dear group,
thanks, Amanda, for raising the discussion to another (more poetic and
realistic) level, but thanks also to Doug for raising the issues and to
the others for responding --- I'd like to say here that Scott's
reference to the current documentation of the Cellbytes project is
politically significant, in some sense, since the project announces that
it's
<...opening up our processes
via these web pages and by making documentation available to
researchers>
The Cellbytes website and the live transmissions make the project more
"transparent" or debatable than many that might be going on in the
scientific or artistic communities, and I think that the "Cellbytes"
teams stated its objectives quite clearly, so that Doug's question, as
to the the politics or the language used, may or may not contribute to
the debate and the critical self-reflections Scott mentions (which will
come after the practical demands?).
Cellbytes's specific project description states that they will
<< create a series of fifteen to twenty 1 to 3 minute performances for
simultaneous live and web presentation. These performances will occur
between two spaces on the same site. This staging method will enable
group process research into the structures and dramaturgical needs of
live interaction across remote stages. The methodology of
creation will be based in inter-authorship.
Cellbytes will present the detail of the bodies' own technology newly
emerging from the nature of digitalisation and its effects on
humankind. Visions of the future of the body will be explored through
emergent issues of the biological/digital interface, referencing
topical information on genomics, cloning, robotics, mutations, nano -
technology etc. >>>
Everyone on our list has already commented or thought about the rhetoric
surrounding virtual dance and "live simultaneous performance." And I
completely agree with Doug that the rhetoric about the "performing body"
in telematic or interactice space is often apolitical, generic,
obfuscating, wishywashy, whatnot. Performance of what, and for
whom?(the eyeballers, as Amanda says, where are they? excluded, invited
via the Net? you say yourself we live in parallel space-time, so there
are many eyeballers out there, perhaps the folks on the MIR are watching
us and our webcasts too). But what remedy to the generic apolitical
lexicon, Doug?
You argue:
<< A ...so-called conference call enables individuals to communicate
simultaneously from locations around the globe, (or for that matter from
space). Precisely due to the lack of a visual component, the
communication relies solely on language-based performance for the
transmission of content. All of the nuance, emotional color etc. must
be conveyed through the speakers performance of text, or we would all
agree the "conversation" goes nowhere. In telematic or web based
performance, the introduction of visual images, or the possibility of
web-casting a sort of documented performance seems to negate the
possibility of "meaningful" communication. >>>
Why so, i don't understand this?
>> It does, in a sense regress the performers ability to, using the body, articulate any issues that are able to rise to the
level of the technology that enables the performance. The idea of the
body displaced in time and space though "performing" in a present,
virtual space is not enough (in my opinion) to support the rhetoric and
hyperbole that drives much of the web-based activity we are speaking
of>>
I see a certain contradiction in your argument, unless you really
privilege text/verbal communication over physical/bodily and visual
interfaces? And in your own political remarks on "identity", "masking"
and "passing", I feel that you are not particularly clear either ( you
say that " My maleness as does my Jewishness contain issues that are not
entirely resolved within contemporary culture'), but even more
strangely, you seem to think that progressive political thought or
action concerning "identities" (gender, racial, ethnic, religious,
whatnot) would need to matter or concern "a series of fifteen to twenty
1 to 3 minute performances for simultaneous live and web presentation."
I think we might want to ask ourselves whether we have the time or the
inclination to debate our identity politics or religious beliefs while
we trying to hook up our machines and figure a way to say/dance
something interesting with our triggers and sensors in one minute (for
the tiny screens and pictures on our laptops, as Amanda described so
beautifully her post/exhilarated feelings after having created what
appeared to be an animated, simulated character. Get a life, grrl!). I
think the reason why masculinity or sexuality or race are rarely
discussed in our pages is because most of the dance or the art created
in interactive or web-based work, at this stage of the experimentations,
is formalist-cellular; i haven't seen too many books (after a hundred
years of modern dance) on black female sexuality before Ramsey Burt
wrote about Josephine Baker recently (in "Alien Bodies," which I
thought was a sci fi book), and we may have to wait a little before we
can talk aesthetics and politics and cultural impact with regard to one
minute telematic choreographies.
I like Per Platou's answer to the question about his religion, though.
Which brings me to my subject:
I wanted to say that I recently saw several African dance companies at
the Montpellier dance festival, and i remember four piece especially,
and could talk about them at great length. They were: Salia Ni Seydou"s
“Taagala, Le Voyageur” (chor. Salia Sanou), a group from
Burkina Faso; the south-african Floating Outfit Project with
“Rona” (chor. Boyrio Cokuana); the Ivory Coast company Tchetche
with “Sans Repere” (chor. Béatrice Kombe Knapa), and the very funny,
very biting piece “Daddy, I’ve seen this piece six times before and I
still don’t know why they’re hurting each other,” choreograophed by
Robyn Orlin for a racially mixed company from Johannesburg.
The reason why these dance performances (in the case of "Rona": three
dancers and two drums) left a deep and rich impression on me, and I can
remember the rhythms, some of the singing, the music, and especially the
unusual movement expressions, footwork, gestures, and facial emotions,
or the careful listening to silences in the space, present and absent
ghosts or spirits,... and the reason why i also could talk about these
performers and their black bodies and white faces (powdered), their
difference, and their strongly articulated athletic aesthetics of
contemporary African dance intermixed with specific references to local
traditions or the symbols of their elders...... the reason I could talk
about what these dances evoked is, partly, because they were substantial
(some lasted 50 or 60 minutes), and substantive, and beautifully
performed, and placed within a French festival and reception ccontext
where such African contemporary dance might be seen side by side with
Meg Stuart or Bill T. Jones or Teresa de Keersmaeker or Ralph Lemon or
Dumb Type. In other words, a distinct comparative (dance) context.
I wouldn't know where to place the workshop performances, for example,
that we are testing here at Hellerau, or the cellbytes dance
choreographies, except in the context of intermediated performances that
many on our list are interested in, but most of the work we do won't
feature much at the Montpellier or other dance festivals, it's local
(lab specific) and diffused in a different way, and there might be
reasons why a one minute cellular telematic transmission-performance or
a 3 minute improvisation with triggers and
sensors (with, quoting Cellbytes, "particular implications for the
dancers who need to adjust to several degrees of disorientation"),
remains disoriented.
1. I suggest that the "garden of exotic delights" in interactive
performance so far is not a very rich garden, the dance vocabularies
used are severely exhausted, undeveloped, often substanceless, since the
emphasis on mapping and software/hardware problems and links and
networking takes precedence over expression (not to speak of the
video/projection aspect which is also severely underdeveloped and
predictable), while many performers rely on abstract and improvised
movement within the nervous systems (re: Doug's complaint about lack of
content and "politics").
[Sad example, also, currently on view in the Dresden Museum of Hygiene's
formidable exhibition on the brain ("cosmos in the head"):
Merce Cunningham's CRWDSPCR - a stunningly hollow work that, in the
video, moves back and forth between Merce sitting in front of LifeForms,
inventing a movement possibility, and the dancers in the studio trying
them out]
2. What expression or movement language, in interactive and nervous
parameters, would physically, emotionally and intellectually stimulate
our audiences? Why don't we talk about this?
3. Amanda refers to Jennifer (Cellbytes):
<<a group working from different platforms ... the
mapping sessions are an attempt to fuse these platforms and spaces. Take
the statement from the choreographer Jennifer Tsukayama, who said:
"Instead of thinking of creating one work at a time I have to think of
creating three works at the same time.">>
A theatre of experience, not concerned with making a "perfect" or
familiar production? what would it look like in our context of
intermedia and interactive dance?
4. One of basic questions I brought with me, when arriving at Hellerau,
was why so many of us are now, in this time, preoccupied with
interactive performance? why this obsession? What does it say about our
dance aesthetics or politics? How can we convey our artistic messages
better through interactive or tele-present media?
Is it not so that (as our brain researcher, Guenter Haffelder, just told
me in a conversation) much new media artwork currently created functions
on an "autistic stage" - that is, it is severely disinterested in what
an audience actually connects with, physically, emotionally,
intellectually? What is the comparative context for the application of
emerging technologies in danceworks, the "Future Physical"
(Shinkansen)?, what is the critical positioning, except in generally
vague reference to "digitization" and its "effects on humankind" - which
is not an aesthetic reception context primarily, but a cultural,
political, and economic context.
5. The effects, I'd think, are visible in the current
micro-experimentation. We seem to work, mostly, with one minute cells,
small fragmented movement snippets (bytes), music/sound samples,
quicktime-video samples, triggered samples. A choreography of sample
streaming, or crosslinking, live mix? Apple-talk? And what could
"inter-authorship" possibly mean, apart from the fact that we work as
teams and create together, even though we may not agree on the
proportional relations between triggered samples and expressive content,
and what/how our samples mean. Or we may in fact not agree on much,
depending on where our sensibilities lie.
cheers,
Johannes Birringer
c/o Hellerau
http://www.aliennationcompany.com
OSU_Dance
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