Choreographic Lab

Working in practice intensive with Matthew Smith and Paea Leach. Go here for tumblelog.

Sunday 1 July, 6pm

£ Free. Isham Studios, University of Northampton, St George’s Avenue, Northampton
Four Acts of Violence Leading Up To Now
“… we must enter into the thickness of a duration where our memories are forged.”
Marie Cariou.

Inhabiting both web and performed worlds, Four Acts of Violence Leading Up to Now offers partial, personal and glancing perspectives on the microtraumatic impacts of time. It is at once a meditation and peering or cutting into the past, whilst acknowledging the durational slipperiness of the present.

Devised by Simon Ellis, David Corbet and Paea Leach

“Like pain, violence haunted the work as an unrepresentable presence … Four Acts was redolent with the possibility that violence had precipitated its course …”
Real Time (http://www.realtimearts.net/article/issue76/8271)

www.fouractsofviolence.net

Open Showing
As part of an Arts Council England professional development and movement research grant, Simon Ellis invited Matthew Smith and Paea Leach to visit Northampton to commence the development of a new performance/dance project. The artists would like to show, share and talk to the initial outcomes of their work. Visit http://skellis.net/research07/?cat=4 for tumblelog of the project (from June 23 onwards).

For further information concerning Four Acts & the Open Showing, visit http://skellis.net/research07/?p=6 or email Simon Ellis at simonkellis@gmail.com

At some point in time I seem to remember some discussion of nothingness. but that’s all I remember. what was the context for this?

Anyway - came across some things that might interest whoever it was discussing it!

From Thomas McEvilley (1991). Art & Discontent: Theory at the Millennium. New York: McPherson & Company Publishers.

p.86: “Works in both the Minimalist and Sublime directions, for example, exhibit an attempt to eliminate content or at least to reduce the number of contentual levels present in the work. This attempt in itself declares or acts out a new level of content; no work ever attains the zero-degree of content, since the concept of a zero-degree of content is itself a content.”

From Andre Lepecki (2006). Exhausting Dance: Performance and the politics of movement. London: Routledge. … but he’s quoting Deleuze:

p.130: “the duration of an organism’s present, or of its various presents, will vary according to the natural contractile range of its contemplative souls. In other words, fatigue is a real component of contemplation. It is correctly said that those do nothing tire themselves most” (Delueze, 1994: 77).

Thanks Gilles.

After the summer workshop was over I began learning how to use Final Cut Pro. Up until now all the loops I’d been creating had been done on iMovies. This new software allowed me to really experiment with something I’d had to use projectors to achieve up then - which was to have different or the same loops play simultaneously on different screens, so that I could see the interaction of the different visual and aural rhythms as I varied the timing and delays of their projections. With FCP’s ability to edit automatically and easily with split frames I could now start investigating this in a much more complex and compositional way. I became particularly interested in a small interaction between two of the performers (Gill and Adam) from the workshop and started taking one of the loops I’d made of them and created different juxtapositions between the loop itself in different frames and also small edits of the loop. Thus I was able to make a much longer films, with a more intricate vocal-physical-visual structures than the loops that I’d been posting on the website up to now. I began to feel I was at last beginning to create “physical-music” as I like to call it. Once I’ve worked out how to do it I will post some or the whole of the film that I edited.

In September I showed the film as it then existed to some of the Lab members (and journalist Donald Hutera who was visiting). They then fed back on it. What follows is that feedback as taken down in note form by I think two different people, though I cannot specifically remember who. I’ve decided to let it stand as it was given to me afterwards - I display it more to give some taste of an example of a feedback session between Lab members around a piece of work, because obviously without being able to view the film the feedback in itself will probably be meaningless to most readers. It may be clear from the first few notes that I told people that they didn’t have to follow any particular approach (e.g. Lehrman, Focusing..) to how they approached viewing and feeding back on the film.

————————-

(BEFORE SHOWING FILM)

GUY
Re. feedback – be relaxed. You don’t need to chose a way of feeding back, although you can use whatever approaches have been useful so far, but don’t use an approach you haven’t already used. Feedback can involve questions.

ANNA
In response to this: “What do you want from us?”

GUY
Just to see it, I haven’t shown it yet. I just want people to look. I won’t talk during feedback unless you ask me a question. You don’t have to feedback anything if you don’t want to. You could feedback later if you want to. When I feel I have enough from you then I might ask some questions of my own.

Context:
“Should I should I not?”
2 perfs – Adams Benjamin and Gill Lyons - voice/movement workshop
Capturing bits of voice/movement process
Want to write music – physical music.
“Visual-physical-music”
Feedback on use of software ok.
I will play it twice
It’s about 2 mins long

(AFTER VIEWING THE FILM)

JANE
Sometimes you let a thing establish itself for long enough for us to get it, then at other times you don’t. Is this on purpose or not? Maybe listen to it by ear.

ANNA
Was your process improvisatory? Were you composing/editing intuitively or with some overall design?

GUY
Had no notion of what it would be - I did it a bit at a time. Once something there, I would think what is the next thing. Sometimes I made a mistake and looked at it and thought that the result was brilliant for some reason.

ANNA
Its very exciting
It could complicate more
It feels like it plateau.
Maybe it’s a taste thing
I didn’t want to be lulled
Excited my senses imaginatively

ROBERT
Read and then explained
Felt like trains in the audio programme
Long train of loop/loop/loop
Dreaming into the moment
A layer of – percussion – where are the strings?
But then it changed (as screens move up and down)
Reich & Glass – early days of looping
Musicality shifting 4/4 – phasing of the loop
Additive techniques
Reductive techniques
Phasing techniques
Moved beyond Reich because it included the visual
Wanted to follow all the way round the cycle
Doing this visually – engaging with frame rather than musicality
Is there any overall structure? Logic?
Keep phasing
Then traditional period
Not guitar
End? Is this because you’re not following a particular structure
(Reading from notes)
Trying things out.

DONALD
Like Anna – I looked away
I liked that
Touch of the infinities
I’ll dip into it
Fixating on man dropping down
Woman backhand tennis
Imagining bigger/smaller
Do I need to SEE it
I like the barking dog (I heard in it)
Hip Hop
I’m dreaming in
Simple + complex at the same time
Visceral
Impulse inside my body responding
Intertextual - Bride of Frankenstein
Bits in bottles
“You said stop it” to the movie at one point
Your intervention exciting – you have relationship to them

(Various people Interested in this interaction between myself and the film when I turned it off and told the performers to stop.)

Blind summit – did w/ puppets
I had a desire to seeing you doing something with them.
Maddening, mesmerising jumping on and off.

VIDA
Read from writing ditties (Vida has these notes)

DONALD
Happy mint

SIMON
I started thinking about disabilities
Nervous ticks
Collisions between disorder of that reaching & this resonant audio
Driving audio / incompleteness of physicality
Senses
Remembers – Rock concert
Thump in my chest
Driven by audio – visual long way in the background
Liked having movement a long way away.
Liked the sense it was in between two scenes that never happen
Steve McQueen Thomas Crown Affair
First movie to use split screens
When is the next scene going to happen?
If it should?
Bradie Bunch

ANNA
The rhythm is still in me.
I know those people are improvising
That material

ROB
Do you see any potentials in how to display it
I saw it in a gallery
+ a short film on TV
Nice little thing

ANNA
Asked whether I started from a concept or was the idea technology driven
I responded about noticing the camera in rehearsal how well it captured work

SARA
Note – the affects of note taking & lab weekend
Drawn to sound
Movement of people and wanting to
See that more closely
Movement of screen and movement
Distracting – want to go in further into the movement

JANE
Struck by something like a separation…..Feel
- me from video
- in me as I experience the sound& image
These things come from the same source but my body isn’t experiencing it like that.
2nd time through – what is it that separation?
Noticing of the image in the 2nd time round of watching
I know the sound
Discomfort. Feeling of separation
A gap. Notice the gaps. Gap between R image + L image. Mismatches
Timing of images
Gap
Mismatching
Desire in me – aesthetic – why is it bothering?
Stay still image, L+R L +R L+R rather than splitting the film into three.
Then I am more content
But more irritated
Desire in me – aesthetic – why is it bothering?
Stay still image, L+R L +R L+R rather than splitting the film into three.
Then I am more content
Purely Aesthetic judgement

(Anna responds to Jane)

“Irritation”
Lurking in there is much more form
Stay & get stuck somewhere
Aesthetic of what is in the space
Compose a film piece by focussing on the audio
Formal properties of the space.
Shape fundamental to the whole piece

SIMON
Black
White
Shot in rehearsal room?
does not matter
What is it in that moment?

JANE
I would love to see it just side to side

ROBERT
Said - LCD picture frames

GUY
Irritation
Not in time
Musically right / interesting
Listening – looking & watching

ROB
Cut point at the beginning very important
1/2 way thru Adam - staggered and recovered

JANE
Continuity of space, clothes, is it possible to overcome that?
Irritability – not to do with sound

(Jane waltzes around the space)

Ad hoc
Could go form one film to the next standing rather than sitting and watching one film on its own – the with each you could in a positive way appreciate that they do go on + on + on + on
How you show it?
So technology intensive

SARA
How did we feedback being given free rein?
Guy context
Anna asked questions
Rob – writes and explains
Donald – Compared himself to Anna & ???
Vida made notes and read
Sara – trouble
Jane – I was struck by - like perf dreaming – then did irritability
Vida Playful dreaming into dreaming into possibilities for piece.
Rob – Maybe was breaking rules
Guy Happy with feedback
Different ways give variety
Difference
Space for…..
Cussing type feedback could get squeezed

GUY
One thing I forgot to do was to leave space before showing the video for people to have time if they needed to prepare themselves to view the work from a particular perspective.

JANE (VIDA?)
Remarked also to leave space after showing for the same people to prepare themselves to feedback in a particular way.

In the summer of 2006 I ran a workshop over two days with a number of dance artists (Wendy Houstoun, Pete Shenton, Adam Benjamin, Gill Lyon, Hannah Gilgren) exploring Voic(e)motion and capturing it on film. The filming was done by Paul Redman. Having worked with a singer and musician during Burst at BAC in May I wanted to shift the emphasis more towards movement and felt that using artists whose main focus was movement rather than sound would help bring this about. With this emphasis in mind I also wanted to look again at how people might interact live with edited footage.

The first day I ran a workshop and spent the evening viewing the film footage from it and quickly editing together some loops (similar to the loops already displayed on this website). The next day I continued running a workshop, but then broke off to show people the loops I had made. From this we then began projecting the loops onto a wall (just running them over and over again) and I invited people to interact with them as they liked, only suggesting that at some point I would like them to at least attempt to completely try to copy some of the loops - of themselves and/or others. They could also obviously interact with others in the room not just the footage. I wanted to see for myself what I felt about any and such interactions. Between watching people and discussing the work with them at various points, I discovered what I probably could already have envisaged – that there is some potential for interacting with these types of films in a live sense. I hope to go into this in more detail at some point. Also, I gave footage of the workshop and the film interactions to the Lab and I understand that this is going to be edited into some form that people can get access to at some point.