[-empyre-] out of range

[Norah Zuniga Shaw]

Hello all.

Thanks Johannes, this is a good message to get me going a bit more. Without
my other half I needed some instigation (am enjoying imagining our friend
stelarc on a boat in south pacific or deep under the ocean at a deep sea
diving station because how else could he manage to be out of touch of the
incessant emails arriving on our phones, laptops, and in our dreams...what
kind of traveling motion takes him out of range, I need to know the secret
to that!). 

I too have felt a bit off kilter in the flurry of rich theorizing that came
rushing into my normally quite mundane and logistically oriented email inbox
last week. I wondered if perhaps that was because of my tendency to read
only short missives in email (and on screens in general) and save my deeper
philosophical meanderings for my paper-based textual experiences.  What is
it that Hayles says about "how information lost its body"? That may explain
why Erin's contribution lit up in my inbox and captured my seemingly
fleeting attention. I saw her recently and am deep into reading her new work
on relationscapes so then the email had a different embodied context. But
the other residue of last week is this thinking that they brought about
failure and gaps and the spaces in between the knowing and the doing. I want
to try moving that idea. Is it something like the space between the sliding
joints of the foot? Or is it more like when you try to do a perfectly
relaxed fall in the most postmodern sense of the word and find yourself
tensing up near the floor and therefore landing harder? What kinds of
failure are we talking about here really. And how does it move? But that's
not actually the subject of my thinking.

My theorizing of late has been manifesting much more within the practice of
making. Critical making my friend Matt Ratto would call it. And
communicating visually. I invite readers to go sample the making so that it
can be part of our exchange. I'll stop there to keep these brief and then
respond to your other very much appreciated prompts in separate emails, to
allow for grazing.

Norah









On 5/13/09 2:25 PM, "Johannes Birringer" <Johannes.Birringer at brunel.ac.uk>
wrote:

> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Johannes Birringer
> Sent: 13 May 2009 19:24
> To: empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> Subject: critical motion nowhere and everywhere at some time
> 
> 
> hello all:
> 
> thanks Norah for drawing attention to a question that perhaps might like
> to see itself addressed in this month's discussion, namely what would
> constitute "critical motion" and what
> such a term or concept implies for us here, to address, and why.
> 
> Your brief reference to work (and dissemination of research) which,
> admittedly, I was able to experience first-hand (and i am thus partial)
> in London during the recent Forsythe festival,
> was refreshing in its questions... can you say more about
> "counterpoint"?
> 
> 
> (I love Forsythe's worktitles:  "Nowhere and Everywhere at the Same
> Time").......
> 
> 
> <<<<   Norah Zuniga Shaw wrote:
> The interactive moving animations reflect on, work on, re-invent the
> choreographic structures in a dance. They were generated at the
> intersection
> of choreography, animation art, geography, architecture, theory (maybe)
> and
> even I suppose a form of activism in that they are reaching out to
> invite
> folks in to the dance and into some ways that we see patterns in
> complexity.
> 
> Are they a technological approach to movement? A critical one? They are
> a
> mix of analytical and creative. They seek to generate new creativity
> while
> representing a form of it (namely counterpoint in William Forsythe's One
> Flat Thing Reproduced). They seek to invite a certain kind of "dance
> readership." Counterpoint itself suggests some pretty radical ideas
> about
> ways to relate and find agreement in motion that don't require unison
> (or
> unity). The work is created in a complex community of practice that
> requires
> both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary practices for creation...
>>>> 
> 
> 
> I was in a production workshop over the last 10 days and am barely able
> to shift energies now from physical work and computing/editing and
> designing
> to the reading of such a highly complex and philosophical debate that we
> have had here. 
> 
>  I could not read the debate in a linear way, as it began,
> with Stamatia and Ashkey lighting out, and Erin following.
> 
> Then i got to a point where i did not want to read further.  Did anyone
> else have this
> sensation? 
> 
>  The discourse, I began so sense, was becoming less than particpatory,
> but i could be wrong. ??  I am sorry if I misunderstood.
> 
> What readership, Norah, was invited, in your work?
> 
> 
> with many regards
> Johannes
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Johannes Birringer
> artistic director, DAP Lab
> School of Arts 
> Brunel University
> West London 
> UB8 3PH   UK
> http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap
> http://www.danssansjoux.org
> 
> 
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