With: Kathy HILL, Charles STEIN
Text: Gregory BATESON
Except: “Through The Looking Glass,” Lewis CARROLL

In “Why Do Things Get in a Muddle?”, HILL’s empirical inquiry into Gregory BATESON’s concept of metalogue-“a conversation about problems between people [that] mirrors the problems themselves”-employs a brilliant methodology to explore relationships between the direction of time and the order of things. A conversation between Alice in Wonderland and her father about “muddles” is constructed through the elaborate technique of reversing the character’s lines, which were originally performed backward-a double reversal that suspends meaning in an oddly disembodied objectiveness. Mirrored by precise choreography and camera movement, this astounding presentation of a child’s parable about subjective perception and its semantic paradoxes demonstrates how order is caused by rather than causes – the interlocking linearity of language, narrative, and history.

“Why Do Things Get in a Muddle? (Come on Petunia)” 1984