place of isolation to one of interconnectedness, as the performers take the audience along on an evocative journey”
—Erin Cassin, The Brooklyn Bugle
photo: Harrison Owen
photo: Harrison Owen
photo: Harrison Owen
photo: Harrison Owen
This installation is an experiment in swaddling adults—which is a technique usually done with infants- inspired by the pressure stimulation or ‘human squeeze machine” of Temple Grandin. Each participant may be swaddled as long as they like. Ahern sits with each person in silence. The pressure of swaddling often induces comfort, calm, and a womb like experience for the participant, and is visually arresting for the viewer.
Swaddling occurred as part of 1067 Pacific People’s “Alternative Pleasure, Pop-Up Gesture Store”, Brooklyn NY,2014-2016, conceived by Andrea Haeneggi. After swaddling, each person must give a self-generated gesture or experience in return.
PRESS: Time Out NY
http://www.timeout.com/newyork/blog/get-swaddled-for-free-on-sunday-at-a-peculiar-pop-up
Slideshow images by Carrie Ahern
The Art of Burial is a small group experience developed and facilitated by Carrie Ahern. Each participant imagines their "fantasy burial" and then has it enacted on them. Open to anyone, no movement experience is required.
Past workshops have been held in NYC, San Francisco.Berkeley and Oakland, CA; Seattle WA and Portland, OR
Video: Dave Ratzlow
PRESS:
http://bedfordandbowery.com/2015/04/attend-your-own-funeral-via-this-fantasy-burial-workshop/