Re: grids and occult

Johannes H. Birringer (j.birringer@nwu.edu)
Tue, 13 May 1997 00:42:02 -0500

Feedback to Dawn and Susan:

>>another kind of dance. If I understand Dawn correctly, her company wants to
>>be acknowledged in New York as a dance company (that happens to use high
>>technology), and it may get invited to events such as BODY ELECTRIC where
>>people will wonder whether bodies are necessary or need to be present. Aha.
>
dawn writes:

>Yes. I would like both. And why not? Do you have to be excluded from one
>group to be a member of the other? Otherwise, where do we perform our work?
>Where is our theater? Who is our audience? There are not enough
>"dance-technology performance events" in our immediate area to support the
>amount of performing that we hope to do. I want to remain connected to
>those who go to see dance since that is my primary medium of expression.
>There is always a live body dancing in all of the works I create.
>

Apart from thanking you for your response, Dawn (yes, I do know the Oursler
images/projections onto the orbs, and found them disturbing, odd-ball, and
then, after a while, too toyful, superficial), I think your reaction to the
question about where our dances/technolgy experiments get invited or seen is
a rather serious issue, for all of us, and I agree, it ought to be both/all
ways, but each arena or different context craetes different problems or
qustions of what you addressed initially when we spoke about grids and
validity.

perhaps we cannot remain "connected" - because perhaps because we don't work
in a primary medium, nor do we know what an "audience" is ("our"audience),
that loose and abstract fiction that is not a fiction because they also pay
for tickets and support or decline to support that which may not fit either
a dance venue or an "ars elecronica" framework. I think, if I look at
Thecla's effort in Vancouver, it will take many more (of likeminded
colleagues) to organize our own workshops/festivals and "frames" or one
might have to explode those frames. Especially (re: Whitney Biennial, etc)
when the frames nowadays create circuses and entertainment arenas wih nice
funky installations of everything grouped together wih everything/anything).

No, there are never enough dance-technology events in our "area." That's why
I begin to welcome the impossibility of planning/plotting workshops across
oceans. I got a tentaive invitation to come to New Zealand, and when we
performed in Cleveland last week, a young performer from Sidney quietly
suggested that we might meet in Australia. Well, I probably can't afford the
flights, but if some of us, with some partnerships (when w e propose an
event to an institution or gain private sponsorship from the DEEP BLUE
people, say), get the opportunity to invite others to work with others, we will.

Ciao,
Johannes