Tracey Meek's Proposal: Spectate / Translate

Earlier in the year I accidentally stumbled on an idea for an intervention art piece. My inspiration for this was people and their many hidden lives and conversations.

I have lost count of the amount of times that I have caught the tail-end of a strangers conversation, wondered what the hell they must have been talking about, imagined where their lives take them... It has become like a sort of mini addiction for me, true you don't get the highs or the chattery teeth but there is great fun to be had in stealing snippets from strangers lives.

I wanted to share the love of this wondrous past-time and get people involved and really just see if people shared my enthusiasm for such a sport.

So, a number of illustrated tags were given out as means of documentation.

The holder of the tag was to see it not just as a bit of paper but as a mission. Their mission was to look and listen.

I have visions of people rushing straight out and furiously beginning their invasion of peoples privacy, or maybe they kept it on their person until the time came when they would catch the end of a conversation and stumble on a situation. There would of course then be a huge scramble for their tag and the scrawling of the words just then stolen from that strangers mouth. It may have been easily understood, maybe nonsensical. Either way it would be documented exactly as heard.

A few weeks later a marvelous event took place at Derby's Industrial Museum, there was music and wine and dancing and such things and sure enough the tags came back. They were called, they didn't just turn up. I then translated these 'spectations' in my own fanciful live-art type way.

Work shown at Bank Street will be a mix of the unfolding's from this event and translations since made. You may attempt to figure out which conversation goes with which illustration.

http://twitter.com/TraceyMeek

tracey_meek@yahoo.co.uk

Christopher Engdahl's Proposal

Title: An album of a dog
This slideshow is meant to be presented alongside Stella's Installation Frauen Danst Frauen. At the same space (or somewhere nearby) and for the same duration.


The work An album of a dog came out of a desire to somehow reproduce or reenact Frauen Danst Frauen. The aim was to have Stella's documented performance continue. It was important to have it remain and continue differently. As something else. Stella's dance performance thus became a photo-album. The dog, who is a part of Stella's dance piece, presents an undecidability of his/her role in Stella's reconstruction. The dog's actions and movements are accentuating any (unavoidable) unpredictability involved in dance reconstructions. In the project of dance reconstructions the dance always becomes something different. Sometimes it becomes a photo-album of a dog.

Link  to the work.


Requirements:

• A computer with internet connection (the slideshow will be played through swedance.ning.com).
• A table or plinth (for the computer to be placed on).

Note: Stella will be the person in charge of presenting An album of a dog at Pandemic.

Stella's Proposal.

Title: Frauen Danst Frauen
Video Installation
Duration: 8’ 35’’ (in loop)

No costumes, no narrative, plot, nor sense of place…
Frauen Danst Frauen is a reconstruction of Rosas Danst Rosas (1983) by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, an allegory of industrial process and of the social roles imposed on women.
Mother with daughter, sitting next to each other are copying the worker-bee movement routine. They sit down, their hair swings around their heads, they grasp onto their breasts, they stand up then sit down again, their arms reach out and retract like pistons in a copy press.
Frauen Danst Frauen is an excavation into the personal and emotional, filtered by and expressed through a purely mechanical choreography.

Requirements:
Space: A small quiet room.
Technical Requirements: A Video Projector, a DVD player, a pair of speakers.
Other requirements: A small sofa just for two spectators placed in front of the projection.

Link to the video.

Fiona's proposed project

The proposed project for Pandemic is interlinked with a year-long project which I am undertaking.  My year-long project involves documenting my memories of each day in 2011. Before going to bed I video record my memories of that day and start each recording 'Today is a day I will never forget because...'  I have found over the past 6 months that often the memory of  how I have documented the memory remains with me, rather than the memory itself.  Over time I have become occupied with how truthful I am being in my account of my memories of each day and how, even though these videos have not been made public, I am self-censoring.  This therefore begun me examining how truthful I am being in my portrayal of events in openly social media where we advertise ourselves and our activities to the world.

So for Pandemic I propose that those visiting the event will have the opportunity to donate their memories to me rather than social media or friends.  People will be invited to write their memories of that day on a piece of paper and I will then record these memories as my own, in the same way as my year-long project. The anonymity of collective memories may offer the opportunity to avoid self-censorship and the donation of the memory itself may in turn become a memory.

Requirements:
Somewhere for people to donate their memories - a table, paper and pens
Somewhere for me to record the videos - a small quite space which is well lit
(As a potential extension to the project a t.v./laptop can be placed on the table showing the video recordings)

This is designed to be an installation so the duration is flexible.

Katerina Paramana's Projects

website: http://www.katerinaparamana.com/

Performance 1
Title: METROLOGY

A whip, a carrot, a boombox. A stopwatch, a bottle, a tape-measure, fragments of text...: 34 objects, three performers. 

Metrology is a playful choreography of signs and their constantly shifting meanings. Moving on continuums between the comic and the tragic, the formal and the informal, this work constantly places the viewer in a position of rewriting the text of the performance and her understanding of it, of figuring out the rules of the system and questioning her expectations and her relationship to the work.

An apparatus of objects and performers, Metrology is constructed out of raw materials (text, objects and actions) which were extracted from pre-existing texts. These materials were then rigorously treated and entered into a new context. The systems generated produce new significations creating a new text, a new object that dialogues with that that it was and that that it becomes in the spectator’s mind. The performers function as mediators, as facilitators of this system performing tasks which are interdependent. Time is brought on the surface in the work both through the repetition and accumulation of images and tasks, but also through the physical presence of objects like a metronome and a stopwatch.

As a text the performance is made and then destabilized through the repetition, refunctioning and recontextualization of language, objects, images and actions. The viewer is invited to actively read the work, to continually see the relationships among text, objects and performers anew; to transform it and to reflect on her position as its co-author.

Metrology deals with text both as an event and as language that is rewritten, playing with and exposing its construction. It questions our ideas about what theatre is and how we watch it. It asks questions about the nature of the engagement between performers and spectators and their co-production of meaning. The possibilities of this encounter are explored through the presentation of Metrology as a system that functions within another system, that of the context of its presentation. The work gives the space and time for the viewer to explore its territory. It promises to create moments of surprise and images that will linger in the mind of the viewer long after the end of the performance. 

Technical Information: 

Duration: 36 - 40 minutes 

Space needed: Ideally the work is best presented in a space with dimensions of 8.5m width and 7.5m depth but can be adjusted to a slightly smaller space.

Technical requirements:
 - 2 microphones on stands and an exta stand (no microphone)

 - A "technician" that simply presses play and stop on a CD player and turns a floor light on and off.

 - An electrical outlet to plug in a CD player  = boombox

 - A floor light

 - I was wondering whether you might have available or you can refer me to a person / place

   in Sheffield where I may be able to find the following:    

                    - a white or black chair

                    - a table (size can be about: 120cm x 60cm or 150cm x 75cm or two tables

                      about 75 x 75cm)

Performance 2 

Title: Muddle, Muddle, Toil and Trouble: Disorder and Potentiality

This works functions like an installation. It should be available for spectators for 5 hours or more. The duration of each loop is about 35 minutes (one spectator per laptop, each spectator experiences it individually like one-to-one, but three spectators can be in the room every time)

Space: A quiet empty room

Tech Requirements: 3 laptops, 3 headphones

Per

Project-Gareth Barnes

What? Four mounted giclee printed illustrations

Dimensions? Each approx 30x40cm

Medium? Fine line pen work with digital colouring

Content? Objects and characters primarily from Japanese culture depicted in various scenes. There is no natural connection between these objects however a relationship between them is formed through the composition. Influences range from surrealism to classical printmaking. 

Below- Bang!

S.Haben Proposed Project

Amplified Music.
Some words.
E.G.

THE LUNGS OF THIS CITY 

CHOKE ON ASHEN LEAVES

TRY SPOTTING DIFFERENCES

WELL EVEN TEETH CAN DREAM

THESE WILDFIRES

THAT DEVILS LIGHT

LICKING AT YOUR FEET

ON THE EDGE OF WHAT WE DREAM

A PYRE RAISED ON FEASTING

FROM THE SMALLEST OF BEGINNINGS

like DANCERS AWAKENING

ALL THAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN

FROM THE FIRST BRONZE AGE SMELT IN THE GROUND

FURNACES LIGHT UP OUR LAND

COMBUSTION TURNS THE WHEEL AROUND

DID YOU THINK THAT WE’D JUST LIE DOWN TAME?

COURT JESTERS HERE TO PLEASE THE KING?

A HILLTOP OF RED VIOLINS

WHEN I SHOT HIM, HE JUST GOT BACK UP AGAIN

Antjes proposed projects.

Proposal One – Trio Collective

Title: TBC

Format: Video Installation

3 TV’s simultaneously playing 3 videos’s in a continuous loop 

Duration: 45 minutes (one loop)

Content: 

·         Re-construction of an interview from France/tour/detour/deux/enfants, Mouvement 3: Connu/Géométrie/Géographie – a documentary in three parts by Jean-Luc Godard

Concept:

·         To reconstruct the exact interview from the documentary asking other people the same questions as the little girl in the original.

·         To take the interview out of its specific historical/political context and to place it in our everyday context.

Process:

·         From the transcript of the interview questions we each individually took a minimum of three interviews. 

·         Because the interview is related specifically to a school we chose to interview people (our friends, family and acquaintances) who also have a direct relationship with school (teachers, students, children).

·         We devised a system of editing in which we divided the questions into groups of three. Each video proceeds in the correct order of the original interview with the interview divided and shifting between people. The interviews repeat in the video so that each interviewee’s full interview ends up being shown.

Technical requirements:

·         3 TV’s with 3 DVD players

·         3 plinths or boxes to place TV’s on

·         3 headphones

Trio Biography:

Trio is a performance collective that was formed in 2009 in London by visual and performing artists Stella Dimitrakopoulou (Greece), Antje Hildebrandt (Germany), Elena Koukoli (Greece), and Michelle K. Lynch (USA). Our work is situated between conceptual dance, performance and Live Art and is reflective of our diverse backgrounds and research. Seeking alternative ways to work together, we have formed a virtual rehearsal space that acts as a platform for collaborative performance practice (http://triocollective.wordpress.com/). Here you can find documentation, visuals and video excerpts of both completed and incomplete works.

Proposal Two – Antje Hildebrandt

Title: Open Offer for Elbow Room – A Silent Lecture Document

Format: Video and Text Installation

Two laptops are placed next to each other. One shows video documentation of a live performance. The other displays the accompanying text that was given out in form of a letter during the live performance. The two are synchronised so that a multiple and cross-lateral reading is possible.

Duration: 35 minutes

Intentionally un-spectacular, Open Offer for Elbow Room takes an ironic approach to presenting performance and its reading; playing with words, language, and political and symbolic references. On the threshold between seriousness and stupidity the performance becomes more and more sophisticated as the simple structure of the work is revealed.

Review:

'Open Offer for Elbow Room is one of those rare poetic performances that understands the necessary co-dependance of spectator and performer. Through small and subtle re-arrangments of objects and actions, the performer literally writes words and sentences in the audience's mind. Drawing on linguistics, the history of dance, performance art, and the study of consciousness, Open Offer for Elbow Room is a compelling meditation on the ways in which our thoughts can produce things, and how things can produce thoughts.'                                          

                                                      - Augusto Corrieri (Performance Artist)

Previous Live Performances:

July 2010: as part of The way we read: performance / text/ image,HOUSE Gallery,London,UK

May 2010: as part of LECTURE HALL. FREE SCHOOL., Bethnal Green Library, London, UK

June 2010: as part of ABUNDANCE – Dance and Choreography Festival, Karlstad, Sweden

Web links / Documentation:

•  http://www.youtube.com/antjehi

Technical requirements:

• 2 laptops

Biography:

Antje Hildebrandt is a London-based choreographer and performer who creates site-specific performances, installations, one-to-one encounters and theatrical works. She has a MA in Dance Theatre: The Body in Performance from Laban and a first honours degree in Dance and Arts Management from De Montfort University. Currently undertaking a PhD in the dance department at the University of Wolverhampton she is researching into concepts of the audience as author and the use of language and text in live performance. As well as working individually she often collaborates with other artists (most recently performance writer Rachel Lois Clapham) and she has worked and performed with Serbian Artistic Collective Doplgenger, Willi Dorner, Lea Anderson, Franko B and Tino Sehgal. Antje is a member of Trio, a collective of four artists who are interested in collaborative performance practice. 

Stuarts proposed projects.

“Get Some Free Will”
By Stuart Alexander © 2010

A proposed site specific work that must be created in the space that will be exhibited in. The space would ideally have a few defining features that differentiate it from a standard white cube space. If his is not possible then certain modifications can be added to the space by myself which will not detract from the original concept.

Making the work will entail standing against the wall where the first image will be hung, facing into the room. I will mark a cross where the back of my head touches the wall and then photograph into the room. The image taken will then be developed and hung on the wall where the cross is marked, so the image depicts the same view of the room if the viewer were to turn around whilst standing in front of the image. They will see the actual view that the photograph depicts. This process is continued around the room repeating all of the photographs until all of the photographs include the other photographs in the room. So the photographs not only depict the room but also the photographs in the room depicting the room. They are a reflection of themselves within the space like a mirror reflecting a mirror creating an infinite recognition and exchange. The images come to represent a larger potentially infinite space within the confined space. Initially when the viewer enters the space and sees the images together they will see their relationship in their reflection and incorporation of each other and a sense of the infinite space and promised freedom of the represented reality.

The reason that photographs have been chosen to represent the space as opposed to film or even just mirrors is that a photograph becomes a product; an object that can be sold. The reason for this is that I want to highlight that reality, in how it has come to be experienced, has been relegated to representation. That we no longer experience reality due to the idea that the media, through advertising and commodity culture has turned reality into a heavily stylised and controlled series of signs used to perpetuate the capitalist system and political agenda. And so, if the viewer has the initiative to go against the traditional system of seeing (in this case the artwork viewed in a traditional art context) and turn around with their back to the image to see the real space first hand the viewer will experience reality as opposed to the representation of the space through the image or product. The fact that the work is called “Get some free will” relates to this idea of breaking the conformity of how art is supposed to be viewed, as the artwork itself suggests to the viewer to turn their back on it. At the same time the title is meant to be humorous as, if someone is told to get free will and does, then it is not actually free will at all.

The work creates a representation of the space through its representation of itself in a way which requires a cognitive process and a decision on the part of the viewer, i.e suggested free will, by turning to stand with their back to the images. Once the decision is made on the part of the viewer to turn around, they become no longer confined by representation but free to interpret reality for themselves.