December 5, 2009 at 7:21 pm · Filed under Artworks, Events, Thoughts
Marc Davis, Chief Scientist and Co-Founder of Invention Arts looks at how digital networks make the invisible visible and the impermanent permanent as we know when peoples whereabouts overlap with devices like an iPhone, for example.
How does this relate to artists such as William Kentridge who look to make the invisible visible in art projects such as Parcours D’atelier: Artist in the Studio? Kentridge uses art products to make the invisible visible. How, then, does his product relate to those social networking processes that we’ve been exploring all day?
Also, as Davis uses game theory to understand the scale of social interaction with his projects that work with geo-tagged photographs etc, I wonder how we can use performance theory as it relates to game theory to understand connections between social media and art pieces that engage similar concepts.
May 4, 2009 at 9:14 am · Filed under Events, Thoughts
I am just returning from a weekend at UCLA for the 2009 Dance Under Construction conference. This year’s theme was The Politics of Choreography, Choreographing Politics. This graduate student conference has been moving from UC campus to UC campus for the past eleven years drawing graduate students focusing on any aspect of dance practice to share their research and engage in conversation. As MFA and PhD students in performance studies and dance converge for one weekend it is astounding the different scholarship that seems to hearken similar questions. Whether dancing, performing a workshop, or embodying a traditional academic lecture, budding academics recount different dances from concert dance, performance art and social dance to everyday movement as dancing. The state of this conference stands as exciting proof that current graduate students are able to get their degrees in dance as a rigorous academic field. I have begun to question, though, what this means. As someone who is in school with non-dancers I am consistently questioned and challenged as to my notion of movement, the body, ephemerality, virtuosity, sincerity and more. Scholarship in other fields that parse these concepts directly, or indirectly are what inspire my dance interventions and choreographic engagements. Once I enter a dance context, though, it seems that we often feel more comfortable using these terms in a contemporary dance context without considering not only scholarship on these topics outside of our field, but a long tradition of dance history that his dissected and deconstructed these and similar concepts. By no means am I suggesting that by existing within a dance only context we become less self-critical. I was pushed and inspired in many other ways this weekend as I grew to question my academic stance on performing lectures and ideas, or whether or not talking about dance in terms of capital and commodity is beneficial. Experiencing my own micro-choreographies and macro-politics in relation to technology has inspired me to question the long lasting effect of my research. How is what I am doing NOT merely a trend? William Kentridge often asks this question as he uses technologies that he feels make a long-lasting political statement as opposed to those that merely play with our instantaneous desires for digi-trends. So, the dance conference experience was inspiring and challenging. I only hope that we continue working both inside and outside of this community. Susan Foster reminded the audience at the keynote panel how the interdisciplinary status of this conference was so unique. I hope that in our academic inquiry we continue to embrace the interdisciplinary nature of our field by working outside of it, even as dance as a discipline continues to grow.
March 15, 2009 at 2:59 pm · Filed under Events
I’ve been looking at William Kentridge’s work a lot lately and had the opportunity to see an exhibit of his work at SFMoma yesterday. I was blown away by how intricately he treads the line between over stimulation and a delicate and subtle emotionality. His multi-media oeuvre also tends to include a great deal of choreography. Although the exhibition blurb coined Kentridge as someone who looks at painting, drawing, film etc, they didn’t notice the implicit gesture toward choreography that accompanies his work. I found both historical reference and robotic work. This is aside from the plethora of projections that are necessary to convey Kentridge’s message about South African politics and more.
Hopefully more on this to come as I will see him speak this afternoon and tomorrow!
