Blogs

Hi!

Its been a while, but I wanted to share the link to download this past year's Contemporary Performance Almanac 2018. The Contemporary Performance Almanac 2018 is a crowd-funded and open-source overview of contemporary performance created or presented during the 2017/18 season available for touring now.

Here is the link!

https://contemporaryperformance.com/2019/04/09/free-download-contemporary-performance-almanac-2018/

Best,

Caden Manson

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Big Art Group

Contemporary Performance Network

Special Effects Festival

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I have been inspired by the book "This very Moment" by Barbara Dilley.

In this self published book, she offers the epic intricacies and beauty of her long artistic career as a dancer, improviser, choreographer, meditation practitioner and educator.

The book weaves stories from her years at the Cunningham Company, Judson Church, Grand Union experiments and the creation of the dance department at the Naropa University with her prolific invention of generative strategies and scores for the exploration of mind-body-space creativity and choreographic composition.

The book is an excellent recourse for the contemporary movement explorer and a heart felt and honest journey.

I had the honor to interview Barbara Dilley when she was writing the book  at a contemplative dance dance retreat.

BOOK LAUNCH AND DRINKS

Friday, 22 May 2015 from 18:00 to 20:00 (BST)

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/motion-and-representation

Matthew Fuller will host Nicolas Salazar Sutil, as part of the UK launch of the book Motion and Representation: the Language of Human Movement at Deptford Town Hall.

Their conversation will revolve around the book's main themes, i.e. the challenging relationship between movement performance and systems of formal representation (mathematical, computational, movement notational), as well as the emerging technologies and industries these systems afford. They will debate critical issues provoked by contemporary forms of motion representation, and the kind of creative interventions that help us to better understand how human movement has been both rationalised and complexified through digital languages, and how we may begin to re-think our culture of technologized movement.

The discussion will be followed by Q&A, and complementary drinks.

Nicolas Salazar Sutil is Academic Fellow in Digital Performance at the School of Performance and Cultural Industries, University of Leeds. He is the co-editor, with Sita Popat, of the book Digital Movement: Essays in Motion Technology and Performance (Palgrave), and artistic director of C8 Project (www.salazarsutil.net).

Matthew Fuller is Professor of Cultural Studies at the Digital Culture Unit, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies in Art and Technoculture (MIT Press), Software Studies (MIT Press),  and, with Andrew Goffey, of Evil Media (MIT Press) as well as Behind the Blip: Essays on the Culture of Software and other books. 

This event is organised by Digital Culture Unit, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths College

To event:

http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/motion-and-representation-book-launch-and-drinks-tickets-16579445568

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of Fluxus—the international laboratory of art, architecture, design and music—Swinburne University of Technology has released a free digital copy of The Fluxus Reader. 

Fluxus began in the 1950s as a loose, international community of artists, architects, composers and designers. By the 1960s, Fluxus had become a laboratory of ideas and an arena for artistic experimentation in Europe, Asia and the United States. Described as ‘the most radical and experimental art movement of the 1960s’, Fluxus has challenged conventional thinking on art and culture for half a century. Fluxus artists had a central role in the birth of such key contemporary art forms as concept art, installation, performance art, intermedia and video. Despite this influence, the scope and scale of this unique phenomenon have made it difficult to explain Fluxus in normative historical and critical terms. 

In The Fluxus Reader, editor Ken Friedman offers the first comprehensive overview of this challenging and controversial group. The Fluxus Reader is written by leading scholars and experts from Europe, the United States and Australia.

First published in 1998, the book was out of print for several years and only available from rare book dealers and galleries. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fluxus in 2012, Swinburne University arranged for a complete digital edition in PDF format, copy-enabled with full search features.

To download The Fluxus Reader please visit
hdl.handle.net/1959.3/42234 

Visit CQ Online Journal and CI Webtexts to find additional writings as well as extended versions of those in the print journal.

Moving Without A Body
Digital Philosophy and Choreographic Thoughts
By Stamatia Portanova
Overview
Digital technologies offer the possibility of capturing, storing, and manipulating movement, abstracting it from the body and transforming it into numerical information. In Moving without a Body, Stamatia Portanova considers what really happens when the physicality of movement is translated into a numerical code by a technological system. Drawing on the radical empiricism of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead, she argues that this does not amount to a technical assessment of software’s capacity to record motion but requires a philosophical rethinking of what movement itself is, or can become.

Discussing the development of different audiovisual tools and the shift from analog to digital, she focuses on some choreographic realizations of this evolution, including works by Loie Fuller and Merce Cunningham. Throughout, Portanova considers these technologies and dances as ways to think—rather than just perform or perceive—movement. She distinguishes the choreographic thought from the performance: a body performs a movement, and a mind thinks or choreographs a dance. Similarly, she sees the move from analog to digital as a shift in conception rather than simply in technical realization. Analyzing choreographic technologies for their capacity to redesign the way movement is thought, Moving without a Body offers an ambitiously conceived reflection on the ontological implications of the encounter between movement and technological systems.

Stamatia Portanova choreographs technology, media, dance, and philosophy together to make a brilliant, multilayered account of contemporary culture and the changes and possibilities brought by the floods of computation. This is a book full of sensual abstraction and lucid, rigorous bodies: an inspiration!”
—Matthew Fuller, David Gee Reader in Digital Media, Digital Culture Unit, Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London

“Moving without a Body is a book about choreography, and about the use of digital technologies in contemporary dance. But beyond this, the book also offers a deeply original discussion of the relations between body and mind, between analog and digital, and between the fluidity of the organic and the algorithmic complexity of software. These pairs of terms should not be seen as opposites; for Stamatia Portanova demonstrates the fertile creativity that arises from their intertwining.”
—Steven Shaviro, DeRoy Professor of English, Wayne State University; author of Without Critiera: Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics

“In the increasingly rich literature exploring the intersections between contemporary dance and philosophy, Stamatia Portanova’s Moving without a Body stands out as a true achievement. Investigating the digital as metaphor of thought, Portanova shows how choreography is not only concerned with the creation of artistic works, or with the implementation of training techniques, but reveals itself to be also, and importantly, an ‘abstractive perspective’ that forces us into thought—as Deleuze would say.”
—André Lepecki, Associate Professor, Department of Performance Studies, New York University

Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason , Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Contexts (Intellect, 2012)

A key interdisciplinary concept in our understanding of social interaction across creative and cultural practices, kinesthetic empathy describes the ability to experience empathy merely by observing the movements of another human being. Encouraging readers to sidestep the methodological and disciplinary boundaries associated with the arts and sciences, Kinesthetic Empathy in Creative and Cultural Practices offers innovative and critical perspectives on topics ranging from art to sport, film to physical therapy.

@ Intellect’s website http://bit.ly/PcpPbk

@University of Chicago’s website http://bit.ly/NBA3m6

@ Amazon http://amzn.to/MfzWex

Acknowledgements

Foreword

     Amelia Jones

Introduction

     Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason

Part I: Mirroring Movements: Empathy and Social Interactions

Introduction

     Dee Reynolds

1. Knowing Me, Knowing You: Autism, Kinesthetic Empathy and Applied Performance

     Nicola Shaughnessy

2. Kinesthetic Empathy and Movement Metaphor in Dance Movement Psychotherapy

     Bonnie Meekums

3. Affective Responses to Everyday Actions

     Amy E. Hayes and Steven P. Tipper

Part II: Kinesthetic Engagement: Embodied Responses and Intersubjectivity

Introduction

     Dee Reynolds

4. Cinematic Empathy: Spectator Involvement in the Film Experience

     Adriano D'Aloia

5. Musical Group Interaction, Intersubjectivity and Merged Subjectivity

     Tal-Chen Rabinowitch, Ian Cross and Pamela Burnard

6. Kinesthetic Empathy and the Dance's Body: From Emotion to Affect

     Dee Reynolds

Part III: Kinesthetic Impact: Performance and Embodied Engagement

Introduction

     Matthew Reason

7. Kinesthetic Empathy in Charlie Chaplin's Silent Films

     Guillemette Bolens

8. Effort and Empathy: Engaging with Film Performance

     Lucy Fife Donaldson

9. Breaking the Distance: Empathy and Ethical Awareness in Performance

     Rose Parekh-Gaihede

Part IV: Artistic Enquiries: Kinesthetic Empathy and Practice-Based Research

Introduction

     Matthew Reason

10. Re-Thinking Stillness: Empathetic Experiences of Stillness in Performance and Sculpture

     Victoria Gray

11. Empathy and Exchange: Audience Experiences of Scenography

     Joslin McKinney

12. Photography and the Representation of Kinesthetic Empathy

     Matthew Reason, with photographs by Chris Nash

Part V: Technological Practices: Kinesthetic Empathy in Virtual and Interactive Environments

Introduction

     Dee Reynolds

13. The Poetics of Motion Capture and Visualisation Techniques: The Differences between Watching Real and Virtual Dancing Bodies

     Sarah Whatley

14. Interactive Multimedia Performance and the Audience's Experience of Kinesthetic Empathy

     Brian Knoth

15. Kinesthetic Empathy Interaction: Exploring the Concept of Psychomotor Abilities and Kinesthetic Empathy in Designing Interactive Sports Equipment

     Maiken Hillerup Fogtmann

Conclusion

     Dee Reynolds and Matthew Reason

Notes on Contributors

Index

RELEASE OF THE BOOK

”TERPSICHORE IN ZEROES AND ONES.

ESSAYS ON VIDEODANCE”

THURSDAY 27^th MAY, 7PM

at CCEBA (Cultural Centre of Spain in Buenos Aires),

Paraná 1159

"Terpsichore in zeroes and ones. Essays on Videodance" is the first collection of articles published in Spanish about this particular art form, questioning its own and complex grammar.

The book will be presented to the public on Thursday 27th May at 7PM at the Cultural Centre of Spain in Buenos Aires (CCEBA), Paraná 1159. Jointly co-edited by Guadalquivir Publishing House, the CCEBA and the International Festival VideoDanzaBA, and compiled by Susana Temperley and Silvina Szperling, this publication is the result of the first two editions of the International Symposium on Videodance (2007/2009), also featuring some other essays, yet unpublished in Argentina.

The presentation will be complemented with the interactive performance

S P E A K 3. 0, by Alejandra Ceriani, Fabián Kesler and Fabricio Costa Alisedo.

Authors: Prologues by Silvina Szperling and Rodrigo Alonso.

Authors of the essays (in order of appearance): Oscar Traversa (Arg); Ivani Santana (Br); Alejandra Vignolo (Arg); Claudia Sánchez (Arg); Alejandra Ceriani (Arg); Laura Papa (Arg); Paulo Caldas (Br); Simon Fildes (UK); Alexandre Veras Costa (Br); Erica Koleff (Arg); Gabriela Tropia Gomes (Br- UK); Douglas Rosenberg (USA) Susana Temperley (Arg); Ladys González (Arg); Ellen Bromberg (USA); Sandra Mathern-Smith (USA); Graciela Taquini (Arg).

more info at www.VideoDanzaBA.com.ar

available online at http://www.libreriaguadalquivir.com/libros/10/Terpscore-en-ceros-y-unos-Ensayos-de-videodanza/

About “Terpsichore in zeroes and ones. Essays on Videodance”

The richness of this publication is founded in its diversity of views, including those from scholars specialized in disciplines close to Videodance who have made important contributions from the fields of Semiotics, Philosophy and Art Criticism, as well as the practice of video, cinema, digital art and dance. And even reflections upon the use of the Internet, the Interactive Systems in relation to Education, AIDS and social movements. Thinkers and artists from Argentina, Brazil, the USA and the UK converge in this book. These essays will begin to cover an increasing need and curiosity from researchers, students and artists, supplying information and reflections in Spanish which dialogue among them, in the way of a rich and bright mesh.

Terpsichore, our Muse of the Dance, keeps on getting transformed in the 21st Century. She dances in the cyberspace as well as in the street, on the videotape and at the museum, in the theatre and on the screen, in the paper as well as in life.

Other news of the International Festival VideoDanzaBA

| Call for entries 2010. Videodances and Documentaries on Dance

DEADLINE: JUNE, 15th 2010

Pieces must be registered online at www.VideoDanzaBA.com.ar

They must be sent by regular mail up to June 15^th, 2010 (postmarked date valid) to:

FESTIVAL INTERNACIONAL VIDEODANZABA

CENTRO DE INVESTIGACION CINEMATOGRAFICA

Benjamín Matienzo 2571 (C1426 DAU) - Buenos Aires – Argentina

Additional press material

WHO ARE WE?

Since 1995, VideoDanzaBA, founded as Festival Internacional de Video-danza de Buenos Aires, is a platform for divulging, learning, discussing, and developing networks about the artistic work around the axis body-technology in the broadest sense.

With a strong accent on the exchange with the Latin American countries, that lead to the establishment of MERCOSUR Videodance Circuit (CVM) and the Latin American Videodance Forum (FLV), VideoDanzaBA has also developed residency plans with foreign organizations such as South East Dance (RU), among others, to increase the research opportunities and the artistic exchange, in a frame that encourages diversity.

In 2008, at its tenth edition, the festival widened its range to a broader arch of artistic forms linked to videodance: installations and performances that involve new technologies and interfaces in real time.

In 2009, thanks to the support of Iberescena, the festival presented again multimedia live performances, with companies from Spain, Chile and Argentina. Also, the Second International Symposium on Videodance (SIV) “Thinking Videodance II” was held with scholars from Brazil, Argentina and USA, among other countries.

This year 2010 –our 15^th birthday- we continue with the same line. The publishing of a book, two residencies, a project development LAB, workshops for professionals and for members of the community, scholarships and internships -from our Education Department-, will add up to our usual screenings (open call, work-in-progress, retrospectives and special screenings).

The audience access, the artistic communication and the development of the regional production are our major priorities.

The festival VideoDanzaBA 10 has support from:

INCAA (National Film Institute)

INT (National Theatre Institute)

CCEBA (Cultural Centre of Spain in Buenos Aires)

British Council

CIC (Research Centre on Film)

ABOUT Silvina Szperling – Director of the Festival VideoDanzaBA

• Choreographer, video artist and curator, dance journalist.

• Director of the International Video-dance Festival of Buenos Aires.

• Coordinator of Mercosur Videodance Circuit and Latin American Videodance Forum.

• Curator and artistic co-director of Buenos Aires Contemporary Dance Festival in 2008.

Graduated from the First School of Body Expression, directed by Patricia Stokoe (1979) and from the Dance School of Margarita Bali (1986), Silvina Szperling has been a choreographer for both conventional and non-conventional stages since 1985. In 1993 she started to make video-dance, documentaries on dance and collaborations in multimedia pieces as a video artist. Her formation in video-dance includes the First Video-dance Workshop for choreographers by Jorge Coscia (1883), the six-week video-dance school by Douglas Rosenberg as a grant holder at the American Dance Festival (1994), in addition to Director of Photography (1995, SICA, by Rodolfo Denevi), Documentary Video (1994, Ricardo Rojas Cultural Centre, by Andrés Di Tella), and master classes by Thierry De Mey at the Experimental Centre of Teatro Colón (2006).

Her work in Video-dance initiated this art form in Argentina. Her pieces Temblor, Bilingual duetto, sistersister, SZiS and Chámame have been screened at many festivals in her country and abroad. Temblor won the Best Editing Prize from the National Secretariat of Culture, and has been included at the New York Public Library’s Dance Collection at Lincoln Center, as well as at the Argentine National Museum of Fine Arts’ Video Collection. Her documentaries Danza argentina en los 60 and Escrito en el aire have been produced through grants from the National Fund for the Arts. Between January and March, 2000 she produced and directed the weekly TV program Videodanza, nationally broadcast by Channel 7 Argentina. In July, 2002 she made a residency as a guest artist at the Video-dance Summer Workshop at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her video-dance SZiS was awarded a grant from Dance Film Association NYC and was premiered as part of the competitive screening at the III International Jewish Film Festival of Buenos Aires (Hoyts General Cinema, November, 2005). It was screened at Tandil Film Festival, Oberá en Cortos (Misiones, Argentina, 2006) and IDN Festival - Imatge, Dansa i Nous Mitjans (Barcelona, 2007). Chámame was premiered at Alliance Française in Buenos Aires, and has been screened at moves09 (Machester, UK), FRAME (Porto, Portugal), agite y sirva (Puebla, Mexico), UFBA (Salvador de Bahía, Brazil) and Dance Camera West (Los Angeles, USA).

She is the founder and director of the International Video-dance Festival of Buenos Aires, which has developed eleven editions between 1995 and 2009. The Festival has been supported by public institutions such as the National Fund for the Arts, the National Secretariat of Culture, the City’s Secretariat of Culture and the University of Buenos Aires, the National Theatre Institute (INT), the National Film Institute (INCAA), as well as private institutions such as Fundación Antorchas, the Research Centre on Film (CIC) and Channel á, among others. Its International supports have included the embassies of France, Canada, USA, Holland and Brazil at Buenos Aires, the Cultural Centre of Spain in Buenos Aires (CCEBA), the Goethe Institute, the Cunningham Dance Foundation, the American Dance Festival, the Cinémathèque de la danse of Paris and the Filmmuseum Netherlands. The Festival is partner of MERCOSUR VIDEODANCE CIRCUIT, within the frame of which in 2005 a double DVD was edited containing pieces by 20 artists from the region. It has been distributed both regionally and worldwide (Dance Camera West/Los Angeles, VideoDance/Atenas, Dança em Foco/Río de Janeiro, Dança em foco/Berlin, Danscamdanse/Belgium, FIVU/Montevideo, Andanzas/La Paz, El Cruce/Rosario, among other Festivals). In 2007 a second compilation was edited in DVD -CVM2- which is distributed through the website www.VideoDanzaBA.com.ar

In 2006 Silvina coordinated the Exchange of Artistic Residencies Argentina-UK,

Festival carried out with the South East Dance agency from England, patronized by the Arts Council of England and the British Council. The first phase of the exchange, held in Brighton and London, included the Postgraduate Course in Videodance at The Place. The closing phase took place in Buenos Aires with the Laboratory in Videodance, in which Argentine and English artists took part, within the frame of the Festival. In 2007 she coordinated the Exchange of Artistic Residencies of the Mercosur Videodance Circuit, with artists from Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay in the cities of Río de Janeiro, Montevideo and Buenos Aires. Szperling has also curated and produced the video-dance section at Festival Buenos Aires Danza Contemporánea (2000 and 2002).

She was commissioned by UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) to write an article about Argentine and Latin American video-dance (Taking tools into my own hands) included at the book Envisioning dance on film and video (Routledge, New York - London, 2002).

Szperling was invited as a panelist and curator to idat99 (International dance and technology conference) at Tempe, Arizona, to the Dance for the Camera Symposium at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA, 2000), to Mostra de video-dansa in Barcelona (1999) and to the Festivals Dance screen 2002 (Monaco) and 2005 (Brighton, England), among others. She has given Video-dance Workshops at Ricardo Rojas Cultural Centre/University of Buenos Aires, at the Research Centre on Film/CIC (Buenos Aires) and in numerous cities in Argentina (Córdoba, Rosario, Mendoza, San Martín de los Andes, Corrientes, Santa Fe, Paraná, Jujuy, Oberá), as well as in Dança em Foco (Río de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, Brazil), FIVU (Montevideo, Uruguay), Andanzas (La Paz, Bolivia), UArcis (Santiago, Chile) and at the International Film and Television School (San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba).

Szperling has been a free-lance dance writer for the newspaper La Opinión in Los Angeles and for Dance Magazine, USA, and she has collaborated with Argentine press media such as Página/12, Balletin dance and Funámbulos. She was a part of the Journalists’ Comitee of the Nijinsky Awards at Monaco Dance Forum (Dec, 2002-04).

She has worked at Buenos Aires Festival de Cine Independiente-BAFICI as an Assistant to the Artistic Director (1999-2000). She has also worked as a Coordinator of Workshops, tributes and special events at Festival Internacional de Cine de Mar del Plata (2000, 2001, 2006, 2007) and Festival de Cine para Niños y Jóvenes (Nov, 2001).

Silvina has been the Technical and Video Director at SZ Danza Company. She has collaborated in the creation of the multimedia pieces Las hijas de Rosita (1995), La InComodidad de los Cuerpos, Paseo inclinado (1996), Croquet en el living (1997) and Inflamable (2000).