There’s so much to do to get ready for our Open Studio at The Place on Tuesday. A new compilation of video footage of our experimentation in the studio and the only event where Hannah will be dancing live in relation to the projected film.
And assembling ipads, frames, screws and rawlplugs, card, blue tack….trying to remember all the bits of kit including projector, cables, tripod, video camera… much more difficult when I know I’ll be two hours away from my base and dependent on having everything we need with me.
The Open Studio was really useful for testing ways of showing the work emerging from our research, and getting responses from viewers – listen here
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I really liked the way you cannot encounter your work with indifference, it gives you a feeling of frustration/ claustrophobia, and also helplessness, as you can’t step in to help!! I really admire the way you tell us enough about the themes without telling too much. On the drive home from your open studio I realised it had given me confidence to do what I was doing, namely, exploring the inner feelings of ‘fear/constraint/ restriction’ (but I think with different meaning to your use of the words, or at least different origin), and not make the whole process sound like an art therapy session !! Or introspective crap, or just wanky self indulgent moaning!! …….
Back to your Open Studio, I think I found the video of Hannah in the living room the most spellbinding, her movements were so relentlessly awkward and upsetting (beautiful too) and made me think of ‘constraint, confinement, resistance and adaption’ the relentlessness of it made me feel powerless, quite voyeuristic and also fascinated. Aesthetically it was quite lovely, which sounds like a contradiction due to the themes.
The Open Studio comprised three installations to showcase work emerging from our research. Visitors were encouraged to sit in the studio and watch clips from our workshops through the mesh of elastic. The clips chosen tracked early experimentation with the dancer Hannah Kidd through to choreographed movement taken from efforts to move through the elastic.
Two complete Tea Break films were installed in frames in the dining room where they played side by side. As they are different lengths the action never coincided in the same way. Tea Break I and Tea Break II can be seen on VIMEO.
We also projected the last piece we made in the kitchen, on the door through which the dancer was filmed. Titled Living Room, it takes choreographed movement away from the elastic and plays out in a domestic context.
The first showcase to share research from our Unentitled project will be at my studio in Bury St Edmunds, 12.30 – 16.30 on Sunday 28 September.
The two films Tea Break I & II will be showing, plus a choreographed piece from our last workshop. The studio will be filled with elastic with projected footage of trial work from the five workshops. The purpose of the Open Studio is to test installations of the films and get feedback from visitors about how the work communicates our intentions.
This was the final workshop planned as part of the Grants for the Arts funded R&D project. We aimed to refine the choreographed sequences, experiment with projecting films in the studio, dancing in front of the projected footage both without and with a new web of elastic.
In preparation I had edited films of elastic with and without sound and saved some photographs of domestic interiors.
Projecting an interior suggested the idea of filming in an actual interior, using the choreographed sequences, which took the work in a new direction.
In reviewing the huge amount of work we’ve done over the last few months, we also decided to install the web with less tension to see how movement would be changed in a looser, less tightly restricting mesh. We also wanted to get more entangled, individually and together.
