[dance-tech] Re: Opening up screendance / dance tech / curatorial practices
- From: "Johannes Birringer" <Johannes.Birringer@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <MEDIA-ARTS-AND-DANCE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 30 May 2008 14:29:51 +0100
hello all:
yes, Claudia, you are right in proposing to dwell not on issues of control,
ideology and canons (and my comment was only meant as an ironic feedback to
Doug's elaborate paradigm of a kind of formalist modernism (the "painting"
analogy) -- i think the paradigm is correct for the history of mainstream
institutional curating, but bears less relevance of the kind of "talking back"
you all seem to advocate, and the kind of hybrid medium / informe I sought to
speak about. where does the talking back take place? at what festivals, and
academic conferences? through what independent organisations, and "social
networks" -- has co-curating ("co-editing") had any sliver of success,
Marlon?
I was also ironic in my use of examples (from structuralist northamerican
film), as in Doug's narrative on formalist modern canon formation and
curatorial practice of iteration (sending a curated show around the museum /
festival circuit just as dance festivals select their companies and acts and
send /spread them, or as video dance festivals make program and clusters that
go on tour ) there are in-built assumptions about the form, the properties
and aesthetics of form, the influences and traces and precursors.......and in
the publications coming from the US, for exmple, as in Judy Mitoma's
"Envisioning Dance", and perhaps in much other writing on "screen dance" /
video dance, these traces are distinct and clearly lined (who does not refer
to Maya Deren, and A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) , to Merce
Cunningham, or to The Hollywood Musical ? [and what of Hip Hop?] .......
and yes it strikes me these lineages are profoundly biased, Euro-American
form-canons, and might have not the slighest relevance for young video makers
and video dance makers in Beijing or in Belo Horizonte or Santiago or
Johannesburg.
On the other hand, the discussion about curating here has been terrific,
bringing out the discrepancies (and ideological pressures/blindnesses), and the
alternative pushes (by practitioners/curators like Jeannette or Brisa in larger
global contexts / the southern hemisphere, by Janine and her efforts).....
in terms of curating and programming, i do think it is exciting to pair or
juxtapose performances, installations, and screenings. It takes time, and
resilience and stamina to attend a festival or days on end looking at all;
I remember we had scheduled something like that during Digital Cultures (2005)
in Nottingham (http://www.digitalcultures.org/exhibits.html), and I felt
audiences were tired after day-long workshops, evening dance concerts,
symposia, and then screenings at 11:oo pm, but a good number went to lie on
the stage floor and stayed on, dreaming and wacthing , when we showcased Nuria
Font's cluster (which she brought to us from Barcelona), and Anna Douglas's
program "Motion at the Edge". The third cluster was curtailed, as our Chinese
guest was denied visa entry, I had hoped to showcase some of the latest
underground video-performance-videos from Factory 798 in Beijing. Instead I
showed an over the top Chinese camp goth ballet shot with 8 cameras which i
couldn't easily trace to anything outside of Marilyn Manson...
so, again I agree with Claudia and Doug, that more intermedia curating and more
mixed media programs will be exciting and helpful to stimulate thought and
responsiveness 9also amongst those who publish, and those who write on these
matters to get it published)
as to strategies of talking back to or setting up works towards other works in
particular kind of room with particular 'colors" ......., and picking up
Doug's "painting" analogy, it might be of interest to reflect critically on
the curatorial tactics deployed by Mr Buergel & his co-curator of Documenta XII
last summer, a rather significant art exhibition taking place every five years
with massive influence on the art world and curatorial ideologies, as can be
seen from the many publications (since World War II) released about the
exhibits and their curatorial choices.......
Last year's theme for Documenta XII was "the migration of forms"..........
regards
Johannes Birringer
DAP Lab
London
>>> Claudia wrote
Dear all
I'd like to respond to a few points that have been raised recently;
Firstly to Pascale's comment: "It is in my eyes illusory to completely
rationalise the curation process."
We need to acknowledge that there is always an intuitive aspect and taste
involved when we deal with art and its processes, no matter what aspect we are
exploring. On the other hand I think that we can - and ought to - work towards
a clearer articulation of what motivates this or that kind of program or
curation. This is not only to make things transparent, but indeed to develop
the artform, as Doug said in his excellent statement on curating.
Which brings me to the proposition of 'control' (Johannes) versus 'speaking
back' (Doug); The notion of control might not take us very far as any form of
presentation/ selection/ programming or showing 'controls' to some extend. I
believe the debate on curating aims above all at diversifying the current
international scenario and practice and in this respect a notion of 'talking
back' or dialogue seems helpful.
A film/ video/ installation work is generally conceived as a complete thing in
itself, as a discrete object, even though it always sits in a wider context and
will be informed by that context. Through the process of curation, through
placing a work in the direct context and proximity of other work, a new level
of meaning can be added to a work, meaning can be shifted significantly and
even lost and new aspects can be drawn out that the individual maker/ producer
may not have intended. In curating films cease to be the discrete object and
enter a wider stream of issues and ideas.
From an artist's point if view I think it is exciting to see what happens to a
work when it is put into a curatorial context.
As Doug indicated curating can raise issues and challenge individual practices.
An 'interdisciplinary' screening/ exhibition may contribute ideas, that
screendance at large has not explored and not explored enough. We also have
barely begun to look at bodies of work from individual screendance
practitioners, or set up an encounter between the work of two or three
screendance/ film/ video/ dance technology practictioners. As has been pointed
out already in the process of this email conversation selections focus often on
what is considered to be the Best. Has there ever been a sculpture exhibition
under the title "The best of sculpture'"? Most people would think this an
absurd proposition.
In response to Jeannette's suggestion of a 'conundrum' to me curation is an
opportunity.
I also would like to pick up on the debate around the notion of academia;
interestingly one area of public life that is hanging on to this division is
the publishing world. Publishers like to think that academics and artists do
not mix and that they do not read the same books or magazines. Is it not our
task to challenge this view? As was pointed out this division appears to rest
on a hierarchical division between those who 'think' over and above above those
who 'make'..Surely we would all argue that making is also a form of thinking.
We ought to prove the publishers wrong and make them realise that we do indeed
read the same literature and share the same discourse.
Best,
Claudia
Claudia Kappenberg
Senior Lecturer
Dance and Visual Art
School of Arts and Communication
Faculty of Arts and Architecture
University of Brighton
Grand Parade
Brighton BN2 0JY
Tel: 0044 1273 643020
-----Original Message-----
From: Media Arts and Dance on behalf of Johannes Birringer
Sent: Wed 5/28/2008 19:26
To: MEDIA-ARTS-AND-DANCE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Opening up screendance and reply to dance tech idea
*** This email has been sent from the MEDIA ARTS AND DANCE email forum. To
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hello Doug, Janine, Jeannette, Brisa, and all:
rather fascinating and eloquent reponse from Doug, I should think, i really
liked your attempt to address the curatorial practices / discourses as an
iterative practice that builds (often of course also dominates or controls, if
you think of MOMA, or the attempts at the Whitney) the "movement" of a form
(and the ideas and content approached via the form).
I take your criticism of the babblefish discorses on mocap and max/msp/jitter
as somewhat grounded but also biased; yes, there have been discussions on
technologies, new stuff, and workshops on such technologies which are also
techniques (and extended practices of choreography, interaction design, visual
form, improvisation, expression, and sensorial experience) which are being
developed and in need of further development (in their materiality), sharing,
exchange, and curatorship (as far as labs, workshops residencies are concerned
or as far as courses are concerrned in universities , institutes (ZKM) or
independent media arts organisations, such as STEIM, V2, Harvest Works,
Lemur., etc..........
But I strongly agree that discussion and exchange, in such international forum
as this (and Brisa, your comments about your work and the local contexts in
Chile and in Latin America are very interesting and immensely helpful, and
please why not write in spanish we should be able to use many languges here)
perhaps might dwell more on content and form of the movement, the kinds of new
ideas (or "classical" manifestations) that shape and re-shape the understanding
of the form. This may very well be an academic or formalist (avant-garde)
take how one wishes to frame a history , if you think of structuralist
filmmaking and would you say La Jetée or Stan Brakhage are important for the
form today? for the expanded media culture? And if Moholy-Nagy and Brakhage
were important for your understanding of the movement of the form, how does
this impact a curatorial choice for work,say, like Skoltz-Kolgen's ? Isaac
Julien's? Nicole Seiler's ? or the incredibly beautiful animations of Anouk De
Clercq?
For audiovisual or interactive installations or for 3D animations, how would
you constrain the "movement" of the forms and under what category do you look
(film:? animation? photography? music,? sound painting? visual music (Nam
June Paik), kinetic art? installation art doesn't have a long history yet,
and interactive installations, such as the group of works you can see at ZKM,
have been around for 2 decades, some may not even function anymore
today........), dance-interactive installations have not been "collected" or
sold yet and not so iterable, unfortunately.
Doug asks: what is the kind of >>work that comes out of a dance-tech
milieu..., what does it mean? What is it ultimately about? >>
We did have some longer and drawn out discussions on "Glow," for example (a
work by Chunky Move), or on Forsythe's "Atmospheric Studies," , we did discuss
ideas on the changing understanding of the formal compositional methods we were
trained in (some of us), on choreography, on interactional flow and real time
adaptation that marks some of the works under discussion (meaning is not just
one thing but can of course be constituted also experientially and sensorially
and thus resides in synesthetic and affective modalities that are being
philosophically examined now through newer phenomenologies (Hansen, Sher
Doruff; Susan Kozel's book, CLOSER, just having come out)......... etc etc.
and in the performance context we are looking at hybrid works.
and i think , reading Janine, Jeannette, Brisa, -- this is precisely where the
curatorial cover does not always work since the experimental cross media
practices now -- short and mixed up videos/short films deriving their forms
and their "informes" (to use the title of Yve-Alain Bois/Rosalind Krauss'
book) from other traditions than screendance/dance on film , music films, Dj
/VJ work, audio-visual installations, reverse engineered games & machinima --
are continuously tearing away at that cover.
Well, more needs to be said, but I stop with a brief response to Janine's idea
of a questionnaire regarding "curator practices' ---
i think this is a very good idea, (and one could also think of other current
discussions and efforts to "frame" a phenomenon, such as the practice-based
research on the postgraduate levels --- interesting here that Doug thinks the
difference between artists and academics no longer matter- -- and how knowledge
about a form or methods of knowing about hybrid forms (in cross disipline
contexts such as media arts in which many of us work) are constituted,
institutionalized and then deployed for evaluations. of art / research,
re-deployed by juries and panels on festivals, etc...
I remember that in the fall of 2006, prior to Monaco's last MDF festival and
the entries invited to what used to be called the "digital dance" section, --
Philippe Baudelot sent out a questionnaire to all those who participated.
Since the results of the questionnaire were evaluated and analysed to help us
draw conclusions from it..... it would perhaps be of interest to some of you
here .... (it might also be interesting, regarding Doug's preparations for ADF
2008, to ask oneself how quickly such a set of questions might become
[historically] dated? What do you think, Janine?
The questions from 2006 were actually meant to sort out whether choreographers
or digital art makers (who submit to festivals of this kind or any kind) still
think of their "dance making" or artmaking as something that needs to be
"qualified" as "digital" or whether the form such as choreography had already
subsumed the digital........, and how they think about the form and the
practice...........and the tools.
regards
Johannes
Johannes Birringer
DAP LAB
School of Arts
Brunel University
West London
UB8 3PH UK
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap
>>>>
Sent: Sun 5/25/2008 6:18 AM Douglas Rosenberg wrote:
Dear Pascale, Johannes, et al,
Happy to see you are all engaged in this important dialog. I would
like to offer some thoughts on questions raised in this strand. I
hope this is not too pedantic, but I am also thinking about these
issues for the upcoming ADF conference on curating.
Pascale says, "On the curation aspect, I must say I am still not sure
what the debate is. Is the core underlying question 'how do curators
select work?', 'why a focus on a theme rather than another one', etc.
It is in my eyes illusory to completely rationalise the curation
process."
Curating is quite different than arranging or programming. It relies
on a set of strategies that are intended to speak back to the form
very directly and in many cases attempts to move the form in a
particular direction. It is also about using works of art to make a
definitive statement that sometime lies outside the form, such as
disability, gender, etc. Programming seems to be a cross between the
way film festivals are often created and the way dance events are
conceived. In both cases it follows an entertainment model, a model
which is contingent on ticket sales and therefore has an agenda that
is perhaps colored by audience expectations. Programming may be done
around a theme but is still a different undertaking than curation,
with a different outcome to be sure. Curation as it is practiced in
the gallery and museum world is in the first iteration, free of
certain encumberances such as ticket sales, (galleries can be entered
without admission fee as can most museums at least once a week). In
subsequent iterations, the curator functions as an interface between
public and artists as well as assuming the responsibility for the
gestalt of the exhibition. The exhibition itself is often intended
to further iterate a particular point of view using the art objects
as a kind of text in order to do so. Some of the concerns that
Pascale raises have more to do with the jurying process, one in which
the artist does often feel "in the dark" about criteria, etc. I
think that is a different but connected issue. In a sense, we are
holding little competitions each time we jury a group of films and as
such our process should be transparent. Who are the jurors, what is
the mission, etc?
The term "screendance" is roughly the equivalent to the term
"painting". In other words, it describes a practice by its formal
characteristics in the broadest terms. The articulation of a practice
beyond those terms requires a subset of language that begins to speak
about the work in more particular terminology. That is, terminology
that begins to allude to style, content, affiliations, histories,
provenance and lineage as well as movements whether art historical,
dance historical or otherwise. To have a show of "painting" without
naming the frame of the specific works in the exhibition would be
rather rare in the art world at large. It is in that scenario, the
job of the curator to choose the paintings for inclusion and to
subsequently create a statement in the form of a catalog essay or
some other text that lays out a rationale and a frame or lens for the
show. In that essay, the curator would address why the group of
paintings was gathered and arranged in a particular way, what is the
connective tissue between the works, what are the intertexts, (in
other words, what do these works have to say to each other and to the
form?) and perhaps speak about the form itself. What is the state of
affairs in painting, does this work indicate a change in course for
the practice, does it restate an existing course, etc? While
curation per se is rare in the dance world, it has existed from time
to time as artist led practice, (Judson Church anyone?) and in the
gravitational pull of downtown dance in New York for instance as well
as the self-organizing nature of post-modern dance as it established
itself as an alternative to Modern dance. Dance was also articulated
through the modern era by writers/critics like John Martin and later
Sally Banes and others. This model is one that screendance would do
well to consider if only as a starting point.
Pascale says, "I feel that the community needs some fresh new blood
and inspiration and that just dance and film is a bit too narrow. We
end up seeing the variation of the same pieces over and over again."
Again, in the painting analogy, this would be recognized as a
movement and named, (abstract expressionist, realism, etc). We need
to begin to name the trends in screendance in order to talk about
them and encourage other visons as well. In another frame, "the same
pieces" might be referred to as "classical". As makers, and
curators, we have the ability to create the kinds of discourse
through curating and exhibiting as well as through writing that can
illuminate these ideas to the field. By curating an alternative to
the strand of work that seems too ubiquitous, and by creating an
essay that frames it, one can illuminate another set of possibilities
and move the field forward.
To speak a bit to Johannes, the "dance-tech" community (in my opinion
and with respect of course) is also guilty of a bit of obfuscation in
the use of terminology that alludes to materiality without
articulating much in the way of meaning. So we get workshops in
motion capture technologies and pieces made with same, a plethora of
discourse on the technical specifications of software/hardware/
digital spaces, second life, etc, but not much in the way of how this
all may congeal as content. Meaning is an accretion that must be
teased out of the overlaps between one media and another and given
the possibilities that abound in this technological era, the question
I often ask myself upon seeing or reading about work that comes out
of a dance-tech milieu is, what does it mean? What is it ultimately
about? Again, I would say these are questions that can be addressed
by curation and certainly by writing. And certainly screendance is
more than a subset of dance and technology differing in numerous
ways. By vocalizing this difference it may be possible to elevate
the form beyond its current state.
This summer's ADF conference focuses on the practice of curating
(curating as practice). It is a shame that more of you can not
attend to engage in this important dialog. The current scenario in
the screendance environment, in which festival models prevail and in
which films are often referred to as "the best" of a given year or
"the best" festival choices and subsequently tour the country creates
a model that is self perpetuating. If these are the best film then
as a viewer and maker, wouldn't it be logical that I would emulate
the style of work that is being granted such status? If instead,
touring programs were curated to make a number of statements that
move beyond the films and engage broader dialogs about the culture at
large, about media, about humanism, then perhaps we could move away
from the current state of the practice.
One more note about "elitism". The term "academic" has come to be
almost pejorative it seems. It is often used to differentiate between
those who make art and those who theorize or teach. The difference
is more often than not without merit. Practice and theory have
become fluid demarcations, (in my opinion they always were) which
makes the idea that only those with university affiliations can be
"academics" moot. I would offer the term intellectual in its place.
Intellectual rigor is what allows us to debate critical issue in our
field and I would hope that more of us will take part in these
conversations about the future and past of the genres we are engaged
in articulating.
Very best,
Doug
From: Media Arts and Dance on behalf of Janine Dijkmeijer Sent: Mon
5/26/2008 12:33 AM
To: MEDIA-ARTS-AND-DANCE@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc:
Subject: Opening up screendance
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Dear Doug, Johannes, Pascale and others
Very interesting points ....
I like to first introduce myself before I jump for the first time in this list
J
My name is Janine Dijkmeijer, programmer ( and curator) Cinedans Amsterdam.
See www.cinedans.nl for more information.
If cinedans and adf were not running at the same time ( beginning July) I
would love come over to have an active role in this discussion. Is it possible
to see the adf filmprogramme for the upcoming event?
Maybe I am running a head of things but I think to prepare the discussion for
adf, it would be nice if a good questionnaire is made and curators and
programmers can answer how they operate and work. A nice and easy readable
list.
I believe we have around 50 dancefilmfestivals (for now I use the term
dancefilm, but can be screendance or films about movement, or cameramovement).
We haven for sure more curators than 50. (can be anyone actually)
I think indeed we ( curators , programmers) are not that active on this list
due to many things ( question 1 maybe?)
In this way we can get a better insight.
Hopefully there will be a 'publication' made about the discussion held at ADF.
I am mostly 'programming' for the festival ( Cinedans) because we want to
present a wide range of films so we can actually make a festival! So what
happens is, we offer around 18 programmes and then the audience chooses what
they want to see. (makes a choice , a selection according to their taste and
mood).
We mainly choose from our entrees. Each year around 300. I also approach
filmmakers to enter to the festival.
Next to this I visit other film festivals, ( and follow the contemporary dance
scene)
During the year I ( co) curate work for other venues and happenings, which I
enjoy because I do not need to turn people down because their film was not
selected but actually CHOSEN!
One example is the middle east festival
http://dancingontheedge.nl/index.php?id=19 ,
For the festival this year we have a couple of guest curators:
Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst and CAPTURE
http://www.cinedans.nl/2008/en/programme.films.nimk-capture.php
Carte blanche given to Anne Teresa de Keersemaeker, William Fosythe
http://www.cinedans.nl/2008/en/programme.films.carte-blanche.php
We have screenings in China, Russia, Poland, South Africa. Beautiful to see how
the response is different in other cultures. Maybe something to discus too.
Best wishes
Janine
Janine Dijkmeijer
Cinedans
Keizersgracht 174
Kamer 201
1016 DW Amsterdam
+31(0) 642273388
info@xxxxxxxxxxx
www.cinedans.nl
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