Dear Colleagues, Elaine Summers founded Experimental Intermedia in 1968 in New York to provide artists working in intermedia forms with institutional support. Elaine is a filmmaker who was actively involved with the Judson Group as well. She is still going strong in her eighties and living in the loft that still serves as the headquarters for the Intermedia group. It is also the home of Phil Niblock one of the founders of the group, an intermedia sound artist as well. The group produces numereous events around the world. Also in 1968 Hans Breder founded the first Intermedia Arts Program at Iowa University granting MFA's in Intermedia. As for Dawn's question re: a movement, we are part of a continuum rather than a movement I would say. That contiuum begins as early as the Industrial Revolution and fin de siecle arts culture both in Europe and here in the US. See Rose Lee Goldberg's book on perfeomance history or Michael Rush's newer " Media Art of the late 20th Century" for the family tree. The Judson Group manifested itself as a movement by rejecting the continuum of dance and offering a replacement. That rejection is manifest in Ranier's NO Manifesto. I do not see the dance/tech community as rejecting a historical continuum, but rather embracing it, albeit often without proper credit or acknowledgement of our predecessors. Dawn, we already have a name..it is Dance. We are only a minor sub genre within the larger genre or practice of dance. As long as there is a contingency on dance, a relience on dance as that which mitigates and enunciates tehnologies then the practices which Dawn describes will always fall within the purview of dance. It was only by not dancing that the Judson Group seperated itself from the dance world, ironically only to be very quickly embraced by that same world. I think the writer Dawn is alluding to in regard to "naming" post-modern" Dance was Sally Banes. Sally was not outside the dance world, but in fact danced herself in a version of Ranier's Trio A. She was one who saw the movement unfolding from the inside and wrote about it from a unique perspective. Sally's book, Greenwich Village 1968, relates the tenor of the times in all of the arts and paints a picture of how hybrid forms, intermedia forms and POMO dance were all interlaced. If one trains as a dancer, "choreographs" and presents ones work in venues that are contectualized as dance and in short relies on the vernacular of dance however mediated one will be always and forever embedded in dance culture. The Judson Group as Elaine Summers explained it to me was in the beginning mostly concerned with the discourse surrounding thier practice, the talking that occurred every monday night followed by the showing of work by a small group of people without an outside audience. When audiences were ultimately invited the work was recontextualized and the Judson Group very shortly dissolved. Sorry for the history lesson, but if we are to as Dawn asks, be considered as any kind of movement, I hope we can be an informed one and one that honors our artistic parents. This is a good topic for discussion though and I hope to hear from some of you. Doug Dawn Stoppiello wrote: > Good luck with your performances Peter, sorry we can't see them. Let > us know how Isadora holds up. > > And I have noticed in two different posts to this list the use of the > term "intermedia" which I like a lot. Interesting. We have been > thinking about using the term 'hybrid" again after struggling with > the slash arts (dance/theater/media) for some years now. Are all the > different names we use to describe what we make confusing to people? > I am wondering if any on this list consider ourselves to be a > movement? (I know that isn't really a proper sentence) A group of > like minded folks? Do we have enough in common to "name" ourselves? > Or is that supposed to come from someone outside the group? It's like > the writer (who I forget now) that wrote about the Judson Dance > Theater and maybe was the first to call them post-modern dancers and > really talk about their processes and theories. Of course, following > the previous posts about writing maybe we better not wait for an > interested art writer to come along. We might be dead before that. > Just a thought. Has this topic already been thrashed about and I > missed it? If so, sorry to bring it up again. > > Dawn > -- > *************************** > Dawn Stoppiello > Artistic Co-Director > Troika Ranch > dawn@troikaranch.org > http://www.troikaranch.org > *************************** > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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