Pacitti Company

Pacitti Company was formed in 1990. For well over a decade it has produced award winning international group and solo performance works, under the artistic auspices of Robert Pacitti, for a range of theatre, gallery and site specific spaces world-wide.

Drawing on a background of punk, activism, fine art and clubland Pacitti Company makes socially engaged work which presses for change. The Company is unequivocally process led and its studio-based practice forms the backbone of its operation. Through it's Research Platform and Think Tank facilities Pacitti Company members are engaged in an ongoing programme of investigation through research. This experimentation provides an extensive 'pool' of ideas, writings, images and concepts which the Company can then engage upon when developing new work.

Known primarily for its unique visual performance style, the past few years have seen a change of focus for Pacitti Company and a diversification of its outputs. Alongside the continuation of its live work, the Company also engages in applying its formal making strategies to sound and internet based projects, as well as teaching, publishing, and curating the work of others. This important plurality of practice has allowed Pacitti Company to place its theatrical vocabulary and aesthetics in new locations. This in turn has opened up new audiences for the Company's work.

THREE DUETS

 "The most 'entertaining' installation I have seen in a while"    Live Art Magazine 2003

Three Duets is a video installation with sound work and objects made for gallery spaces. On film Robert Pacitti performs three separate duets, one each with Sheila Ghelani, Juliet Robson and octogenarian Angela Rodaway.

With Sheila the pair enact a series of unusual rituals in adjacent identical hallways, seemingly suspended somewhere between the institutional and the intimately personal. Through the creation of this very formal space the viewer begins to witness the gymnastics of two minds unfolding - making manifest strings of random thoughts as if trying to trick their way out of the unbearable wait in an hospital corridor.

Juliet and Robert appear durationally in a succession of static outdoor shots to camera. Dressed in a variety of quietly outlandish costumes they present themselves repeatedly as a series of couples, her always seated in a large 1970's wicker chair, he always stood next to her, his feet obscured from view. These tableaux are gently subversive - they belie truths about the physical and sexual identity of each performer - and as such these innocent faux family portraits become highly volatile games.

The third duet presents fragments of story and memory, shared between Angela and Robert, as text. Working from audio recordings Angela's voice is turned into a series of pulses which present her narratives - a single written word at a time - in line with her speech pattern. This embodying of tales through the (re)presentation of text is a deliberate attempt to describe a friendship that exists between the younger man and older woman based not on difference but on shared politics, activism and belief.

Three Duets is a game of looking which challenges assumptions around difference. That the three film pieces are shown at the same time, alongside a deteriorated aged puppet theatre standing on a plinth, subtly begins to patchwork together musings on life, death, sex and transformation.

A Breathing Space commission. Premiered in Gallery 1 of the Arnolfini Bristol as part of the 2003 InBetweenTime Festival. Also shown in the former Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, England as part of Meanwhile.