Hi!

Can you please share info about FLUIDATA

Audience who cannot be in Brisbane, will be able to participate online with their computers.

Looking forward to seeing you online

Suzon

WATERWAYS, WALKS & Wi-Fi--INVITATION

Intrepid artists James Cunningham & Suzon Fuks travelled 7500 km through Queensland exploring creeks from tropical Cairns, through the mining towns and dusty trails of the vast outback collecting data and exploring physical & digital connections to our environment. The pair has returned to Brisbane to present an interactive art installation called FLUIDATA.

FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1570583656540863

13, 14, 18, 19 & 20: Watch live on your computer! http://water-wheel.net/taps/view/794

If not on East Coast Australia, check your local time here: http://bit.ly/1Rc4IW0

More info at: igneous.org.au/projects/fluidata

#creekmemory #fluidata #waterwheel

If you have a creek memory to share, please tweet it with #creekmemory :)

INTEGRART SYMPOSIUM 2015
DANCE AND “NORMALITY”

Tuesday, 2 June 2015
MEG Musée d’ethnographie de Genève
Boulevard Carl-Vogt 65-67, Geneva

More information:

http://www.integrart.ch/en/symposium

You can watch the broadcast here:

“Paradoxically it is only when we recognise that we are not completely controlled by norms, that we become free to radically deconstruct and change them.“
Judith Butler

Ever since the beginning of the 20th century Dance History can be told as a continuous questioning of aesthetic and social normativity. However, contemporary dance is still defined by conventions and standards that mirror prevailing social norms. This becomes clear when people with a disability enter the stage – and especially when they do not.

At the fifth IntegrART symposium, artists and experts will focus on creating and recreating “normality” in dance and society. By looking through the lens of the history of culture and dance to analyse this phenomenon, the symposium aims to find aesthetic and ethical alternatives to the tyranny of the “neutral”.

The symposium will explore the following questions (among others):

• What lies behind the concept of “normality”? How did it develop and how does it manifest itself in the age of “diversity”?
  
• What part did norms, particularly norms regarding the body and people’s perceived abilities, play in the 20th century of dance? Which rules determine what is dance and who is a “real” dancer today?
  
• What strategies can be used to question, undermine and potentially overcome the “dictate of normality” as an exclusion mechanism?
  
• What are the different artistic practices of dancers with a disability and how do they relate to current standards and conventions in professional dance?
  
• What perspectives does this offer for dancers with a disability in particular and dance in general?

Artistic practices are the starting point for our reflections at the fifth IntegrART symposium. The programme includes presentations and discussions, artists’ videos, short dance pieces, performances, demonstrations and workshops.

Concept: Marcel Bugiel
Collaboration on the concept: Saša Asentic

An international symposium by Migros Cultural Percentage. The 2015 event is organised in partnership with the City of Geneva as part of Out of the Box – Biennale des Arts inclusifs. Supported by the Federal Bureau for the Equality of People with Disabilities FBED, the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Corymbo Foundation and Migros Geneva.

Staying (A)live... through words,here it is: The Venice Biennale Angolan Pavilion catalogue, includes a text by Vania Gala

Staying (A)live... through words,here it is: The Venice Biennale Angolan Pavilion catalogue, includes a text by Vania Gala

Staying (A)live... through words,here it is: The Venice Biennale Angolan Pavilion catalogue, includes a text by Vania Gala on the challenges for choreography in the present time

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

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

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

Over the past two weeks I have been in residence at Lake Studios Berlin focusing on improvisation in rehearsals and performances, mostly with saxophonist/improviser/composer Ross Feller, the other half of a long collaboration via Double-Edge Dance. Improvisation has been a through-line in my decades long journey as a dance artist while I have also focused on choreographic work. As a performer, I prefer to create instant compositions and as a choreographer, I prefer not to perform and to hone the work to a fine degree while honoring the rigor and spontaneity of live performance. I teach improvisation, composition, and dance ‘technique.’ I write that last word with the memory of being a student long ago in the heydays of SNDO, the School for New Dance Development, when it had its own building on Da Costakade in Amsterdam and amazing guest artists. In the late 80s they refused to call their technique classes technique and instead called them systems. After a year of taking ’systems’ classes, I was well aware that those classes were still dispensing a ‘style’ or a ‘method’ even if it was not totally codified as Cunningham or other modern dance techniques. At that period of SNDO, it was release technique in motion, with a particular indirect focus and appreciated ‘moves.’  There were tiers and assumed ideas of what constituted adept movers just as there are in other spheres of dance. This is fine but deserves to be mentioned as there is still a pervasive construct of what constitutes methods that are freeing with the idea that they are beyond style, whether within technique classes or improvisation classes. Many of us navigate our pathways through dance training via a mix of sound anatomical understanding and somatic approaches so that the baseline of the training is efficiency via healthy alignment and body use. All of these approaches are useful but they are approaches. What I find is that idea of efficiency creeps into value for artistic expression, whether in improvisation or technique classes, workshops or performances.  

While as a human and dancer, I embrace efficiency and healthy alignment; I am not so interested in having that as an issue within my artistic work, whether through improvisation or choreography. I am interested in wringing out motion from my body and some of that involves struggle, a very different kind of exhibited effort than Graham but a similar bent towards the drama of conflicts within the body. I may love to be cozy (one of my favorite words in Dutch is gezellig) rolling on the floor with flow in contact improvisation but I am not really interested in being cozy in my work. I do not care to exhibit my abilities within release technique while on stage. Just like all contemporary dance artists, we are making our mixes. The interesting element is the gloss of improvisatory values as a lens and value system when looking at performance or being a personal arbitrator. We are all personal arbitrators, having varied histories and values. However, the conflict I find within the improvisation world is the unexamined assumptions and preferences that bleed into artistic arbitration. Why is dealing with discomfort in performance seen as a spectacle while doing a released spin or cool inversion is seen as an accepted validation of training? Or, why is conceptual work taking such hold in contemporary dance rendering full-out motion passé? Or, why is it not more readily acknowledged that improvisation techniques are, well, techniques, and have their limits and assumptions and preciousness just like some codified techniques?

Early on during my artist residency I met a wonderful Italian actress who, with another woman, invited many improvisers from very different vantage points and talents, to come together to research memory. It was good timing for me given that is the topic, an iceberg of its own, of my new work. I purposely let myself not be impressive with my improvisational ‘skills’ and judgments but to submerge myself in the research without of an instant composition, ‘make it work’ hat. Another particular perfomer took a very different strategy and it was obvious and visible to me. I could see that performer make what I would consider skilled but somewhat generic decisions based on good calls of what the space needed to make the overall composition have merit. It was clear the person had good dance and improvisation ‘chops’ but it was also somewhat oppressive in terms of the stuckness of thinking certain improvisatory approaches, such as one employs (including myself) within instant composition. There is a certain air of superiority that can come into play, which is really interesting within the improvisation field. I have had a few encounters in the last couple of decades that woke me up to the egos and ranking within the improvisation world. There are masters. There are people who dedicate their entire lives to dance improvisation. Anna Halprin would be one who I would consider so full of compassion that there is not a sense of her having one way, only one approach. Many others are also compassionate and amazingly skilled but it is good to remember that, just like in any form, there are assumptions that sometimes do not get examined. For example, many have the idea there should be one approach to improvisation. Viewpoints is wonderful. I feel lucky to have studied with Mary Overlie early on and would love to study with SITI. Contact Improvisation is wonderful. I feel fortunate to have studied with Steve Paxton, Nancy Stark Smith, and Kirstie Simson among others. I studied improvisation with all different flavors, from Nikolais to Authentic Movement and much in between. But I am not trademarked, I do not subscribe to one approach, and I have not only dedicated my entire life to improvisation. What came up with the powerful presence of the Italian actress and her workshop partner was the reality of gathering many artists together and not spouting one method, not putting one method above another, not placing a generic hierarchy on approach, and not using ones skills to breakthrough and impress. That was refreshing. What came up in a recent lovely contact improvisation workshop, is how a slightly varied way of someone else teaching say, surfing, can be, as another workshop participant said, like trying on someone else’s clothes. That new set of clothes was unfamiliar and a bit awkward for me even though it was an idiom in which I usually feel free. That was refreshing too – not to only feel cozy. Even things that I am really ‘good at’ such as resilience and modulated resistance was not like wearing the clothes I wear when I teach that material. For me, such slight discomfort is good as I am not only submerged in assumptions but am somehow am in an awkward zone of unknowing, something I do believe in while letting it go simultaneously.

One question that was posed to a group of us recently involved our individual motivations to dance, our messages, our statements. I, as many, don’t have one of each of these but a layered web of answers and refusals. I dance largely because of an intense non-verbal relationship I had as a child with my sister who was unable to talk or walk. I would watch her, touch her, cuddle with her, and do my best to empathize and intuit. I learned to quietly shut the screen door so as not to upset her upon me stepping outside or, worse yet, heading back to where I lived which was in another state. I dance partially because the echoes of understanding such non-verbal communication deeply with someone I loved so dearly and lost when I was 12 years old, reverberates in my being and demands ways of release. I dance because I enjoy it as well. As a teacher and human, I embrace joy for sure. But as a mover and choreographer, I am actively and constructively churning. Not in some cathartic exorcism, but as ongoing research with topics such as being on the edge of balance, honoring the awkward in movement and performance, mining the body for memories without needing any literal translations, and doing the same with the performers with whom I work.

One performer last night in a shared grouping of improvised solos posited that arms couldn’t hold a memory. Perhaps they can, perhaps they cannot. Memories are volatile, made up, real, shifting, erasable, retrievable and every other construction - within limits and beyond limits. The research I am doing now involves memory and active forgetting. The latter is a skill that is very interesting within improvisation and performance. I teach a score in improvisation classes that is quite simple in structure yet complex in practice. In a large circle we play a kind of telephone game. One has to try and quickly do the movement of the person by them exactly in the circle one by one, taking turns in one chosen direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise). What happens is that there has to be active forgetting so that students do not correct mistakes they've witnessed being made. They've witnessed the first - original and 'correct' version of the movement but they need to forget that enough to do the translated movement as accurately as possible versus correcting the 'mistakes' made. Everyone is trying to be accurate versus creatively altering movement. One needs to actively forget some information in order to be fully present to the most relevant information and be an engaged, responsive self. 

Interesting to me is that last night, while seated on a bench as one of the twenty-four performers to improvise what were to be 2-minute solos (many were quite a bit longer last night but no worries), I imagined using my mimicry skills to regurgitate bits of about eighteen of the solos I had seen. I immediately dismissed this as I decided quickly it would not aptly honor the performances I had witnessed. As a witness, I took my role as a type of holder, such as one might be sensitively with Authentic Movement and Jungian practices. Such mimicry, though certainly comic, seemed like a cop out of my role as being a holder, a compassionate witness, and my role as being present in the moment as an improviser. I let go of the idea incredibly quickly. What ended up happening was that a neighboring soloist left his sweatshirt with me. I then used that sweatshirt in my improvisation as it was on my lap and well, there it was. Post-performance two people communicated concern about the sweatshirt. Admittedly, I put part of sleeve in my mouth and was a bit wild. I was far from being wild enough to damage a designer sweatshirt but perhaps my use of the sweatshirt was somehow taboo in the mostly free, but yet not, culture in Berlin. No worries, but interesting. My motivations for being a mover and a dance artist come out in my work and they came out in my improvisatory performances in Berlin the last two weekends, the first two at ada 10 times 6 series at Uferstudios and the latter two at Lake Studios second anniversary Self-portrait series. They are not cozy for the most part. They definitely have sensitivity and are composed in the moment using honed skill sets but they are not comforting. I don’t dance to be comforting somehow and this seems to be something that continually pops up as a concern from the audience. Sometimes it involves people who know my fun-loving humorous side and are surprised by the darker side, the churning of many aspects of myself. Often times it involves people who do not know me at all but are witnessing unknown material, not referencing conceptual art or normative dance and thus steering away from what might be a compass to guide the audience in something they can put a finger on and at least try to define.

A self-portrait. We are so many in one. Not schizophrenic, but we can modulate many aspects of ourselves in ways, bringing out some, and gently tucking in others in the memory folds of our selves. One person that knows me calls me Chödrön Wigman, in reference to the Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön as well as the dance expressionist and choreographer Mary Wigman. Access to the light and dark swan without getting stuck in either but aesthetically being closer to the dark, and in daily life being closer to the light.

The work I will begin to focus on with depth at Lake Studios in June when BOOMERANG’s principal performer Matty Davis joins me in Berlin is a new evening-length creation to be premiered in NYC in March 2016. We will push physical extremes with both sensitivity and rigor. This new work will interrogate the relationship between memory and active forgetting. Within the creation process of the new dance and the emerging duet itself, one of our avenues of research will be how exhaustion can precipitate forgetting, when all that is not necessary must be relinquished. I will continue dipping into my research of ‘what I call ‘awkward grace’ (a blending of idiosyncratic motion with unpredictable timing and making the ‘ugly’ ‘beautiful’), physical necessity, teetering on the edge of control. Davis and I, through these and many other strategies and purposefully impossible challenges, will deal with the ideas and altered realities of memories.

The creation process, starting earnestly in June, will progress in a continuous but modular form, creating movement and text conversations that are purposely interrupted and backtracked.  Literary references will come into play, most notably from recent research and writing on memory and forgetting by Lewis Hyde, an internationally known cultural critic and MacArthur Genius Award winner. I have been inspired by Hyde’s latest unpublished manuscript. Personal writing will also factor into the creative process as Davis and I further investigate the links between memory and forgetting. Continued collaboration with playwright Will Arbery, with whom BOOMERANG has worked on three other pieces, will hone the text and dramaturgy of the duet.

BOOMERANG will collaborate as well with Greg Saunier, the drummer in the band Deerhoof, on sound and live music.  Saunier met with me after witnessing a performance I choreographed and performed in at Roulette in Fall 2013. We have since been in enthusiastic dialogue. Saunier’s energy and artistry is charged and vibrant, similar to the athletic and sensitized work of BOOMERANG.  Video of the emerging work BOOMERANG will create in Berlin will be shared with Saunier, who will respond with video and sound as well. Both his rhythms and his movements will offer important contributions to the creative endeavor.  Once BOOMERANG returns to the U.S. we will engage in live studio collaboration with Saunier.  Also, definitely in the U.S., and hopefully some in Berlin, I will be replaced as a performer by another performer so that I can be a third eye, what I need as a choreographer.

It has been an interesting ride in Berlin so far. I have such appreciation for Lake Studios Berlin and the community and feel lucky to be there. Much is gurgling up and I am all there processing, fighting, and allowing. Thanks to Lake Studios, in particular Marcela Giesche, and to Ross Feller for encouraging me to keep visiting the stage, rather than only hiding in the studio, and for improvising on stage rather than my only stage work being my choreography sans me as a performer. The latter, I am committed to, happily so, but the former is good to return to for the learning and the depth. Also, thank you to Marlon Barrios Solano. Much gratitude.

Kora Self Portrait of the Moment in 2nd Night of 2nd year anniversary of Lake Studios Berlin from Double-Edge Dance on Vimeo.

Costume by Textile artist Rebecca Cross

The wonderful Lake Studios Berlin where I arrived May 1st. I have been dancing daily, some solo, some with others, and some with saxophonist/composer Ross Feller. This month is supposed to have the focus of improvisation with Double-Edge Dance's Feller while I'll switch to choreography with BOOMERANG's principal performer Matty Davis in June. I usually enjoy improvising and composing in the moment in performance but am missing the puzzle pieces of choreography lately so am giving myself some latitude to do some choreographing this month as well. DED will be performing improvisation this weekend:

10 times 6

9./10. Mai 2015 – 20:30

10 Stücke, keines länger als 6 Minuten, von und mit Giulia Amici, Simone Detig, DOUBLE-EDGE DANCE, Aude Fondard, Kyra Jacques, Kathrin Knöpfle, Vera Köppern, Shiri Lukash, Barbara Toraldo und Simone Wierød.
Tickets (8-13 Euro sliding scale): 030-21800507 / ada-berlin@gmx.de

Looking forward to it!

We are pleased to announce the following Call for Papers: 

Human Technology: An Interdisciplinary Journal on Humans in ICT Environments

Special Issue on Human–Technology Choreographies: Body, movement, and space

http://www.humantechnology.jyu.fi/call/call-for-papers-special-issue-CHORUS.html 

Guest Editors:

Antti Pirhonen (University of Jyväskylä, FI)        

Kai Tuuri (University of Jyväskylä, FI)

Cumhur Erkut (Aalborg University Copenhagen, DK)

In interaction design and related disciplines, the focus of research tends toward technological objects rather than the movements relating to interacting with the objects. Even when movements are considered, the emphasis is placed on their instrumental value, that is, how movements have direct effect on the functions of technology. However, the emphasis of this special issue rests upon technological objects and how they are used. In other words, the editors of this special issue seek submissions that emphasize intentional human movement in the physical and social “life-world” in which humans encounter technological and virtual artifacts. The term choreography here refers to meaningful continuums of movement that humans, as individuals or as groups, experience during interaction with technology.

In daily life, each technological design constitutes choreographies of varying scopes: Technology may enable, limit, or control human movements and other behavior. Human– technology choreographies can involve anything from subtle finger movements to the movement of crowds in public spaces. A choreographic orientation brings forth all the opportunities and options that interaction designers have available for defining movements, movement-qualities, and choreographies required in the interface with the various devices so prevalent in contemporary living. Human movement is never a mere structure that could be handled without also affecting the inherent meanings it embodies.

We seek contributions that challenge current thinking and critically acknowledge the role of bodily movement as a basic element in a profound understanding of relationships between humans and technology. We propose choreography as a key concept through which the movement-centered phenomena present in interaction with technology could be better acknowledged, reflected on, and understood. Varying orientations on the subject are welcome. These may include, for example, interaction design, product design, architecture, phenomenology, or embodied cognition, as well as more broad cultural, societal, artistic, educational or philosophical accounts. Reports on empirical studies are welcome, as are movement-centered reinterpretations of prior research and theories. The themes include (but are not restricted to):

Choreographies and Design

• Designing by moving: Sketching meaningful and situationally appropriate physical interactions

• Moving by design: Acknowledging how technology makes us move

• Issues of body as an instrument of control

• Handling imaginary (ideomotoric) movements of a subjective space

• Rethinking HCI design theories and methods through movement

• Movement trajectories in urban environments

• Spatiality of choreographies: topography, kinesphere, skinesphere, inner space

• Temporality of choreographies: rhythm, pulse, tempo

Choreographic Sustainability

• Technologies colliding with everyday choreographies in public and private spaces

• Game-changing impacts of technology on infrastructures and habits of movement in spaces

• Choreographies of globalization: A way towards homogenization?

• Visions of urban environments: Spaces and moving agents in “smart” cities

• Aesthetics of movement in spaces

• The ethics of human–technology choreographies: Shaping the responsible future

Choreographies and the technologized self

• Wearable technologies in our life: Something that tags along or is blended into?

• Self-monitoring and quantified self

• Effects of wearable and mobile technology on body-image and body consciousness

• SoMe-tized life: Personal and interpersonal choreographies in both physical and virtually “extended” spaces of social media

Complete articles (a minimum of 7,000 words) should be submitted by the deadline of August 28, 2015. Papers will be evaluated for suitability within the scope of the special issue and readiness for peer review. Decisions of the 1st review are expected by October 16, 2015.

Target Publication date: early 2016

Author guidelines are available at http://www.humantechnology.jyu.fi/submission/

The submission website for this journal is located at: http://humantechnologypublishing.jyu.fi

If you use Max to control your dance tech world, check out the new version of Jean-Marc Pelletier's computer vision library at:
http://www.maxology.club/starter-kit-info/2015/4/27/starter-kit-1

Hi All,

Sorry I have not posted for a while.. I am in second year of fabulous new MFA Program at City College..

called DIAP.. Digital and Interdisciplinary Artistic Practice.. I am working on my thesis project

"Anima-Body" which will be a multiple- installation theater environment .. happening soon in May..

I will update more soon..

here is an image  of a test element..

El Mercat de les Flors de Barcelona acoge este fin de semana el festival Spring Forward, dirigido a programadores de danza y organizado por la red Aerowaves. Cada año se celebra en una ciudad diferentes y sirve como plataforma para una selección de compañías europeas emergentes que han sido escogidas por especialistas en base a su mérito artístico.

Los espectáculos serán emitidos por Streaming el viernes 17 de abril a partir de las 20:30h, sábado 18 a partir de las 17:30 y domingo 18 a partir de las 18:30h. Las emisiones tendrán lugar a través de la web www.artstreamingtv.com/live.php

Programa completo de Spring Forward e información sobre Aerowaves.

Cari Ann