on rubble 

On a football pitch in East London something solemn and beautiful is taking place. Anna Hart’s solo performance has the duration of a football game with an extra six minutes and the mis-en-scene she creates under this huge sky takes the ordinary progression of late summer dusk into a meditative space. The audience concentrate on her silent action of walking across the flat pitch, however, we are ‘on rubble’ that was buried beneath this pitch after the Second World War; this material flattening of memory is contemporaneous with the rubble of war in the world now. Hackney Marshes accommodate many football pitches creating a huge open space near the city whose lights twinkle at its edge. The detailed duration and time of day for the performance feels biodynamic and at the same time the ephemeral movements of wars, dog walkers, football games suggest a kinetic pentimento.

Hart stays within the boundary of the football pitch turning with a self-consciously careful realigning of her feet at each new change of direction, as if practicing an action that is usually innate to moving. As the light levels drop a large orange moon clears the trees edging the marsh and the many rows of goal posts could be imagined as a henge from a forgotten ceremony. To spend dusk watching Hart’s silent crisscrossing summons the deep listening of a summer evening as she dissolves into the moonlit space. RC

The walking was fluid and mesmerising, deliberate but trance-like. Then as the full moon rose, from where we were sitting the bottom of your dress was in line with the trees behind you and your body literally melted into the trees and we could see your head floating along and your legs gliding, it was impossible to tell if you were walking on the ground or floating above it. It was so magical and otherworldly. I loved the way you melted into the landscape with the moonlight catching your legs arms and head at different moments, making you seem half bird, half human and you embodied such a powerful connection to nature. EJ

It was really intense - you were like a time travelling apparition. Maybe it was my night vision and the fact I was also trying to keep track of children as they wove back and forward from watching you and hanging off distant football goalposts but you kept disappearing. E said maybe you'd worn clothes that matches the grass and trees but it was a really unnerving effect. It also - even with the title and what three words really made me think of Jude Rosen's poem 'Reclamations: voices and narratives from the olympic zone'. I put excerpts in the Art of Dissent book and a part of it called 'the outdoor room' - 'Let memory reinvent us honouring this place, scoring us into the marsh's sediment, set the stones in the ground, not on a grave, to mark an outdoor room that makes us feel, at home in the city and we shall be...' 'let the marshes recreate us as they are, our recreation, in solitude and in unions: in cycling and sporting clubs, sunday football leagues-also women's-in defence of lammas lands and the cultivation of gardening societies.' HP