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.