John on Jessica

John Avery’s soundtrack of Forced Entertainment’s very first show Jessica in the Room of Lights, has been re-released by the appropriately named Belgian label Forced Nostalgia.

Using dialogue, taped voiceover, soundtrack and choreographed action, the performance explores a blurred storyline about a cinema usherette whose real life becomes mixed with films she’s absorbed at work. Moving from the suburbs to the city, Jessica’s story — a failed romance — is retold in contradictory versions as a form of incomplete memory.

John remembers:
“Jessica. Headlights on the ceiling. Was it always dark back then? I remember a suitcase full of torn paper, and water everywhere. I remember that every instrument and tape recorder was either broken when I started Jessica or broken when I finished. The, always too loud, TV next door somehow made its way in there too. Voices in the walls. Headlights on the ceiling. Always dark. Some things never change”.

More about John Avery and Forced Nostalgia.