Lone Taxidermist, AKA Natalie Sharp, has called time on her Trifle project with a new video which you can watch above.
Shot by frequent collaborator Ross Blake, ‘Cornflakes’ follows a genderless figure, known as ‘Eddie Baggins’, who navigates London with extreme curiosity but without much care, or awareness, for social conventions.
Scenes flick from the inane (leisurely games of tennis, commuters passing by) to the unexpected (shaving with custard, pouring milk over flowers, cake sitting). The track itself is taken from her 2017 outing Trifle.
She threw her final Trifle-related parties on January 12 on a ‘repurposed industrial barge-turned-inflatable theatre’ as part of the London Short Film Festival.
Below, she tells us more about the video and gigs, why she’s stopped the parties and what she’s doing next.
tQ: Hi Natalie! First of all, what is going on in the video?
Natalie Sharp: The film chronicles a day in the life of the genderless ‘Eddie Baggins’, a behaviourally mis-aligned character on a never-ending quest for sensory pleasure from the local surroundings, who pays particular attention to daffodils, milk, tennis and especially ‘its’ own red hat. This video condenses what was originally a long-form moving image used as the backdrop to Lone Taxidermist’s multi-sensory live performance, showcasing debut album ‘Trifle’, to which the song ‘Cornflakes’ belongs. The ingredients of the video reflect the props and costumes used in the show not to mention the general atmosphere of uneasy filthiness.
And it’s the voyage of Eddie Baggins, a genderless chaos character so obsessed with its red beanie and whether it should be on or off the head. There’s also footage taken from the live performance of our Trifle show, featuring our friends bottoms painted pink sitting on faces, prosthetic tongues, the sexual organs of a daffodil dripping with milk which are eaten by Eddie Baggins.
I also caught some footage of your last ever Trifle party. Why was your last performance on a huge inflatable canal raft and under what looks like a giant inflatable hot dog?
NS: It was part of the opening ceremony of London Short Film Festival, The director Philip had asked me to perform inside a giant inflatable yellow Air Raft which has always been the vision for the Trifle show, it’s as close to Pat Sharp’s fun house that I got. Dream realised!
Are you stopping the Lone Taxidermist project?
NS: I’m not stopping Lone Taxidermist as such, just stopping the Trifle show which has toured for nearly two years. I think the show has been fully realised and can’t go any further, plus my back can’t handle the physical endurance of this show. I’ve already started the new project BodyVice which is all about turning your body into a device, anatomical synthesis!
What can we expect from you in the future?
NS: A Haptic playable spine that squirts spinal fluid, skinstruments – as in instruments made from skin and a room filled with scanners and magnets that will render your phones useless. This is all part of BodyVice which I’m working on with Tara Pattenden of Phantom Chips and queen Tida the Flautist. We have a lot of shows, instillations, experiments coming up this year which I can’t wait to divulge.
