Video documentation of the two day Workshop with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen took place at Uferstudios on July 2011. It was followed by a talk between B.B. Cohen and the philosopher Alva Noë. The talk took place in the frame of an event by the research group “Aesthetic praxis and embodiment” of the HZT Berlin in cooperation with the Tanzfabrik Berlin.
Click here to go to video:
http://dance-tech.tv/videos/the-dynamics-of-perception-workshop-with-bonnie-bainbridge-cohen-at-hzt-berlin/
Video documentation of the two day Workshop with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen took place at Uferstudios on July 2011. It was followed by a talk between B.B. Cohen and the philosopher Alva Noë. The talk took place in the frame of an event by the research group “Aesthetic praxis and embodiment” of the HZT Berlin in cooperation with the Tanzfabrik Berlin.
Click here to go to video:
http://dance-tech.tv/videos/the-dynamics-of-perception-workshop-with-bonnie-bainbridge-cohen-at-hzt-berlin/
Sex, digital technology, indescribable variations of gender identity, and a party atmosphere which demands of the guests to be at ease with nudity, sex and a general laissez-faire, n’ importe quoi, joie de vivre? It could be just another night in any Berlin club worthy of its name, if not for the chance of starring in a movie that combines the meta-modern doomed replicants-in-love scenarios of Blade Runner, the anarchic humor of a John Waters DIY opera buffa, and the ornate gender semiotics usually decorating the baroque queer-theory of Judith Butler.
Tomorrow, at Mindpirates, at the Fluid: the movie open casting call, Taiwanese-American experimental filmmaker Shu Lea Cheang is seeking “gender-fluid humans and non-humans who can act, suck, jerk, fuck, eject and get on a virtual high”. If you’ve watched his previous saga, I.K.U, which was the first pornographic film to be screened at the Sundance Film festival, you will be familiar with the plot concept for his next sex-in-the-age-of-biotechnology epic: set in a post-AIDS future, it’s about a mutant generation of Zero-Gens who are bio-carriers of Delta, a white, fluid, sexual-ecstasy-inducing drug and thus are hunted by multi-national corporations, new age drug lords, and all sorts of bizarre characters eager to satisfy the most post-human of kinks. Producer Jürgen Brüning and casting director will be present, so Email them your CV to register.
Reposted from
It seems like there is always something to do better.
It can be a motivated thought but it can be also discouraging.
So what is it that makes something "work"? That makes you say "this is it"?
Everything can be done in so many different ways, but in real time it happens only in one way, and I need to choose this one way.
When you feel like you found something and its "working", you start to feel good and comfortable about it, then comes the red light telling you "hey, don't get too comfortable".
When you wait for the right moment to do something and every second becomes full of consciousness and possibilities, you start to lose the sensation of the "right moment".
Well, I think its a matter of balance, or actually more correctly as Gary Keller describes it- contra balance.
Perhaps its not really about "the right thing" or "the right moment", perhaps its simply about our choices.
To arrive to the point that we actually make choices, that we are actually free and liberated to make them, we need to have all (or at least a lot) of possibilities available for us. How do we do that? By gaining basic and universal tools that can be relevant and applicable in different contexts and occasions.
Now I have a lot of possibilities. I need to make some choices.
photo by Bart Grietens
29.05.2014-01.06.2014
international conference hosted by the MA program Choreography and Performance
One of the global tendencies that describes the current situation of the arts under the conditions of neoliberal capitalism is privatization and financialization, in which both the arts and education lose the meaning and the status of a public good. Using the pretext of austerity and strategies of neoliberal policy, the state is dismantled in its public sector, disowning the arts and education as common concerns. While, on the one hand, it goes hand in hand with the transformation of labor in post-Fordism, de-skilling and re-skilling which trains flexible subjects, and, on the other hand, it reflects the temporality and affective modes of project-based, intermittent and precarious work, this tendency plays out as a merge between art and education, leaning on art as research, or art as practice, to name a few concepts in recent debate.
The past few years have witnessed a paradox in the development of higher education in the arts and university. On the one side, MA and doctoral programs in the arts are proliferating, thus registering an increased influx of artists into the academy. “Creative-art” and “practice-based” doctorates offer institutional support to artistic research, in other words, a refuge for many young artists who are struggling in precarious conditions of freelance production. To continue one’s studies by going back to school doesn’t just present a temporary relief from the art market, it responds to a relentless feeling of various kinds of structural lack: of knowledge, an incurable “unlearnedless” that artists express in the wake of knowledge economy; of consistency in work, which is compensated or covered by conflating one’s art with a project of lifelong learning and subject-formation; of public space that can be hijacked into a platform of artistic, theoretical, social or political gathering and activity; of time that is punctuated and fragmentarized by projects, nomadic lifestyle, and other forms of job opportunity that thwart the experience of duration in which things may go astray, in which one may hesitate, delve into something that doesn’t seem useful yet, drastically change or simply research. In sum, there are many positive aspects of higher education in the arts that empower artists today and, thereby, explain the mass exodus of artists from the artistic scene toward the university. But there are equally many problems associated with, what was uncritically appraised as the “educational turn” in the arts, which prompt us to organize this conference.
As the qualities and the layers of the work are getting more clear, I'm busy with thinking HOW CAN I MAKE IT ACCESSIBLE?
How can I create something that can touch different people, from different places, with different interests and different backgrounds.
I need to find something that is common for EVERYBODY. something global. Something universal. something that is beyond the specificity of what I do, and then, when I catch them, I can slowly and gradually lead them by the hand into my world.
Things that we can recognise and connect to are the things that we know from ourselves.
We can recognise when someone is having fun because we know how it feels to have fun.
We can identify with someone how experience loss if we experienced loss.
We feel empathy towards someone who is having a hard time because we know it is hard.
We get touched by witnessing moments and actions that we once passed through.
By understanding and analysing that, I realised the importance of humanity or reflecting humanity through my work.
I need to irrigate the human elements that are anyway existing in the process, and build the work (or we can call it the piece) in parallel to that.
What do I mean? How does it suppose to happen? Well, lets take one of examples that I gave before- FUN. Fun is something that we are experiencing together in rehearsals and outside of it anyway, so why not to bring it into the work?
This way of thinking and approaching brings me (back) to the idea of applications. Why not to use our experiences, friendships, losses, happiness, sadness and all the rest, in different fields of our lives? Why should we separate it? Why would I want to avoid something that can make my work and approach so ACCESSIBLE? Why would I want to have only "dance people" in the audience when I can have different people in the audience?
If the work is directed to the dance audience, it doesn't make sense that T'ai Chi practitioners, film-makers or soccer players will connect to it. But if its directed to people, then people will connect to it.
So how much of the process and the energy should be invested in thinking about the audience? Well, thats a whole other discussion…
Curiosity is being evoked when we recognise something which has something that we can connect to, but that we don't know as much as we want to know about it.
When we can identify with something but we are not sure why.
When we see that there is quality, urge and passion that can be equal to ours, but in a different form.
Same but different.
Photo by Bart Grietens
WANTED: FEMALE ACTORS with movement skills or DANCERS with
acting skills, FOR ELENA BAJO'S PERFORMANCE With Entheogenic
Intent (Burn the Witch) AT 18TH STREET ARTS CENTER, LOS
ANGELES, CALIFORNIA-US- ON THE 1ST OF FEBRUARY, 2014
DESCRIPTION
The piece is created by Elena Bajo, a visual artist who has exhibited
internationally and focuses on the social, political aspects of the site in the
city of Los Angeles. Bajo combines performance with large scale
installations to investigate the political and social conditions of change in
post-industrial structures, creating site specific work and a space of
collective action.
The performers will be required to perform in the space of 18th Street Arts
Center. They will be required to do both improvised and choreographed
script/movements determined before hand with the artist. The generator
of the piece is a political text/poem. This political text-manifesto will be
handed to the performers and it will be used to generate their individual
script/choreography. Total duration of the performance around 20 min.
REHEARSALS
3 days, total: 2 days (1h/day) one on one individual work with the
artist and 1 day (1h/day) run-through in the space with all performers
If you are interested in this project please send ASAP an email to
elenabajo@gmail.com including a web link to video file where your work
can be seen , one image and a brief bio/cv. Express very briefly why you
want to participate in the project. You will be contacted by email to
proceed forward. If you don't have a link to video online let me know and
Ithe artist would send you a text fragment to prepare something short 1-2
min that you could record in Skype or video camera or iphone.
For your participation you will receive a small fee, copy of video footage
and photos of the performance as well as credits in the program. This is
an event widely advertised and expected to be a good exposure. Please
only apply if you are interested in being part of an experimental piece,
outside of the comfort zone, that is the spirit of this project.
More information about Elena Bajo’s work:
CALL FOR PERFORMANCE SUBMISSIONS
Between the Seas Festival in New York City,
July 21st- 27th 2014
at the Wild Project (195 East 3rd str.)
DEADLINE EXTENDED TO FEBRUARY 10TH 2014
Join us in celebrating contemporary Mediterranean culture in NYC!
Between the Seas Festival, New York City's only international Mediterranean festival, is inviting submissions for its fourth edition (July 21st to July 27th at the Wild Project)
We are looking for full and short length works, fully developed or works in progress, original or previously presented, in the fields of theater, dance and music by artists of the Mediterranean and Mediterranean diaspora. Selected applicants will perform alongside a group of curated artists in a total of approximately 15 different performances during one week. Some of the themes that the works may address are:
Mediterranean identity/ies: Works that explore or are inspired by life, identities and histories in or across Mediterranean societies
Living in-between: Works exploring or inspired by diasporic Mediterranean identities
Contemporary works and adaptations; Performances of existing and new works by contemporary Mediterranean playwrights/choreographers/composers. Adaptations or new interpretations of the classics in ways that highlight contemporary Mediterranean realities or explore new aesthetics; original works showcasing techniques, interests and interpretive models emerging in the Mediterranean region.
Submission Guidelines:
Please submit
A brief cover letter explaining your interest in the festival
A detailed project description (not longer than 3 pages). Make sure to specify your technical needs. We strongly advise that you keep your technical requirements very simple as all performances will be staged in the same theater space using the general festival lighting plot. Make sure to check the theater space and its technical specs to determine if it meets the needs of your work: www.thewildproject.com
Work samples. These may include: videos and photos of past work or of previous presentations of the proposed project; script (please send us the full script); reviews and press clippings of your show.
Resumes of the primary artists involved and company information
A non-refundable application fee of $40 [USD]. The application fee can be paid online on our website or by check payable to “Between the Seas Theater Productions LLC” and mailed to c/o Aktina Stathaki, 152 W131st str New York NY 10027. Make sure to write “BTS application fee” on the memo line.
The new deadline for applications is February 10th 2014. Application materials can be emailed to betweentheseasfestival@gmail.com (please indicate “BTS PERFORMANCE submission” in the subject line) or sent by mail to the following address: c/o Aktina Stathaki 152 West 131st street #1 New York NY 10027. Please review the full submission and selection guidelines on our website before submitting.
It started from an idea. From a moment of inspiration that lightened my passion to start to create something.
Its not that first I wanted to create and then I had to think about what to create, but it was more like the inspiration brought this urge to me.
Then, I found the material- the people I want to work with. The people that understands me, that interest me, and that share interests with me.
Then, I turned to look at the ingredients. What is the vocabulary and the language that I want to create and to use in the piece? What do I already have (from the idea itself and from the people) and what do I have to build and develop?
This led me to building some kind of a daily routine that will (hopefully) develop abilities, qualities, expressions and textures that I'm interested in having in the piece.
This routine is not directly connected to the work, but if we will be able to make the right applications, it will serve that goal.
In general this is something that I'm trying to apply in my life- to work and to practice different things that I'm interested at and to create the applications between them. Sometimes its good to separate things, but in the end, if we learn and practice things and then we don't use them its a bit pointless…
So after having the idea (my initial inspiration), the material (people) and the ingredients (physical language), I arrived to the point of asking myself what do I want to do with all this? What is my personal taste in relation to all this, and what do I want to say about it? Or in different words- the choreographic and dramaturgy side of the work.
So to start the work together we started with a very similar process to the process I just described until now. First we got connected to the initial idea that I got inspired from, on top of that we put the individuality and personality, and on top of that we started to create the physicality that comes from all this, with my guidance and my personal taste.
Working and dealing with all these aspect of the process, it became part the process itself.
Everyday we put time to invest in each one of the layers of the process and also time to mix them and let the applications take part.
I think this is what they call PROCESS. Photos by: Anette Wörner
