24 May – 6 June 2007
As an artist Jason makes tableaux vivants or stage pictures. These are performed in silence and are concerned with visual narrative and the moving image without the need for sound.
The works currently exist in the form of scripts and this Whisper residency marks a shift from making artists books of these scripts to working with performers from them. Jason will use this residency to workshop a new script based on a short story by the French author Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893).
Jason is influenced by the work of late nineteenth century theatre directors such as Dion Boucicault and David Belasco. He is also interested in the ideals of movement in the paintings of Italian Futurists such as Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini as well as pictorial composition in works such as The Wedding at Cana by Paulo Verenese.
“We have the appreciation of music without the need for visual accompaniment, books and paintings do not need a soundtrack, yet we have not learnt to appreciate the moving image without the need for sound.”
Jason ho studied BA Hons in Fine Art at Goldsmiths and MA in Film History at Birkbeck under Laura Mulvey. He also trained at the film units of the Laban Centre of Contemporary Dance in Greenwich and the National Theatre. Jason has also taken movement classes from the School of Corporeal Mime in London and from and from Beryl Morina, author of the publication Mime in Ballet. He is currently curating a show of photographs and newspaper articles for the National Theatre Archives on foreign theatre.
