To name

To document something we do is also to say I did that, there is a proof.

The document is usually a proof we did something, and as you all seem to recognize and admit, the document is subjective, always a point of view. I agree, there is a contradiction. There is an appeal to work on the idea of false document, the lie. The documentation of an event that never occured, the boasting of an event, document a conspiracy.

If the document is a proof, a witness, it is also from that moment going to be a reference. The reference allows us to connect things together. The multiplication of references make ideas look old. This is the contradiction of avant-garde. Since avant-garde is not anymore, not even exotic anymore, we are afraid of naming things and therefore I see a lot of the same thing being repeated but continuously altered with the color of the day, giving it a false new look. I see an avoidance of documentation in the fear that if it is documented, it might become clear that it is not as new as it was represented to be. The connection between works would become clearer and detract from their perceived originality.

The incursion of somatics in dance (Body Mind Centering, Alexander, Skinner Release...), techniques now largely used in dance is symptomatic of the end of the idea of the invented movement, as moderns (Graham, Humphrey, Limon...) were exploring. The Graham technique has a trade mark and the company tried in the past to restrict the use of this technique to themselves, with not much success. But dancers now rarely only train in a unique technique. Somatics focuses on fundamental possibilities of human movement in very detailed ways. They have been so popular because it allows dancers to navigate between techniques and approach a variety of movement and traditions with more comfort and safety. Most of the movements are now found and chosen, they are "ready-mades", they belong to the mass, to everybody.

The distance between the ready-made on stage performed by a dancer and the one experienced by people in real life is still huge, a gap that would be interesting to document.

Maybe choreography classes shouldn't be oriented towards invention of movement, towards the creation of "vocabulary". There is more interesting ways to approach choreography. Instead of creating dance, it is about creating a way of creating dance, these are scores and there is infinite room for creating new scores.

I am interested to explore ownership in dance, in performing existing scores that have been documented.

One of the beautiful score of Lia Rodrigues, an extraordinary choreographer and thinker living in Rio, Brazil. The score is simple but difficult to do. You have to enumerate every movement you do in the most detailed way, in real time.

Reconstitute a part of Trio A (Yvonne Rainer) from documents.

There is a guy who wrote a choreography, in a form of a book, and this book has been published and the choreography performed by various companies. His name is Thomas Lehman, a Berlin-based German choreographer. The book is called "Schreibstück". I should have a copy soon.

Scores of the Fluxus group.

any more ideas ?

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peeping through our windows

The latest indignity from Microsoft:
"the data collected are unique to every customer, just as human fingerprints are unique, and the issue becomes how long the company holds onto the details and whether they could become personally identifying later on"

round two

for all who can and wish to, we're writing again tomorrow at the same time (19:00 en Belgique).

drawing and other mediums also encouraged as are other languages

photo: complicity theory

the write time

invitation to all to participate in the first shared automatic writing session

Sunday, July 17 at 19:00 (Belgium)

what time is that where i am?

we write for 20 minutes, the pen doesn't stop moving, eventually repeating if necessary, use a clock , the first 10 minutes, we write about what's in front of our eyes or ears or skin or nose, after ten minutes we allow imagination, fantasy, past, future ...... to come in anyway we feel

We can share results as you want to on the blog...

thanks to Catherine for the idea and instructions!

instant memory

I was struck during the coverage of the recent bombing in London of all the cell phone pics and videos as well as the instantaneous "first-hand" accounts that were on the online news sources within seconds. Then this weekend, there was an article in the Globe and Mail that talked about this movement towards non-journalists reporting the news, recalling the "fake" tsunami photo - if it's published, it must be real, right?

But in the rush to get the scoop, how much is published in error, whether well-intentioned or not?

I'm curious about how we could use this phenomenon of "instant reporting" to create some performance scores, inevitably twisting the "news" to our own ends, viewpoints, biases...

the catalogue project

SZ catalogue sketch
Originally uploaded by kgillieson.

i am thinking about coordinating a catalogue for SZ and would like to see if anyone is interesting in participating.

first some themes around the visual identity of SZ, as it ties into the concept for the catalogue: it is about playing with forms of 'residual technology'; low-fi and old-school reproductive technologies like typewriters, photocopiers, super 8, camera film, with electronic, digital and surveillance technologies; documenting the body through residue (footprints, body parts on photocopier, etc.) and embodied interaction; and effects such as visual noise caused by reproducing reproductions (layers of graininess).

the publication concept incporates these ideas; the basic catalogue would include of a set of pages with images, interviews, blurbs & bios, screenshots from the website, etc. this basic set would be bound with front and back panels using lo-fi technology: metal pins or duo-tang fasteners, for instance. it would be hand-assembled and, crucially, expandable.

over the course of the festival we would document events, do interviews, report on performances, performers, audience, or anything else through immediate collection, (digital photos, MPEG stills, other recordings, handwritten notes from participants, typed up interviews or vignettes, fingerprinting the attendees... just kidding!) they would be put together in the form of sheets available on the next day. these could be typeset, handwritten, collaged and photocopied, anything. choice of materials (paper, plastics, cardstock, fabrics) and method of reproduction (printing, photocopy, rubber stamps, spray-painted stencils, etc.) is totally open. they just need to be the right size and have the right holes punched for insertion into the catalogue.

this means that the final publication is an 'assemblage', the possibilities for inserts is infinite, and each catalogue will be unique, the creation of the person picking up various inserts along the course of their visit to the event.

what do you think? any comments welcome. - katherine