Category: projects

figure ground (video)

FIGURE GROUND is a movement and media work performed at movement research’s Open Performance Series. This is the video component of the performance. Documentation of the performance is available in a separate post.

The work is based on the Second Tableau (The Sacrifice) of the Joffrey Ballet/Millicent Hodson’s 1987 reconstruction of the “original” Nijinsky choreography/Roerich costume and set design for the 1913 Ballet Russe production of Le Sacre du Printemps.

At the core of this piece is a cyclical dynamic of transitioning figure and ground relationships. Ritual, sacrifice, mystery, earth, the heroic, politics of gender and technology, death and renewal are embodied by the integration, camouflaging, and collision of different musics, times, materials, cultural forms, and media.

Video Materials: original and found sound and video.

Found Video:
Festa Della Bruna, Matera, Italy

Les 100 ans du Sacre du Printemps par le théâtre Mariinski

My second best SuperHyperCube run, so far

US soldiers getting manicures

Len Lye’s Tusalava

Found Audio:
Beethoven Op. 132, Budapest Quartet

Stravinsky, Requiem Canticles

Burial, Come Down to Us (Hyperdub 2013)

Ambient music for Len Lye’s Tusalava by Andrew Pask

place and borrow

Realized in a re-purposed bank in Detroit, Place and Borrow is an interactive performance work for actor and media. The piece was developed for G. Louise Cooper, who gave the performance and installed the work in the multidisciplinary art space Grand on River as part of MicroMacro Art Biome (catalogue pdf). The video was shot by Remi Slade-Caffarel.

The basic premise of the piece is that somehow, through the process of installing the exhibit, the formerly abandoned bank has woken up to find itself an art space. It channels its dual nature through a head teller/performer and attempts both to continue its business as a bank and performance venue. This is America, 2016.

The media includes bismuth, lead, paper, string, bio-plastic, a wireless, head-mounted camera, projector, and a remote control vehicle.

A detailed description of the piece, script, and other relevant materials can be found here.

Photos of the piece can be found here.

two daiquiris withdrew into a corner

Poetry: John Berryman reading (University of Iowa in 1968) Dream Song #16, excerpt, from 77 Dream Songs.

Henry’s pelt was put on sundry walls
where it did much resemble Henry and
them persons was delighted.
Especially his long & glowing tail
by all them was admired, and visitors.
They whistled: This is it!

Golden, whilst your frozen daiquiris
whir at midnight, gleams on you his fur
& silky & black.
Mission accomplished, pal.
My molten yellow & moonless bag,
drained, hangs at rest.

Collect in the cold depths barracuda. Ay,
in Sealdah Station some possessionless
children survive to die.
The Chinese communes hum. Two daiquiris
withdrew into a corner of the gorgeous room
and one told the other a lie.

Music: Ich bin der welt abhanden gekommen from Rückert-Lieder, Gustav Mahler | LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA | Claudio Abbado | Magdalena Kožena (mezzo-soprano)

Recorded August 2009 in Lucerne, Switzerland. Published by Euroarts on DVD and Blu-Ray.

lucernefestival.ch/en/shop

Based on a text in German by Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) , no title, from Liebesfrühling, in 4. Vierter Strauß. Wiedergewonnen, no. 29

Lyrics:

I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may very well believe that I am dead!

It is of no consequence to me
Whether it thinks me dead;
I cannot deny it,
for I really am dead to the world.

I am dead to the world’s tumult,
And I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love and in my song!

[ The video is a composed of found footage from various sources ]

the ambient performance of quiet spaces

The Ambient Performance of Quiet Spaces is a site-specific exploration of experience at the border of perception and imagination. It was set in Washington DC’s McKinley Theater in the Carnegie Library and performed continually between 8pm-3am. The Carnegie Library, the first public library in Washington, was decommissioned in the late 70’s and it is now a performance and event venue.

In this work, the shared physical, public space of the library is reconfigured so that its new visitors: the audience, robotic cameras and performers are equally engaged in moments of private and public reflection. The form of the work is the active transposition of subject and object and of content and meaning between these three constituencies. This process of transposition is a reference to contemporary digital culture’s ongoing assimilation of earlier cultural forms.

Working with performer Nick Horan, we each took turns on stage, quietly reading and at times engaging with the installation. Two PTZ IP cameras were programed to scan the stage, the audience and each other, similarly pondering their environment. The resulting images were projected onto the screen behind the stage. A soundtrack composed of ambient sounds from existing public libraries, recordings of the preparation of the materials for the installation and ambient sounds from recent installations played quietly throughout the performances.

The Ambient Performance of Quiet Spaces featured an installation of various materials on the stage of the theater that included: card catalog cards, *prepared books (with tape, acetate, LEDs/electronics/code), cables, computers, projectors and IP cameras.

*prepared books included:
> James Joyce’s Ulysses containing excerpts from Emmanuel Levinas’ Totality and Infinity
> John Beecroft’s Kipling: A Selection of His Stories and Poems containing card catalog cards for books related to technology and its impact on the library system
> John B. Noss’ Man’s Religions
> Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Photo documentation

an ideal space on the frontier

maya.rouvelle Topolo 2015

click here for the complete set on Flickr

An ideal space on the frontier is a topology of events and media realized for Stazione di Topolò, July 2015. The work includes an installation/performance with mezzo-soprano Carlotta Buiatti, a musical composition, handmade musical instruments, materials found on site, drawings and video.

Inspired by the location and its history on the Italian and Slovenian border, Stazione di Topolò was an ideal space for us to continue to explore with sound, light and movement the qualities of suspension that take place on the frontier; where the essential in-betweenness of all things is evoked, with its ever present shifting perspectives, dualities and parallels.

As an installation/performance, materials (including objects found on site and media we prepared beforehand) were installed and open to the public. Performances in the space by us and mezzo-soprano Carlotta Buiatti were also scheduled, during which we would play a sound work composed of pre-recorded and live sounds made with the materials in the space. The performance would cause the materials/composition of the installation to be rearranged and would remain until the subsequent performance.

Materials: objects found on site, hand-made paper assemblages, drawings, video projection, sound (a pre-composed soundtrack of digital and analog sources, live performance on hand-made acoustic instruments, vocals by Carlotta Buiatti, cassette recorders) and programmed LEDs.

This video was developed on site and includes footage captured in Topolò as well as unpublished material from earlier maya.rouvelle projects whose content foreshadowed this work. The visual echoes between the Topolò footage and the previous work footage form an isorhythm across time and space, another frontier. As a part of the installation/performance the video was projected onto drawings positioned over found objects.

The musical composition is a cross-synthesis of different musics from different times and media organized around the theme of the project.

This video presents the work in its installation form. The accompanying sound is an edited version of the audio track that was part of the work (link above).