The Covid days have provoked

an explosion of creativity here in Bristol, local food suppliers trying to maintain their livliehood are outdoing themselves by redesignating themselves as caberet artistes/gourmet-food-deliveristes - I have ordered a wine delivery with added ukelele, there's a magic-trick vegetable person and ... my personal favourite - Disco Hummus, shiny bomber-jacketed folk in spangled flares, sound-tracked by Saturday Night Fever as they hip-wiggle their way up the street to deliver a vegetarian party

I live near a church

all of its altars, coffins, fonts etc. have been removed, it is a building pared down to stone walls, stained glass windows, a wooden floor and a high high ceiling.

Last night in the stripped church a Dutchman performed a show called Freeze.

On the centre of the wooden floor are eight knee-high mirrored glass cubes arranged in a circle. Around the cubes are stones, all kinds of shapes and sizes, some would fit in your palm, others are bigger than a big man's foot. The Dutchman stands upright in the circle. 

A body length away from the cubes are floor cushions for the audience.

A recorded voice delivers a measured narrative in a strong Dutch accent. While the voice talks the Dutchman inspects the stones, picks out one and places it with great deliberation on a cube. He finds another three or four and places them on other cubes. He then searches out a stone to pair with one of the first stones, he works at this pairing until he has made the two stones balance one on the other in a way that seemed impossible but now they have grown into each other.

The recorded voice stops, the Dutchman continues  around the cubes and the stones, placing stones together in pairs then threes, the concentration is immense and we are concentrating with him. When four stone totems are built, despite none of us moving a muscle - we are not even breathing - one of the totems  smashed down through the glass plinth. It was shocking and liberating.

Unconcerned he continued, occasionally gesturing to an audience member to pass a stone while he held a half-totem in balance. One woman stepped forward a little abruptly setting four totems smashing through their glass plinths.

It is a piece about being in the moment - it was mesmerising.

Nick Steur is touring this show



I went there with two girlfriends, we talked about the show a lot, then we talked about other things. One of the women has a husband who makes films she tells us that he now wants to write a book

He's worried about posterity, he says he wants to leave a mark

I don't want to leave a mark.

Three years ago

  
the artist known as Banksy wrote a slogan


THIS LOOKS A BIT LIKE AN ELEPHANT

on a disused water tank in Hollywood,
 
Conflicting reports circulated. The disinformation that I repeated was that a homeless man occupied the tank, Banksy's work resulted in his eviction and our heroic Banksy flew to the rescue by giving the man a home and also disowning the work so that it became devalued.

None of that turned out to be true.

An extraordinary character called Tachowa Covington, had lived in the tank for seven years but had moved out to a nearby cave before Banksy  'arted' it.


Tom Wainwright wrote a play about it

The Room In The Elephant 

An actor playing Tachowa Covington delivered an explosive monologue. Inconsistencies made it clear that this was not necessarily an account that could be relied on.

When the piece ended the story wasn't complete. We were then shown a film, a documentary made by amateur film-makers who'd met the homeless man when he was still living in the tank and had filmed him. We saw crazy, damaged Tachowa in the tank, he'd organised water, electricity, sanitation and had set up security cameras, he described how you go about making a living space in a cylinder

How you make a floor when it's curved ? you have to put ladders across that's what, make it flat. How you attached stuff to metal walls?  Magnets man you use magnets

The tank was was full of his art. The man flickered between shy child, king of the world and ranting madman, the actor had performed him brilliantly.

The film was made over a seven-year period, we see the film-makers going to his cave and showing Tachowa the news that a play is being written about him, Tachowa was then taken to Edinburgh where the show opened last year.