UNIT7. Performative Food -

(Syn)aesthetic Object-~Oriented Event

GIVING AND RECEIVING

THE NATURE OF EXCHANGE

Image credit to Casper Dillan.

DEBRIEF___

‘THE GIFT’

Turn it into a----- object through making/adapting, adding and by performance means. The idea is to turn waste/spent/trashed into something lasting and special, a re-generation, an upcycle, a re-purpose proposition. With purpose message and meaning. Turn this found, discarded, unloved object into something better than it ever was. A fantasy... an uncommon sense!

The first week is BA P: DP students only. We will present ‘The Gift’ to each other (and guests) and Tutors on Friday 14 Feb and to Fine Art Students on 17 Feb. IN THE WHITE LAB. What will follow will be a collective response to find trash and turn it into performative object d’ arts – love darts - and love tokens.

Monday- 10/02/20

5mins short live performance-[ FRIENDSHIP]

Performer: Han; Yinuo 

Plot Description:

[sets on fake green  grass carpet ]

Character1 laying egg position on a check-patterned skirt formed coop---a chicken crowing sound from unknown electronic device ----Character1 waked by the suspicious crowing sound and surprisingly found one dollar notes from the broken egg-- Character1 put the one dollar notes through the vending machine nearby(which made by throw-away mailing boxes)--- a lifeless-looking avatar doll (Character2) being drag out of the vending machine by character1----avatar doll being positioned upside down by character1 and dressing in a funny reversed way (hands in shoes, jackets on foot and one huge head sphere object between its too legs )---the final scene---character1 carefully removed the clothes from her avatar doll and both of them wearing different layer of cloth together--(good friends wear the same pants.) ---The Fin.

E NTRANCE

& E XIT

Tuesday-11/02/20

A short practice of how to make an "ENTRANCE" and "EXIT" of a performance

Apart from using the lighting and sound effect to inform the audience when the show starts and end also by using actor's own physics; I and Han were making our entrance like playing a man with his human trolly, I continue my last afternoon's role to help Han walking through the studio door by using her hands by lifting both her feet up. I guess it really showing our playful spirit through this exercise.

other unforgettable entrances both made by Casper and Sjourney.

Casper was entrance multip[le time through the 3 doors in the white lab and brushing his teeth with almost spitting on the floor. Well playing with audiences' nerves and curiosity with his timing-control and natural humorous.

Sjourney was simply crawling through the main entrance of the white-lab and lying still on the floor as the ending. very simple but effective in an unusual way of entrancing.

GIFT? 

 >>>1-2-1 Tutorial with Linett Kamala<<<

I showed Linett my ambitious sketchbook of design. I want the GIFT performance piece to be centered as a lighting installation piece with the under developing idea from the previous dance-collab. 

I used the objects found in my bedroom as the main components for the installation piece; the day-light light, Orchid plant pot, and the air diffuser machine. 

The time-limits will be the biggest difficulty to face right now. I've only got 2 days and a half to finish the props making, soundtracks and choreography. last but not least the lighting and sound system in the studio space needs to be tested before Friday.

Linett pointed out my worries that I have too much on my plate and I need to be FOCUS on one thing. The theme is a gift and how can I use this to link my thoughts up and successfully deliver it to the audience.

The coronavirus become the epic issue right now and I want to raise this issue up in my piece as the second priority. Casper's piece inspired me, What if I wear the 3M mask walking through the door as my entrance? What will the audiences react? 

Wed-Thursday 12/02/20

-The Virus Nightmare lower Growing out of my body-

Soap based-Orchids

 >Scene1 wearing mask appearing onto the stage

>>Scene2 breathing through the tube with blue plastic lung having on the orchid sculpture. lung exploded

>>>Scene3 soap patterned revealed with lighting projector

>>>>Scene4 interact with the lighting sculpture

>>>>>Scene5 maniacally moving in space with lighting sculpture. audience interaction

>>>>>>Scene6 slowing taking off the bathrobe and revealing the soap flower growing out of the skin. pealing it off in pain and handling over to the audience in care.

 SOUNDTRACK LINK _----------------------

THE GREAT MANA !

TUE- FRI 18/02/20

(week2)

Magician or Con-Artist?

Duvet cover as a portal to the world of synesthesia, where the difference of each individual's senses can be shared and connected and gradually transformed into one unity.  We practiced and applied a series of physical movements to showcase the morphology of the shape created by playing with the lighting and silhouette of the duvet cover into the choreography.

The idea of Duvet covers also taken from the notes of gift wrapping, as the curiosity towards the unseen always playing the best part of gift receiving. We like the audience to have the experience to fully enjoy the moment of dewrap the unknown.

Choreography Design

+ Soundtrack  Frame

 CHOREOGRAPHY & PLOT DESIGN DRAFT

Scene1: Lights on, 4 performers covered in duvet sheet and rotating in slow motion and accelerating with the music.

Scene2: Lights blackout, performers change to the second position with duvet fully extended in a rectangular shape with physical force balancing orientally. Performer one-by-one rotates their own body on all-sides while maintaining their body semi-covered by the sheet.

Scene3: Performers all standing up from the center while remaining covered by the sheet. rotate in motion.

Scene4: Yinuo crawling out of the sheet and take the lead, walking grotesquely in slow motion in the space. 

Scene5: Performers step out of the duvet cover one- by one and stoned still in their pose with water sound hint from the soundtrack.

Scene6: Wrap; Spin; Reveal with Lightings blackout.The Fin.

 SOUNDTRACK INSPIRED BY MOVIE_ ANNIHILATION  

The Shimmer- What humans called an" expanding Clear Film' so call X space. Space of unknown and uncertainty which causes fear and anxiousness from us deep inside.
The shimmer reflects everything, the light, the signals, DNA and souls.
The place is actually not the start of ending the world but a reformation: the human DNA can reconstruct freely with any species like animals, insects even plants. 

HOX GENE: The term in bio-engineering, once it starts to split it will change the status of the form inside out.

HELA cellular: The desires towards immortality. 

I was amazed by the breathtaking scenario in the shimmer, the animation, and cinematography they created in this film. and perfectly fulfilling my theory and the visionary gap in my project --the Transhumanism. Where we found the driven force always coming from the deep desire towards DANGEROUS BEAUTY.

 NEW SKILLSET GET!!!!

Soundtrack download link:

 https://soundcloud.com/yinuo-chen-749703490/artlab-manihilation-2020220-854

Friday- Presentation Performance

-BEATS ERROR

-Performers have difficulties remembering the hints from the soundtrack.

-Getting bored both mentally and physically.

  AMAZING POTATO SOUND COMPOSING PIECE!!!

SOFTWARE REFERENCE:

Feedback on Duvet Cover;

The soundtrack was a lackluster part in general. Linette noticed the movements were offbeats or vice versa. The truth was as we getting too focused on remembering the cue from soundtrack we lost our randomness and playful spirit during the performing, and the lighting cue was much easier to follow than sounds. It ends up in repetitive movement in the final part with offbeats lighting cue as well.  It was weird that actually the first rehearsal with the soundtrack on Thursday become the best experience for all performers, which we all giggling inside our little-tent and not afraid of tripping on each other.

Over-practicing may diminish the fun and freshness.

G  U  S  T  

MON-FRI 24/02/20

DOVET COVER V.2 (week3)

IMPORTANCE OF DOCUMENTATION

Jefford shows us his own recent performance piece both tips in working progress and how he documented in different versions.  Peter and Jefford later announced the paired up groups and want we help each other group to make improvements based on previous performances by having the Third eye views outside the frame during our practice in terms of lighting position and documentation for instance.

The fact is, all our group members eager to move on from the "duvet" idea.  I totally understand the importance of documentation Jefford wants us to take out from this but when we trying to further develop the duvet piece, our idea gets so tangled up, almost trapping inside and at the end of the day, we exhausted, both physically and mentally. 

Maybe the essence of our way of collaboration is "Keeping the freshness and being playful." BUT how to maintain this positive collaboration atmosphere in the studio in the long run? and as I learned from the previous dance-lab, when u during a physical practice in space, the mind automatically slows down as ur 100% physically engaging into one group practice, its a double-sided blade in this case.

How to maintain the positive energy of our collaboration become a priority.

We decided to take a break.

SPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPINSPIN

rehearsal footage link：https://vimeo.com/409323524

 The task before the next presentation --working on the transition between choreographed movements.

 Special Effect Makeup

and Bodypainting for

'Design For Dance'

- Special thanks to YANYI who invited me to participate in her project as visual MUA,  gives me the opportunity to work within a professional environment to exchange knowledge and exploring ideas with choreographers and dancers from Lambert Dance School. 

-I've been commissioned to create an artwork upon all the male dancers' upper body in order to add another layer of visual expression on their skin after the dancers choreographically ripped off their costumes during the performance. ---

All photos by me.

LATEX TESTING AND PATTERN DESIGN BASED ON INKPLOTS.

The inkpot painting inspired by Chinese Calligraphy and expressive water painting effects. I initially design the pattern on paper and transfer it digitally through photoshop mapping onto the dancers' bodies. Everything from ideas exchanges to final execution was crazy and in a rush. It was a huge challenge on both the physical and mental levels.  I have to start the design process right after the first meeting during their first dress rehearsal. As the formal event was upcoming in 2 days! 

I get the impression of the coexistence of masculinity and fragility through their choreography and the Urban boy vibes in their soundtrack mixtape. It reminds me of tattoo-covered skins. Those who get tattoos in a need of self-expression and prepare their skins as the blank canvas for their trusted tattooist. I also noticed the lackluster part in the rehearsal, for instance, the chaotic lighting color arrangement and lack of sets design from a visual director's perspective. It enhances my intuition towards adding the second layer of skin covered by expressive painting in monotone. 

During the Dress Rehearsal, Unfortunately, One Dancer got a serious allergic reaction from the latex adhesive.

We have to change the original special makeup plan into a new body painting design for the next day.

And also the white, skin-like body ornament did not show well with the lightings on stage during the rehearsal.

The colorful lightings from several angles on stage automatically EAT all the skin features

[5 hours working non-stop --Drawing patterns---Air-Drying latex ---Outlining---Contouring( make it 3d from the skin)---Sealing (stop moving makeup in movements) Repeat those stages every 2 hrs, checking on each performer.]

THE FINAL__ 

BACKSTAGE FOOTAGE: 

POSTER DESIGN

FOR ART_LAB TEAM

MON-TUE 02/03/20

(week4)

Gust-

In Greek mythology, the Anemoi, or the Winds, were the four sons of the dawn goddess, Eos, and the god of dusk, Astraeus. Boreas was the Greek god of the north wind called the cold breath of winter while Notus was the Greek god of the south wind known as the god of summer rainstorms.

Lighting  Design  

OBJECTS- snook stick/ duvet cover/ clothes display rotary shelf/ mirror sheet

Scene1:  Lights up, clothes shelf covered in duvet sheets being still in the center of the stage.

Scene2: Light switch to pure Red as Ysabel walking up to the stage, handling over the shelf and start to spin in motion. 

Scene3: Bo walking through the shelf and deconstruct the top handle of the shelf as Isabel disappear into backstage.

Scene4: Bo walking to the side reconstruct the flag preparing for the next scene and Isabel spinning the shelf with mirror reflection on the side walls.

Scene5: Bo and Ysabel spinning Flags and shelves at the same time and switch position in accelerating the motion in space. the audience may feel the wind and the soundscape created by the objects in the performers' hands.

Scene6: As Ysabel lost control of the accelerated shelf and let it hit the sidewall, meanwhile, lights switch to pure green and focus on the center stage where Bo is doing his solo spinning with utter attention from the audiences. Duvet cover gradually covered Bo Up into a mysterious triangle shape.

Scene7: Bo maintains stillness, while Kano and Ysabel slowly moving towards bo as lights switch to blue. Kano takes over the stick inside the duvet and makes the scratch noise by dragging the metal stick on the floor in a big circular shape in space. (could be walking behind the audience as the seating arranged in circular shape already) 

Scene8: Bo and Ysabel shaking the duvet under green light in motion with Kano brings up the shelf back to the stage and smoothly bring the duvet back on to the shelf again.

Scene9: All performers leaves, lights on, shelf covered in duvet sheets again in the center of the stage.

THE FIN

EXTERNAL WORK:  

BLACK BORDELLO

MUSIC VIDEO SHOOTING

Black Bordello’s single ‘Backache’ is a haunting ode to physical and mental illness, a desire for comfort whilst being unable to get out of bed. The video follows Sienna Bordello through an absurd, high society dinner party, where she involuntarily mingles, dresses-up and dines with socialite guests. Her superficial interactions with the guests play on anxieties surrounding one-sided relationships and feelings of being the other. Sienna’s performance throughout the video will allude to the expectations put upon female performers, to be sultry and beautiful - as the story progresses we will see Sienna break free from these shackles and attack the toxic environment around her.

DanceLab

\This will be an experimental workshop format of movement and dance. The project explores some fundamental questions about the dance format: what constitutes ‘dance’, and how do the roles of performer, designer, and choreographer intersect and overlap?  Dancelab involves collaboration with student dancers and choreographers from London Studio Centre. Designers, dancers, & choreographers work together, normally in the White Lab to create devised performances for an invited audience. The project will be split into weekly ‘labs’ which will each have their own lens as a theme per week. 

These lenses are Sound, Form (Object), Atmosphere and Light.

Reflection on 07/01/20

First day meeting the group, Anderson lea given out the briefing of "improvisation" as the core context for this unit and following with practice of improvisation on HITCHCOCK's movie "blackbird". Group of 8 girls with 3 dancers from outside college and the rest of us from PDP yr2. Each one of us gets a short selected video clip from 'blackbird' individually, based upon that, then improvised into their own dance movement add to the sequence and sewed up into one complete final sequence of movement by all 8 of us. \

’BLACKBIRD‘ video URL link：https://vimeo.com/409321714

Free Improvisation - Structure Improvisation.

[Freeing the body from habitual movement patterns, the emphasis of instinctual, unpredictable free movements. which also centered upon the mover is able to explore authentic feelings and inspirations.]

''5 element'' : - Setting--Character--Problem--Rising Action--Solution (controversial)


 It's nice to see how different we take on things and express ourselves through the improvisation, as the 3 girls from the dancing group, who stated they usually get used to doing what director or choreographer told them to do rather than bring in their own design and thoughts. So once the director expecting them to interact with objects on stage, they face difficulties as always be put in a passive position in one production.\\ I tried to express my ideal way of collaboration, referred to my previous collaboration in TATE, -ORANGE .with dancers, is building up a structure, like character set, and let dancers fill up the empty hole in the middle. 

SOUND OBJECT-

 Improvisation Practices.

[1.Tape 2. Daylight Lamp 3.PVC sheets 4. Pink umbrella]

Documented by Sumika.\

< MOVE bring SOUND > - tape slashing body moves

URL link：https://vimeo.com/409321849

<SOUND lead MOVE >- Gabriella, Dancer killing umbrella 

URL link：https://vimeo.com/409321912

< Instrumental BODY> Sumika, dancer tape sound objects torso and moving in space.\

Further development...

 
Library research-Bernhard.L

[ SOUND OBJECT ] J.A. Steintrager, R.Chow

post-structuralist theory\ sonic entities/ technological means of reproduction/ Pierre Schaeffer's " Objets musicaux"/ acoustic memory.

 

>>> SOUND VALLY <<<

20.01.14

Location- WhiteLab

2:40 mins duration

/Use Threads to connect the sound objects and bodies, meanwhile, those threads divide the space and create barriers to restrict the movement.

Reflection on Monday Physical theatre practice.--exploring the possibilities inside our body 

 URL Link to the full version of SOUND VALLY performance on Vimeo:

https://vimeo.com/409322070

PHYSICAL WORKSHOP

Reflective Notes:
\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\///////////////////

Trio- composition practice-

1 people standing; 1 lying down; 1 sitting

explore the mind & consciousness of the space and prop' 'set' qualities of the objects- chair &desk.

how to balance the composition of the whole performance by controlling ur own bodies while through communication by gesture and ACTION.

 

BLINDFOLD- sensory experiment/

Walking on thing thread back/forward with eyes-closed.

Following the thread lead by the other walking in the space with eyes closed.

Touching different texture lead by the other with eyes closed.

 

Transference Practice-

Try to hold and walk still with a glass full of water with no spilling a drip and exchange ur glass of water with the other cautiously with continuous eye contact.

Eating the Universe-

Eat Art is a term coined by Daniel Spoerri for art made with and involving food. The exhibition demonstrates the continuing great attraction of the topic of food as a fundamental interface of art and life and its enormous relevance up to the present day, especially against the backdrop of issues such as affluence and hunger, the anti-consumerism and anti-globalization movements, modern dietetics and cooking shows, health crazes and fast food.

The main part of the exhibition presents a wide range of more recent work that deals with the use of edible material. Cooking and eating as social and cultural performances are the starting point for Christine Bernhard’s ethnologically based research, Arpad Dobriban’s annotated banquets, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s culinary performances, as well as Dustin Ericksen’s and Mike Roger’s collection of drink containers used by artists. Sonja Alhäuser, Judith Samen and Jana Sterbakshare a sculptural interest in the sensual, strongly physical and ephemeral aesthetic qualities evident in the usage of foodstuffs.

Article reference-  https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/37407/eating-the-universe-food-in-art/

ANIMISM 

Animism encompasses the beliefs that all material phenomena have agency, that there exists no hard and fast distinction between the spiritual and physical (or material) world and that soul or spirit or sentience exists not only in humans but also in other animals, plants, rocks, geographic features such as mountains or rivers or other entities of the natural environment: water sprites, vegetation deities, tree sprites, ....

/The religious studies scholar Graham Harvey defined animism as the belief "that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others".

/The physicist Nick Herbert has argued for "quantum animism" in which mind permeates the world at every level.
/The quantum consciousness assumption, which amounts to a kind of "quantum animism" likewise asserts that consciousness is an integral part of the physical world, not an emergent property of special biological or computational systems. Since everything in the world is on some level a quantum system, this assumption requires that everything be conscious on that level. If the world is truly quantum animated, then there is an immense amount of invisible inner experience going on all around us that is presently inaccessible to humans, because our own inner lives are imprisoned inside a small quantum system, isolated deep in the meat of an animal brain.

/Werner Krieglstein wrote regarding his quantum Animism: Herbert's quantum Animism differs from traditional Animism in that it avoids assuming a dualistic model of mind and matter. Traditional dualism assumes that some kind of spirit inhabits a body and makes it move, a ghost in the machine. Herbert's quantum Animism presents the idea that every natural system has an inner life, a conscious center, from which it directs and observes its action. /SIO_POLITICAL IMPACT_Harvey opined that animism's views on personhood represented a radical challenge to the dominant perspectives of modernity, because it accords "intelligence, rationality, consciousness, volition, agency, intentionality, language and desire" to non-humans.

 <READY TO SERVE______?/>

2:12mins duration

Location: WHITELAB

Directed by YINUO 
Assisted by CATHY & GABRIELA 

URL link： https://vimeo.com/409320643

How do we perceive art made of edible materials and their specific nuances of taste? 

What happens when our mouth and tongue suddenly take center stage in the art experience?

Can artworks address the sense of taste even when the viewer has no direct physical contact with them?

Can gustatory experiences be described and translated into pictures?

Can flavor serve as a medium of artistic expression and creativity?

How post-modernism affect the way we eat????????

 'Foods under attack from two quarters. It’s under attack from the food industry, which is taking perfectly good whole foods and tricking them up into highly processed edible foodlike substances, and from nutritional science, which has over the years convinced us that we shouldn’t be paying attention to food, it’s really the nutrients that matter. And they’re trying to replace foods with antioxidants, you know, cholesterol, saturated fat, omega-3s, and that whole way of looking at food as a collection of nutrients, I think, is very destructive... Nutritionism is the prevailing ideology in the whole world of food. And it’s not a science. It is an ideology. And like most ideologies, it is a set of assumptions about how the world works that we’re totally unaware of. And nutritionism, there are a few fundamental tenets to it. One is that food is a collection of nutrients it contains. The other is that since the nutrient is the key unit and, as ordinary people, we can’t see or taste or feel nutrients, we need experts to help us design our foods and tell us how to eat'.------Michael Pollan, author of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food” 

-This nutritionist mindset would be modernist with all of that scientific reductionism, reducing food to nutritional chemicals and the intangible pleasures of food to good health, as if a meal were really a medicine.

POSTHUMANIST MENU

ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY

-EI Topo (1970)
-The Holy Mountain (1973)
-  Tusk (1980)
-Santa Sangre (1989)
- The Rainbow Thief (1990)
-The Dance of reality (2013)
- Dune (2013)
-Endless Poetry (2016)

 Marije Vogelzang.

.Marije Vogelzang imagines the future of 'plant bones' with meat-like skeletons   

Thomas Feuerstein

  |METABOLICA

 Loli Sifakaki.

16/01/20

Reflection on both -' London Studio Centre' Tuesday and Thursday white-lab physical practice.

?MEMORABLE OBJECT?

///a material thing that can be seen and touched./////

////a person or thing to which a specified action or feeling is directed.////

///a noun or noun phrase governed by an active transitive verb or by a preposition(grammar)/////////

///a data construct that provides a description of anything known to a computer( such as a piece of code) and define its method of operation.///////

////a reason for doing something, or the result you wish to achieve by doing it.//

 Giving idea a physical form

-------------movement-------body---------space-----------------------------------

 

Body disconnection- Body constrain and limitation.

she mentioned 'the discipline', and stated that I don't need to know and follow it in order to complete the task of body and objects task. I believe so. However, I still want to know the 'discipline' the 'structure' inside a dancer, physical artist. I have the desire to make sense of dance choreographed.

Maybe it is a question of, is it a matter of how we FEEL or how we THINK? to others? as an artist?

 What makes the difference between a trained dancer/ live performer and ordinary people when they use their body and movement? Apart from the result. The process of both mind and body receives the information and expresses it with body movement. I can't tell because I believe I am trapped inside an ordinary body. I have too much body limitation that constrained my thoughts and imagination.  I think the answer might explain the differences in the way we view the arts. What is the idea and logic behind one's movement?  Whether I can categorize it into expressional action and functional action? What trigger it?

Expressional action( beige eat, sex, )

 

The initial intention for me to engage with the Dance-Lab project was -

-Pushing myself out of my discipline (comfort-zone) get a fresh perspective. I used to express my idea by drawing making sculptures and tying out my thoughts on a keyboard, maybe a series of continuous actions in order to realize a final outcome.

-Make sense of a choreographer's logic and dancer's movement so I don't find the dance performance as boring as before. so I can further analyze a piece of performance at a deeper level.  [sympathetic/ omnipotent resonance.]

-seeking an ultimate freedom/ break the body limitation

-What my body can do.

 
REALITY is -

When you act, you don't think. There is no right and wrong?
The problem is the more it makes sense the more difficult to continue...

minds start to fully aware of the body, It might purposely or indirectly have an impact on the other, the viewer using the eye and mind, fully observational act in a still mode.?

How about stillness? What if one's body movement might not deliver the thoughts just cross the mind correctly?
In this sense, are those observatories become the performer as well. they were doing the right thing for not doing anything.

Where are the rules and discipline in so-called performance art and action and what the teacher trying to lead us to? -Showing the impact of an object from both inside or outside of one's body.

How body intimidation of the food taste form , digestion routine through performance////////////////

 Atmosphere 

 = ( AIR) 

'FRESH LOVE' series by Haruihiko Kawaguchi / 2016 Sony World Photography Awards

Japanese photographer Haruhiko Kawaguchi and his American girlfriend Katherine spend 10-20 seconds photographing couples that they meet in nightclubs. The couples are photographed on a kitchen floor in Tokyo, where they are arranged like household objects inside bags meant to store futons and blankets. Their bodies are then sealed inside the bag using a household vacuum that sucks out all of the air. 

Japanese electro-pop band

"World Order".

They are known for the amazing choreographed dance routines and signature robotic walk

Their performance piece reflects the important concept of Japanese working-class office culture----A common phrase “Ba no Kuuki wo Yomu”(場の空気を読む), “understanding the situation without words” or “sensing someone’s feelings” It literally means----Reading the air.

In Japan, for example, if you’re the person speaking loudly in an otherwise silent train car or talking to a client who has long since lost interest, you risk being labeled KY – a pejorative Japanese slang term that stands for “kuuki ga yomenai”, or “unable to read the air”. A big part of “reading the air” is picking up on Non-verbal cues.

“Silence is one non-verbal cue. Shifting of posture is a non-verbal cue. A social smile could be another cue,” says Matsumoto. “All of these are part of the non-verbal package that contributes to that contextual meaning.”

LEA's Physical Workshop

DANCE THROUGH UR NOSE . ? LIPS? EYELASHES? HEART ❤️ even FINGERTIPS

Lea's warm-up session-Writing words In the air with ears and nose tip.-Imagine ones' peeing their name in the snow.

 CHOREOGRAPHY

PRACTICES &

METHODOLOGY

MUSCLE MEMORIES

& MOVEMENT VOCABULARY

Muscle memory is essentially a brain-power saver– when you repeat an action for an extended period of time your brain eventually knows what to do when you need to do it, thus creating a shortcut. As a dancer, repeating the movements over and over again allows the brain to map the actions so that thinking and doing become one. A ballet dancer must attend classes at least two times a week, wherein each class the same technique exercises are performed over and over until the dancer knows what to do and when to do it. In fact, a dancer's brain becomes incredibly perceptive at noticing movements they themselves have done before.

The ability to develop muscle memory can be aided by verbal cues. When the dance teacher teaches the steps, she not only describes the movements to be done but also hums the tune and says the lyrics that go along with the movement. Eventually, all of the individual chunks come together into one dance, a simultaneous movement that most dancers don't even remember performing because the movement becomes so automatic.

As a non-professional 'dancer' like myself.  I realized maybe I will not have the time to catch up with the accumulated movement sequences as the other dancers do but what I do have are the movement sequences from everyday life, e.g Cooking, Brush my teeth, gardening. As long as we always pay attention to those ordinary moves and they can be utilized in the choreography process and then you can start building up your own unique MOVEMENT VOCABULARY.

Choreograph through 2D Image Collage

-[ collecting cut out body-figures from magazines or print-outs and manipulating into new body positions.]__ Taken from the new body positions collection and rearrange them into an ideal storyline, a great solution to visualize continuous movement.

LIGHTING INSTALLATION DESIGN  

Individual work plan for the Reading week :

Soap base / 3M Mask?/ PVC tubes/ Acrylics/ Silver Wrappings/ Aroma Diffuser/ Day Light Lamp/ Fresh Orchids/ Old School Projector/ Wires Structure/ Polymorph/ Latex/ 360 degrees Camera

anj

Journal #10 - November 2009

Hito Steyerl

In Defense of the Poor Image

The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.

The poor image is a rag or a rip; an AVI or a JPEG, a lumpen proletarian in the class society of appearances, ranked and valued according to its resolution. The poor image has been uploaded, downloaded, shared, reformatted, and reedited. It transforms quality into accessibility, exhibition value into cult value, films into clips, contemplation into distraction. The image is liberated from the vaults of cinemas and archives and thrust into digital uncertainty, at the expense of its own substance. The poor image tends towards abstraction: it is a visual idea in its very becoming.

The poor image is an illicit fifth-generation bastard of an original image. Its genealogy is dubious. Its filenames are deliberately misspelled. It often defies patrimony, national culture, or indeed copyright. It is passed on as a lure, a decoy, an index, or as a reminder of its former visual self. It mocks the promises of digital technology. Not only is it often degraded to the point of being just a hurried blur, one even doubts whether it could be called an image at all. Only digital technology could produce such a dilapidated image in the first place.

Poor images are the contemporary Wretched of the Screen, the debris of audiovisual production, the trash that washes up on the digital economies’ shores. They testify to the violent dislocation, transferrals, and displacement of images—their acceleration and circulation within the vicious cycles of audiovisual capitalism. Poor images are dragged around the globe as commodities or their effigies, as gifts or as bounty. They spread pleasure or death threats, conspiracy theories or bootlegs, resistance or stultification. Poor images show the rare, the obvious, and the unbelievable—that is, if we can still manage to decipher it.

1. Low Resolutions

In one of Woody Allen’s films the main character is out of focus. It’s not a technical problem but some sort of disease that has befallen him: his image is consistently blurred. Since Allen’s character is an actor, this becomes a major problem: he is unable to find work. His lack of definition turns into a material problem. Focus is identified as a class position, a position of ease and privilege, while being out of focus lowers one’s value as an image.

The contemporary hierarchy of images, however, is not only based on sharpness, but also and primarily on resolution. Just look at any electronics store and this system, described by Harun Farocki in a notable 2007 interview, becomes immediately apparent.In the class society of images, cinema takes on the role of a flagship store. In flagship stores high-end products are marketed in an upscale environment. More affordable derivatives of the same images circulate as DVDs, on broadcast television or online, as poor images.

Obviously, a high-resolution image looks more brilliant and impressive, more mimetic and magic, more scary and seductive than a poor one. It is more rich, so to speak. Now, even consumer formats are increasingly adapting to the tastes of cineastes and esthetes, who insisted on 35 mm film as a guarantee of pristine visuality. The insistence upon analog film as the sole medium of visual importance resounded throughout discourses on cinema, almost regardless of their ideological inflection. It never mattered that these high-end economies of film production were (and still are) firmly anchored in systems of national culture, capitalist studio production, the cult of mostly male genius, and the original version, and thus are often conservative in their very structure. Resolution was fetishized as if its lack amounted to castration of the author. The cult of film gauge dominated even independent film production. The rich image established its own set of hierarchies, with new technologies offering more and more possibilities to creatively degrade it.

2. Resurrection (as Poor Images)

But insisting on rich images also had more serious consequences. A speaker at a recent conference on the film essay refused to show clips from a piece by Humphrey Jennings because no proper film projection was available. Although there was at the speaker’s disposal a perfectly standard DVD player and video projector, the audience was left to imagine what those images might have looked like.

In this case the invisibility of the image was more or less voluntary and based on aesthetic premises. But it has a much more general equivalent based on the consequences of neoliberal policies. Twenty or even thirty years ago, the neoliberal restructuring of media production began slowly obscuring non-commercial imagery, to the point where experimental and essayistic cinema became almost invisible. As it became prohibitively expensive to keep these works circulating in cinemas, so were they also deemed too marginal to be broadcast on television. Thus they slowly disappeared not just from cinemas, but from the public sphere as well. Video essays and experimental films remained for the most part unseen save for some rare screenings in metropolitan film museums or film clubs, projected in their original resolution before disappearing again into the darkness of the archive.

This development was of course connected to the neoliberal radicalization of the concept of culture as commodity, to the commercialization of cinema, its dispersion into multiplexes, and the marginalization of independent filmmaking. It was also connected to the restructuring of global media industries and the establishment of monopolies over the audiovisual in certain countries or territories. In this way, resistant or non-conformist visual matter disappeared from the surface into an underground of alternative archives and collections, kept alive only by a network of committed organizations and individuals, who would circulate bootlegged VHS copies amongst themselves. Sources for these were extremely rare—tapes moved from hand to hand, depending on word of mouth, within circles of friends and colleagues. With the possibility to stream video online, this condition started to dramatically change. An increasing number of rare materials reappeared on publicly accessible platforms, some of them carefully curated (Ubuweb) and some just a pile of stuff (YouTube).

At present, there are at least twenty torrents of Chris Marker’s film essays available online. If you want a retrospective, you can have it. But the economy of poor images is about more than just downloads: you can keep the files, watch them again, even reedit or improve them if you think it necessary. And the results circulate. Blurred AVI files of half-forgotten masterpieces are exchanged on semi-secret P2P platforms. Clandestine cell-phone videos smuggled out of museums are broadcast on YouTube. DVDs of artists’ viewing copies are bartered. Many works of avant-garde, essayistic, and non-commercial cinema have been resurrected as poor images. Whether they like it or not.

That rare prints of militant, experimental, and classical works of cinema as well as video art reappear as poor images is significant on another level. Their situation reveals much more than the content or appearance of the images themselves: it also reveals the conditions of their marginalization, the constellation of social forces leading to their online circulation as poor images. Poor images are poor because they are not assigned any value within the class society of images—their status as illicit or degraded grants them exemption from its criteria. Their lack of resolution attests to their appropriation and displacement.

Obviously, this condition is not only connected to the neoliberal restructuring of media production and digital technology; it also has to do with the post-socialist and postcolonial restructuring of nation states, their cultures, and their archives. While some nation states are dismantled or fall apart, new cultures and traditions are invented and new histories created. This obviously also affects film archives—in many cases, a whole heritage of film prints is left without its supporting framework of national culture. As I once observed in the case of a film museum in Sarajevo, the national archive can find its next life in the form of a video-rental store. Pirate copies seep out of such archives through disorganized privatization. On the other hand, even the British Library sells off its contents online at astronomical prices.

As Kodwo Eshun has noted, poor images circulate partly in the void left by state-cinema organizations who find it too difficult to operate as a 16/35-mm archive or to maintain any kind of distribution infrastructure in the contemporary era. From this perspective, the poor image reveals the decline and degradation of the film essay, or indeed any experimental and non-commercial cinema, which in many places was made possible because the production of culture was considered a task of the state. Privatization of media production gradually grew more important than state controlled/sponsored media production. But, on the other hand, the rampant privatization of intellectual content, along with online marketing and commodification, also enable piracy and appropriation; it gives rise to the circulation of poor images.

The emergence of poor images reminds one of a classic Third Cinema manifesto, For an Imperfect Cinema, by Juan García Espinosa, written in Cuba in the late 1960s. Espinosa argues for an imperfect cinema because, in his words, “perfect cinema—technically and artistically masterful—is almost always reactionary cinema.” The imperfect cinema is one that strives to overcome the divisions of labor within class society. It merges art with life and science, blurring the distinction between consumer and producer, audience and author. It insists upon its own imperfection, is popular but not consumerist, committed without becoming bureaucratic.

In his manifesto, Espinosa also reflects on the promises of new media. He clearly predicts that the development of video technology will jeopardize the elitist position of traditional filmmakers and enable some sort of mass film production: an art of the people. Like the economy of poor images, imperfect cinema diminishes the distinctions between author and audience and merges life and art. Most of all, its visuality is resolutely compromised: blurred, amateurish, and full of artifacts.

In some way, the economy of poor images corresponds to the description of imperfect cinema, while the description of perfect cinema represents rather the concept of cinema as a flagship store. But the real and contemporary imperfect cinema is also much more ambivalent and affective than Espinosa had anticipated. On the one hand, the economy of poor images, with its immediate possibility of worldwide distribution and its ethics of remix and appropriation, enables the participation of a much larger group of producers than ever before. But this does not mean that these opportunities are only used for progressive ends. Hate speech, spam, and other rubbish make their way through digital connections as well. Digital communication has also become one of the most contested markets—a zone that has long been subjected to an ongoing original accumulation and to massive (and, to a certain extent, successful) attempts at privatization.

The networks in which poor images circulate thus constitute both a platform for a fragile new common interest and a battleground for commercial and national agendas. They contain experimental and artistic material, but also incredible amounts of porn and paranoia. While the territory of poor images allows access to excluded imagery, it is also permeated by the most advanced commodification techniques. While it enables the users’ active participation in the creation and distribution of content, it also drafts them into production. Users become the editors, critics, translators, and (co-)authors of poor images.

Poor images are thus popular images—images that can be made and seen by the many. They express all the contradictions of the contemporary crowd: its opportunism, narcissism, desire for autonomy and creation, its inability to focus or make up its mind, its constant readiness for transgression and simultaneous submission. Altogether, poor images present a snapshot of the affective condition of the crowd, its neurosis, paranoia, and fear, as well as its craving for intensity, fun, and distraction. The condition of the images speaks not only of countless transfers and reformattings, but also of the countless people who cared enough about them to convert them over and over again, to add subtitles, reedit, or upload them.

In this light, perhaps one has to redefine the value of the image, or, more precisely, to create a new perspective for it. Apart from resolution and exchange value, one might imagine another form of value defined by velocity, intensity, and spread. Poor images are poor because they are heavily compressed and travel quickly. They lose matter and gain speed. But they also express a condition of dematerialization, shared not only with the legacy of conceptual art but above all with contemporary modes of semiotic production. Capital’s semiotic turn, as described by Felix Guattari, plays in favor of the creation and dissemination of compressed and flexible data packages that can be integrated into ever-newer combinations and sequences.

This flattening-out of visual content—the concept-in-becoming of the images—positions them within a general informational turn, within economies of knowledge that tear images and their captions out of context into the swirl of permanent capitalist deterritorialization. The history of conceptual art describes this dematerialization of the art object first as a resistant move against the fetish value of visibility. Then, however, the dematerialized art object turns out to be perfectly adapted to the semioticization of capital, and thus to the conceptual turn of capitalism. In a way, the poor image is subject to a similar tension. On the one hand, it operates against the fetish value of high resolution. On the other hand, this is precisely why it also ends up being perfectly integrated into an information capitalism thriving on compressed attention spans, on impression rather than immersion, on intensity rather than contemplation, on previews rather than screenings.

But, simultaneously, a paradoxical reversal happens. The circulation of poor images creates a circuit, which fulfills the original ambitions of militant and (some) essayistic and experimental cinema—to create an alternative economy of images, an imperfect cinema existing inside as well as beyond and under commercial media streams. In the age of file-sharing, even marginalized content circulates again and reconnects dispersed worldwide audiences.

The poor image thus constructs anonymous global networks just as it creates a shared history. It builds alliances as it travels, provokes translation or mistranslation, and creates new publics and debates. By losing its visual substance it recovers some of its political punch and creates a new aura around it. This aura is no longer based on the permanence of the “original,” but on the transience of the copy. It is no longer anchored within a classical public sphere mediated and supported by the frame of the nation state or corporation, but floats on the surface of temporary and dubious data pools.15 By drifting away from the vaults of cinema, it is propelled onto new and ephemeral screens stitched together by the desires of dispersed spectators.

The circulation of poor images thus creates “visual bonds,” as Dziga Vertov once called them. This “visual bond” was, according to Vertov, supposed to link the workers of the world with each other. He imagined a sort of communist, visual, Adamic language that could not only inform or entertain, but also organize its viewers. In a sense, his dream has come true, if mostly under the rule of a global information capitalism whose audiences are linked almost in a physical sense by mutual excitement, affective attunement, and anxiety.

But there is also the circulation and production of poor images based on cell phone cameras, home computers, and unconventional forms of distribution. Its optical connections—collective editing, file sharing, or grassroots distribution circuits—reveal erratic and coincidental links between producers everywhere, which simultaneously constitute dispersed audiences.

The circulation of poor images feeds into both capitalist media assembly lines and alternative audiovisual economies. In addition to a lot of confusion and stupefaction, it also possibly creates disruptive movements of thought and affect. The circulation of poor images thus initiates another chapter in the historical genealogy of nonconformist information circuits: Vertov’s “visual bonds,” the internationalist workers pedagogies that Peter Weiss described in The Aesthetics of Resistance, the circuits of Third Cinema and Tricontinentalism, of non-aligned filmmaking and thinking. The poor image—ambivalent as its status may be—thus takes its place in the genealogy of carbon-copied pamphlets, cine-train agit-prop films, underground video magazines and other nonconformist materials, which aesthetically often used poor materials. Moreover, it reactualizes many of the historical ideas associated with these circuits, among others Vertov’s idea of the visual bond.

Imagine somebody from the past with a beret asking you, “Comrade, what is your visual bond today?”

You might answer: it is this link to the present.

The poor image embodies the afterlife of many former masterpieces of cinema and video art. It has been expelled from the sheltered paradise that cinema seems to have once been. After being kicked out of the protected and often protectionist arena of national culture, discarded from commercial circulation, these works have become travelers in a digital no-man’s land, constantly shifting their resolution and format, speed and media, sometimes even losing names and credits along the way.

Now many of these works are back—as poor images, I admit. One could of course argue that this is not the real thing, but then—please, anybody—show me this real thing.

The poor image is no longer about the real thing—the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation.

In short: it is about reality.

CIRCA MAG.

Lucy orta-
Process of transformation.

The work of Lucy Orta underlines the role of the individual within society as a social being inextricably interconnected to the needs of the group. 

Nexus Architecture/Collective Wear interventions.

picture.

Art-making become a process that is capable of building a common experience in a manner that empowers the often disadvantages crowd. The mobile shelter as a collective activity, each individual within a Collective Wear human chain becomes symbolically attached to a collective entity, so these individual panels symbolise the bringing together of a diverse group into a collective whole.

George Gessert

-Bio Hybrid Art-

"I hybridise for the pleasure of working with plants and because hybrids are various, astonishing, and wonderful in themselves..."

"someday perhaps, there will be new kinds of art spaces accommodate non-human."-----challenge the traditional sense of museum and venue.Can living things in galleries help remind people that all forms of life have intrinsic value?