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Through 2007-8 The Presence Project will be closely following the development of The Builders Association's current project, CONTINUOUS CITY.
CONTINUOUS CITY: Excerpts from a work-in-progress by The Builders Association, UC Berkeley, October 5-14, 2007
Our extensive documentation of this process will be developed on the Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1187
Initiated in a series of company workshops at the Krannert Centre and the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in July 2007, CONTINUOUS CITY will be developed throughout the next year toward opening performances in Autumn 2008.
CONTINUOUS CITY: Excerpts from a work-in-progress by The Builders Association, UC Berkeley, October 5-14, 2007
Engaging with the impact of network technologies on the nature and sense of contemporary place, the company write that:
CONTINUOUS CITY is a mediation on how contemporary experiences of location and dislocation stretch us to the maximum as our "networked selves" occupy multiple locations. Globally, we are at a watershed moment where, for the first time, more people are living in cities than in rural environments. From the megacities of the developing world to the gated communities of the U.S., our new production looks at the sense of 'place' within a global context, and how electronic connection contributes to and complicates that sense of place.
CONTINUOUS CITY also explores these networked architectures through a website created as a performance space where members of the public may participate in the project by joining a chorus, entering into dialogue with characters and uploading images, all of which may be added to the theatrical production. Uploaded material may also be viewed from the site. Visit http://continuouscity.org/ to explore and participate in this part of the project.
CONTINUOUS CITY: Excerpts from a work-in-progress by The Builders Association,
UC Berkeley, October 5-14, 2007
Ranging from extracts from Marianne Weems' preparatory notebooks to interviews at key moments with company members to analyses and accounts of working processes and outcomes, this documentation will form a unique dialogue between The Presence Project and the evolution of a major theatrical work.
Following an intensive period of work at the UCL CAVE between February and July 2007 at UCL we are now beginning the process of analysing the outcomes of the first of our two experiments in VR.
During this period, Gabriella Giannachi, Nick Kaye, Mel Slater, David Swapp, Marco Gillies, with performer Annie Hudson, developed a mixed reality scenario in CAVE to test hypotheses defined in response to the our series of Performing Presence practice/research workshops in Exeter during 2006.
Using sophisticated motion capture and software, and developed as an interactive performative scenario between avatar, performer and participant, the experiment provided us with a wealth of qualitative and quantitative outcomes, including interviews, questionnaires and data recording physiological responses to the experience.
The outcomes of this process will feed into key project publications as well as shaping our developing work within CAVE. More images and details of the experiment will be available on the Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/645
The documentation of the workshops on which this process draws, and interviews with many of the contributing artists, including Tim Etchells, Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes, Fiona Templeton, and Phillip Zarrilli, are now available on the Presence Project Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu
The Presence Project Collaboratory now incorporates more than a dozen extensive discussions with contributing artists now available through the Collaboratory, including:
Marianne Weems http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/831
Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1120
Fiona Templeton http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1101
Phillip Zarrilli http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1143
A full directory of these discussions of presence, performance and visual art is available at our Presence research grouping, available on the Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/493
Our most recent posted discussion is with Tim Etchells:
I don’t know if there is such a thing as simply ‘being there,’ just being present. Being present is always a kind of construction. Perhaps we could think of presence as something that happens when one attempts to do something, and whilst attempting to do that thing you become visible; visible in not quite succeeding in doing it, visible through the cracks or the gaps. (Tim Etchells, Presence Project Interview)
Our interview with Tim is now avaliable online through the Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/646
Recorded by Gabriella Giannachi and Nick Kaye following Tim's Presence Project workshop, 'Presence and Absence Intertwined,' our discussion ranges over Forced Entertainment's live performance, digital and installation work, as well as the company's collaborations with the photographer Hugo Glendinning.
Throughout, Tim considers the constructions of performer presence that animate the company's work, as well as the work of other influential artists including The Wooster Group and Peter Handke.
courtesy Tim Etchells
Reflecting on the impact of new technologies on the construction and performance of presence, Tim notes:
One of the things we do as readers of signs and situations - and of all things - is that we respond to absences - and we fill absence. So, you know, the way the telephone makes us imagine the whole person, the way that in text chatting - instant messaging - in writing, you sort of spend time with other people but you are not in the same room as them. And because it’s purely in that sense, because it’s purely language, there is a huge role for you in mentally unpacking what’s written or, in the phone, unpacking what’s said, to create people.
As we look forward toward beginning year 3 of the project, we will be significantly extending the Collaboratory resource, incorporating video documentation, publishing a wide range of interviews and significantly developing our core investigations.
We welcome contributions and enquiries - details of contributing to the Presence Project Forum are at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/1095
On 8th March Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes will conduct the second of our Presence workshops in Drama's newly opened Alexander Building at Exeter.
Pearson/Brookes/Thomas:who are you looking at?
Since 1997, Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes have created a series of
productions that proposed new strategies within the form, function and
placement of performance in work employing a variety of media, from radio broadcast to
surveillance CCTV.
In this workshop, which includes audio and video material
from several of their recent multi-site works, they examine the implications
of these strategies for notions of presence and absence, for both performers
and spectators alike. They reflect upon their working practices, new forms
of dramaturgy, the shifting role of audience, reorientations in the
technique of the performer, and questions of documentation. Pearson and
Brookes will show previously little seen material including graphic
representations of their performance scenarios, footage from projects in
Germany and west Wales, and the experimental DVD-ROM of their performance
work Carrying Lyn. The presentation will be informal, with an opportunity
for discussion.
Pearson/Brookes/Thomas:who are you looking at?
Pearson and Brookes have worked together since 1997. In 2002 they began a
long-term though irregular relationship with Welsh playwright Ed Thomas.
Their regular performer/collaborators include John Rowley, now working with
Forced Entertainment, and Richard Morgan and Paul Jeff of Good Cop Bad Cop.
Pearson/Brookes: polis
Mike Pearson is Professor of Performance Studies in the Department of
Theatre, Film and Television Studies, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. He
was a director of Cardiff Laboratory Theatre (1973-80) and Brith Gof
(1981-97). His main interests are in devised performance and site specific
work. He is the author with Michael Shanks of Theatre/Archaeology (2001,
Routledge), and of ŒIn Comes I¹: Performance, Location and Landscape
(University of Exeter Press, forthcoming)
Pearson/Brookes: polis
Mike Brookes is an artist and designer, working primarily as a painter and
performance maker. His design work has engaged both graphic and time-based
media; and his collaborations with performance companies such as Brith Gof,
The Magdalena Project, Earthfall, and Quarantine, have resulted in a wide
spread reputation for his activities as a lighting and production designer.
Audience places at the workshop are free of charge and can be reserved by contacting Linda Dowsett at l.m.dowsett@exeter.ac.uk
Further information on work by Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes is available through the Performing Presence Collaboratory here http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/343 and in our earlier weblog entry at http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/presence/2005/11/pearsonbrookes_presence_worksh.html
Mike Brookes' website is at http://www.mikebrookes.com/
Images from who are you looking at? Pearson/Brookes/Thomas.
Images of polis Gerald Tyler.
Images courtesy Mike Brookes.
Future presence workshops at Exeter will be conducted by:
Vayu Naidu: 22 March
Phillip Zarrilli and Klaus Seewald: 10 May
Fiona Templeton: 24 May
Bella Merlin: 21 June
Tim Etchells’ Presence Workshop will take place on 15 February 12.30-4.30, in Drama’s newly opened Theatre Studios at Thornlea, University of Exeter.
All our workshops are free and open to a public audience. To reserve an audience place please e-mail: l.m.dowsett@exeter.ac.uk
Photo courtesy Tim Etchells
The workshop will be divided into two parts. In the first Tim will lead a small group of students in a series of practical exercises. Based on simple rules and performance tasks these will provide a starting point for discussion about how we construct our own presence and that of others and how rules, situations, space and language itself function as the frames through and in which we appear.
The second part of the session will be more in the form of lecture-demonstration. Tim will use examples from his own practice and that of other artists to expand on the ideas begun in part one, continuing to focus on the ways that limits, frames around and confusions to presence are a key part of its manifestation.
Forced Entertainment, Exquisite Pain (2005)
Photo Hugo Glendinning, courtesy Forced Entertainment.
Tim is best known for his work as artistic director and writer of the performance ensemble Forced Entertainment, based in Sheffield UK and working together since 1984. He has also created diverse projects of his own in a variety of media including SMS, video and installation.
Forced Entertainment, Exquisite Pain (2005)
Photo Hugo Glendinning, courtesy Forced Entertainment.
He has collaborated with other artists in many disciplines including the photographer Hugo Glendinning, the choreographer Meg Stuart/Damaged Goods and visual artists Vlatka Horvat, Franko B and Asta Groting. Under his direction, Forced Entertainment have toured widely in mainland Europe and beyond and have made projects that span theatre, durational performance, and other media. Recent Forced Entertainment projects include 'Bloody Mess' a darkly comical rocktacular collage, 'First Night', a disastrous vaudeville and 'Who Can Sing A Song To Unfrighten Me?', a performance of 24 hours duration.
Tim has written widely about performance and contemporary culture, and has published three books: 'The Dream Dictionary' (Duckworth 2001); 'Endland Stories', (Pulp Books 1999); and 'Certain Fragments' - a collection of theoretical writing and performance texts (Routledge 1999).
Tim is currently a Creative Research Fellow in the Department of Theatre Studies, Lancaster University.
Full details of the Performing Presence workshop series are available at http://www.projects.ex.ac.uk/performing-presence/events.php
Forced Entertainment’s website is at http://www.forcedentertainment.com
Gabriella Giannachi’s notes on Tim Etchells and Forced Entertainment are on the Collaboratory at: http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/306
See also our previous weblog entry http://traumwerk.stanford.edu/presence/2005/11/tim_etchells_presence_workshop_1.html
Future workshops in the series will be conducted by:
Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes: 8 March
Vayu Naidu: 22 March
Phillip Zarrilli and Klaus Seewald (date tbc)
Fiona Templeton (date tbc)
Bella Merlin: 21st June
More to come….
I have just returned from New York and the BAM performances of The Builders Association and dbox's SUPER VISION.
The BAM Harvey Theatre is an extraordinary performance space.
Saved from dereliction, the interior fabric of the building has been preserved in a revelation of the interior structures, materials and surfaces that frame a state-of-the-art 900-seat theatre.
To this The Builders Association and dbox have brought a precise and spectacular synthesis of virtual scenic architecture, video, sound and theatre design, with live, mediated and recorded performance.
Interweaving three stories, SUPER VISION is a complex visual and musical exploration of the 'data body,' the shaping of presence and identity in the data stream continually constructed around us.
 
 
During the six days of my visit, I was able to record interviews with Marianne Weems of The Builders Association and James Gibbs of dbox, as well as eleven company members and associates.
Along with Marianne and James, I was able to talk with Moe Angelos, Kyle deCamp, Constance DeJong, Dan Dobson, Peter Flaherty, Allen Hahn, Stewart Laing, Rizwan Mirza, David Pence, Tanya Selveratnam, as well as Norman Frisch who has collaborated with the company on past projects.
SUPER VISION emerged out of the collaboration of many artists and contributors, full details of which are available through the SUPER VISION website at http://www.superv.org
 
 
The agreed, edited transcriptions of these recordings will form the basis of a documentation and exploration of SUPER VISION and the process of its development.
Forming one of the key projects within the Presence Collaboratory at http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/339, this process will also explore the collaborative, online documentation of performance.
For me, this has been a unique opportunity to discuss in detail the process and realisation of a performance that crosses disciplinary boundaries and has been evolved in a close and intensely creative collaboration between all aspects of its production.
Details of tour dates for SUPER VISION are available at http://www.superv.org
The Builders Association are at http://www.thebuildersassociation.org/flash/flash.html?homepage
dbox are at http://www.dbox.com/
Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes will be offering the second of our Presence Workshops in Exeter on 8 March.
In a series of performances since 1999, Pearson/Brookes have explored studio-based practice as a mediation of specific sites and events.
who are you looking at? – performed in Cardiff, Wales over three nights in February 2004, formed the second part of their collaboration with writer and director Ed Thomas.
The piece proposes strategies for re-imagining the city in a revelation of personal material and experience.
Mike Brookes describes the piece:
An installation and performance presentation built on core material produced in collaboration with five young female performers - each documenting 3mins within a particular public city centre location, on the same evening: producing footage, of each location, from three simultaneous and expanding points of view.
The event was performed by Brookes, Pearson and Thomas - working around a large central table, on which was arranged all the necessary equipment and material [...] to structure the progression and juxtaposition of this material live within the room of the developing installation.
In their work, documentation acts as an axis to explore the presence/absence of objects, images and experiences transposed into performance.
Mike Pearson trained as an archaeologist. Between 1972 and 1997 Mike was involved in a series of key performance companies based in Wales and working across Europe, including RAT Theatre, Cardiff Laboratory Theatre and, from 1981, Brith Gof.
A major documentation of Brith Gof’s performances is being developed at Stanford as part of Michael (Shanks)’ Metamedia Lab at http://metamedia.stanford.edu:3455/BrithGof/Home. Michael was a company director of Brith Gof from 1997 until the company closed in 2004.
Mike Brookes is an artist and designer whose performance work focuses upon 'the production of durational objects and interventions, holistic ambients, radical structures of presentation, and context specific performance works.'
An earlier Pearson/Brookes performance, polis, realised over three consecutive evenings in September 2001, comprised twenty-five performance fragments, realised in five phases of five simultaneous acts, across the centre of the city.
Small groups of spectators produced documentary traces of these events, along with personal material.
Simultaneously, within the developing structure of an installation, Mike Pearson and Mike Brookes effected a re-presentation of these traces, producing
An installation that combined multiple projection and video monitoring; with maps of routes and locations; texts; polaroid photographs; an evolving and complex sound ambient; and the accumulation of artifacts and traces resulting from the performers' processes and activities, and the spectators encounters with them.
Pearson/Brookes explore the material and immaterial traces of action and place in the performance of events just-passed and the re-presentation of one site through another.
Their work is concerned with the mechanisms in which the presence of actions and events are mapped and re-enacted.
Mike Brookes website and documentation of Pearson/Brookes work is at http://www.mikebrookes.com
Images from who are you looking at? Pearson/Brookes/Thomas.
Images of polis Gerald Tyler.
Images courtesy Mike Brookes.
Tim Etchells will conduct one of our first Presence performance workshops – to be hosted by the Centre for Intermedia, Exeter, on 15 February.
Tim is Artistic Director of Forced Entertainment, one of the UK’s most influential companies working across performance, installation and media.
Forced Entertainment is currently presenting two theatre pieces, Exquisite Pain and Bloody Mess, at the Riverside Studios in London.
Exquisite Pain is pared down re-telling of conceptual artist Sophie Calle’s stories, an exploration ‘how the forces of language, memory and forgetting move to contain, preserve or erase events, how as a person one comes to terms with trauma’:
I decided to continue... until I had got over my pain by comparing it with other people's, or had worn out my own story through sheer repetition.
This is the first time the company have chosen to perform a text they have not created themselves.
Tim notes:
I loved the project's form of repeated exchange. Its "I'll tell you my sad story if you tell me yours". It's the kind of simple transaction that most of us have taken part in informally - in bars, cars or bedrooms - but in Calle's hands, as she repeatedly exchanges her own story of failed romance for the stories of friends, acquaintances and strangers, the process is reduced to its mathematical and psychological essence; a ticking tit-for-tat of death, lost love, existential despair and bad dentistry.
Two people sit in front of you and make their way through a collection of sad stories that belong to other people. A kind of bearing witness, a trip through the archive that Sophie Calle has collected, and a journey through her journey of remembering and trying to forget.
Bloody Mess is in many ways the antithesis of Exquisite Pain.
A highly physical spectacle involving ten performers ‘about the pleasure of watching, and about visual pleasure, physical pleasure,’ Bloody Mess emphasizes action, disorder and simultaneity.
Forced Entertainment’s work emphasizes the constructed nature of role, identity, and place.
Reflecting their concerns with media and mediation, the company frequently heighten the artificiality of the elements they play through, allowing one ‘fictional’ moment to shift onto or be juxtaposed with another.
Tim has suggested that such strategies foreground ‘the inability of the performers to fully inhabit the texts and gestures which they perform,’ reflecting the notion that:
The space that we really live in is a kind of electronically mediated one. And it feels like one’s landscape - the source of one’s images, the things that haunt you - are likely to be second, third, fourth-hand.
Yet in these ‘shifts,’ the vulnerabilities of the performers are revealed in counterpoint to the fictional ‘borrowings’ that make up the work.
Forced Entertainment pose questions about the performance of presence where mediation itself reveals the complexity of the ‘live’ act and event.
We will soon be developing Collaboratory project pages on Tim's work and Forced Entertainment in preparation for the workshop documentation.
Forced Entertainment’s website is at www.forcedentertainment.com/
Photos: Hugo Glendinning, courtesy of Forced Entertainment
Image by dbox
In December, we will begin our first extended documentation through the Collaboratory.
SUPER VISION has been created by The Builders Association and dbox as a major cross-media project embracing multi-media performance, digital animation, new video techniques, electronic music and an architectural set.
Engaging with a 'post-private society,' the performance explores the negotiation of identities and presence in the contemporary production and circulation of data.
Our work will focus on performances of SUPER VISION at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, before its wide-ranging international tour, and will be the beginning of an extended collaboration with The Builders Association through the Presence project.
It's a tremendous opportunity for us - our documentation is being developed on the Collaboratory project pages http://presence.stanford.edu:3455/Collaboratory/339
The Builders Association website http://www.thebuildersassociation.org provides details of the touring schedule of SUPER VISION in 2006-7, as well as an animated trailer and project details.
dobox are at www.dbox.com,
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