Scoring the Future, Penetrating the Past: A Collaboration with Time and John Berger

Deborah Pearson, University of the Arts London

I am writing to propose a paper and creative workshop with attendees for the upcoming symposium on collaboration in Berger’s work at the University of Potsdam in Germany. In 2017 I was invited to make a short video essay about Berger’s work for a symposium at the University. I titled it “A collaboration with Time and John Berger” and focussed on the ways in which Berger’s television series About Time became a palimpsest for my own artistic preoccupations, and a memory upon which I had imposed perhaps misremembered moments that remain present in the medium of the series, if not in the message.

Following on from Berger’s writing in Berger On Drawing and in And Our Faces, My Heart Brief as Photos, I would like to continue this conversation on collaboration through time - both with those whoare no longer living (like Berger himself), and with plans or suggestions for future realities. My ownpiece The Future Showis a performance in which I read out a list of everything that will happen in myfuture, starting from the beginning of the performance and ending with my own death. In 2016 Ipublished several past versions of this show, along with a score for other performers to create their ownversions of the piece, which has happened five times to my knowledge - Megan Stuart in Canada, JoTan in Singapore, Jorge Andrade in Portugal, and two artists at the Snap Festival in Hong Kong.

In2020, I worked with young writers in Coventry to create an audio version of the Future Show score,which I then adapted in 2024 into a score for ten young performers to inhabit in a university context.This has happened with students at the University of Wollongong in Australia and Simon FraserUniversity in Canada. I am curious about how collaborations, both with those absent in the past andwith the future, are possible through documentation - be that a score, a script or a photograph. I proposeto show my video essay at the symposium, while also gathering ten attendees to create their own versionof The Future Show, followed by a group discussion about how we collaborate (or fail to collaborate)with time, through the lens of Berger’s thinking on the subject.

Deborah Pearson is a senior lecturer at University of the Arts London in their Screen School. She is also a practicing artist.