[-empyre-] Virtual Embodiment / whose "our systems"

[Johannes Birringer]

dear all:

[Kirk schreibt]
 I’m sorry I’ve not been able to participate in real-time, but I have found inspiration in many of the comments several days after they were written.

understandably, and as pointed out at the end of the June discussion (sonic pathways) here, not everyone is able to write/respond instantly, I almost feel such discussions, if they feel worthwhile, as Jackie also just pointed out in her post on/from "models observation" (and I really enjoyed getting a glimpse of the videos on https://vimeo.com/videovectors, and also found your comments on camera style/mediation on past old World Cups [1974] and more recent ones quite illuminating), ought perhaps to continue, for a while longer, and spill over, or continue to resonate and draw in more of you, if needs be, slowly. 

Kirk's response to some questions were much appreciated, I had no idea, Kirk, that you are in fact working on alternative modeling & archiving  -- also, the debate now between John and Simon is truly breathtaking,  as far as the "beyond" is concerned (John's philosophical commentary on dislocating and separating memory from individual embodied memory, as well as the earlier comments on "maintenance of archive", collective and individual) and thus seems to bear on heritage work and what Kirk refers to as issues " surrounding embodiment and bodily practices to inform our understanding of past cultures. In short, we attempted to look at landscapes and archeological records not as sculptures or illustrative records, but to place embodied researchers in human-scale (re)constructions."

It then seems also quite relevant (as you mention a certain kind of documentation made for academic research contexts) to really ponder the question (Simon Taylor's) of sliding scales amongst the "factitioner, the quantic surveyor, the data-garnerer", and also then the facebook players  (must agree here, very well then, if the younger folks think facebook a game or a joke, that's nice), and in your case the experimental archaeologists and (re)constructeurs testing digital reconstruction technologies for "evocations" (an ethnographic term used by Latin American artists who came to Houston to work with us on a project in 1997 [see my archiving of "Después de la Etnometodología" at http://www.digitalcultures.org/research12.html // http://www.digitalcultures.org/Library/transart.html]) of intangible heritage. 

It would occur to me that a conversation between all of you only just started, and perhaps, Jackie, as you mention your concern with how cameras (observing and filming) "impose themselves on different qualities of embodiment and movement vocabulary" (are you suggesting the camera always already manipulates the "user" embodiment  and viewer's perception of such?).... you may recall that Sue Hawksley mentioned her work on physical practices, her choreographic explorations with dancer Freya Jeffs, and she also mentioned that a filmmaker was involved, Roddy Simpson, but Roddy's impact is not discussed.

<http://theperipateticstudio.wordpress.com/2012/09/11/sue-hawksley-traces-of-places/>

Sue does mention that "Roddy helped out with documenting the process through video and photos. Documentation of dance is something I always find problematic, especially as I am not a filmmaker; my own efforts generally reflect this lack, while professionally produced material reflects the presence, perspective and creative input of the person behind the camera. To address this concern I wanted for some time to make a piece specifically for camera...."
but I could not find a video of "Traces of Places" and thus cannot comment on how cameras can "capture" or move internal pressure, internal inhabiting remembered space, trauma, memory.  

The repression of pain (to use a Freudian term) would not really be dissociative, individually or collectively, would it? How could pain of guilt be ever thoroughly dislocated, separated? (growing up in Germany, those questions, addressed to our parent generation, always cut quite close to the skin). Today, incidentally, Poles and Germans remember the uprising and massacre in the Warsaw ghetto in 1944, and the german president remarked that it is sheer unbelievable ["ein Wunder"]  that the two countries have friendly relations today. 

Kirk, one would need time to read the articles on your practice and gain a better understanding;  Simon's brilliant post certainly invites responses and I am re-reading slowly what you say, Simon, thus not able to answer yet, it's exceedingly complex and sometimes I feel, now encouraged in my feeling after you speak of your Minus theatre company as using a number of (playful) second languages, that you are stepping out of "our" systems. 

This idea, that we are scarcely bound and tethered by "our" dispositifs - especially when they are not a fundamentally ordered system – but that we can treat them as costumes, was of course what I was hoping to propose in the very beginning. Here I sense we agree, that "as useless or failed or with whatever kind of abejcture  or minoritarian becoming artifacture", the dress can be worn in many ways.

(Re: Oiticica and his fabulous colorful parangolés:   back in 1968, I believe, the sad anecdote goes that he had prepared an exhibition of his Tropicalia show for a museum in Rio de Janeiro, and given the parangolés to some Afro-Brazilian friends to wear, and as they came dancing in from the streets, the museum guards stopped the black dancers at the door and would not let them in).


regards
Johannes Birringer