Testuro Utero Go! Litter Womb is a site-specific performance in-progress, reflecting on existential themes, in increasingly changing times. Presented outdoors between dusk and nightfall, a ‘separate being’ is seen inside a large transparent ball, blindly navigating from day to night, between land and water mass, followed by another anonymous figure pulling two smaller balls containing shredded single-use plastics. Intermittent walkie-talkie exchange with a guide outside is core to the soundscape as well as the spectral, absurd and surreal atmosphere of the piece.The work attempts to visually summarise the safety, isolation, and uncertainty experienced, as humans increasingly exist in bubbles. The performer’s presence is contained and protected, traversing and adapting to ever-shifting terrain. The vulnerable image echoes the challenges that we grapple with in trying to understand the world. The artist is mindful of ancient waterways, linking a site to an earlier state and am interested in anatomical/environmental ‘containment’ of water with its role vibrating through a body/landscape, contrasting the solid and the mutable. The plastics within the balls are an attempt to provide ironic ecological commentary. The first iteration of T.U.G! LW took place in a derelict sea bath, for Kirkos Ensemble’s Biosphere in Dublin. In further developing this work with Echo Echo festival in Lough Foyle Derry, later in 2021 (postponed from February when the artist performed an online talk in lieu of the live event), Bourke is keen to explore links with Cork, the southern sister city, particularly within the unchartered post-Brexit territory. Also, restriction-pending, another iteration of this work will hopefully take place as part of Cork Harbour festival around the river Lee in June.
