Goal(s): Project Opening; Introducing the RELAY project to the participants; Getting to know each other and building trust; Informing and inspiring the working process; Setting up a learning format that challenges the relationship between physical and digital materials and situations in artistic processes
The first RELAY encounter in Cologne started with a keynote by choreographer and dancer Claire Cunningham to inspire the working phase and to draw attention to aspects of the relationality between form and content.
Claire Cunningham is a performer and creator of multi-disciplinary performance based in Glasgow, Scotland. As one of the UK’s most acclaimed and internationally renowned disabled artists, Cunningham’s work is often rooted in the study and use/misuse of her crutches as well as the exploration of the potential of her own specific physicality with a conscious rejection of traditional dance techniques, developed for non-disabled bodies. Alongside this runs a deep interest in the lived experience of disability and its implications not only as a choreographer but also in terms of societal notions of knowledge, value, connection and interdependence. A self-identifying disabled artist, Cunningham’s work combines multiple art forms.
In Claire Cunningham’s work, the relation between form and content becomes very tangible and concrete: her artistic practice is formed by the crutches she uses and which she herself describes not as dead objects, but rather ‘very alive’. As much as her movement apparatus is affected by the crutches (e.g. role of shoulders as shock absorbers, strength of arms and upper body, chest as core), she describes how this pre given ‘form’ is used by her to create movement material.
The keynote served as an inspiration for the participants and was followed by labs hosted, held and designed by both students and mentors of the partner institutions. Due to the pandemic situation it was not possible to meet on site, so the labs were held simultaneously in Cologne, Bucharest, Copenhagen and Heraklion, followed by an online sharing between the lab groups.
In Cologne, the Lab Group consisted of seven dance students and two students of electronic composition, plus two professors, one from music/composition, one from contemporary dance practice. The objective of the Cologne Lab was to share materials of movement and sound and to provoke, affect, manipulate, support or challenge them by other materials - of the same (sound, movement retrospectively) or of another media. In order to design frames for the materials to be explored, musicians and dancers proposed scores, structures and constellations to each other.
The Copenhagen Lab Group consisted of the four staff members that would be involved in the next encounter in Copenhagen. Working with the fact that the first encounter in Cologne shifted to a hybrid format, the lab outlined an updated draft taking in consideration the new situation that the second encounter in Copenhagen turned into the first physical encounter of the RELAY project. Additionally, the lab processed the proposed input of Claire Cunningham's keynote.
The Lab group in Heraklion comprised ten dance students and one lecturer of contemporary dance. The Lab was divided into two sessions. During an improvisation lesson the students were invited to explore the concept of sustainability in action (which also included to exploration of what is NOT sustainable) - both materially and mentally - creating a toolbox of words at the end of the first session. During the second session the group moved further and connected materiality of movement to music by focusing on how different sounds trigger sustainable or unsustainable movement.
The Bucharest Lab was held at the CNDB, with the participation of two lecturers and in total five students from the three Romanian partner institutions. In order to encourage the students to find common themes, concepts and models which would inspire and motivate them, the starting point was an acoustic model of sound and different ways composers have related to it throughout history. The perspectives presented in a short lecture provided an opportunity for a prolific exchange of ideas encouraging to think about artistic material as energy in motion. Additionally, a movement workshop designed to bring together learners with different backgrounds (music and dance) took place. The main focus was on embracing the differences of perceptions and to acknowledge the body as a platform that connects movement and sound. Is the sound generating movement or the movement generating sound?
The online situation of this first encounter was a Plan B scenario due to the complex travel realities caused by the COVID-pandemic. Originally, we had planned a meeting in physical presence in Cologne. This raised pragmatic challenges for how to pass on artistic materials between the participants. Also, it posed questions around the relationship between material and immaterial matters, constellations and situations in general, and in particular regarding the relationship between physical and digital materials and situations.
The first encounter in Cologne involved a transformative arc from movement/sounds that emerged from disciplinary gestures of choreography/dance and music/composition through a phase of interdisciplinary exchange operating in-between different practices of the participating composers and dancers towards the un-disciplinary (something that is not anymore/ yet a discipline). Material (including scores, images, structures, movements, sounds) generated directly from the artistic research processes have been tested in interplay of the embodied in order to expose, transform, distill or expand understanding beyond one's own discipline. This brought up questions on the relationship and interdependence between content and form in artistic practice (and beyond). It became one of the ongoing subjects in the working phases to follow.
As part of the Cologne Lab, the Time Capsule was prepared by the students from Cologne. In a structured improvisation format material was non-verbally processed, assembled and collected. Eventually an old suitcase served to store some of the negotiated material, f.ex. aluminum paper that the musicians had used to connect their microphones to the dancers’ skin in order to produce interaction of sounds through movements, USB sticks with sound files recorded during the Cologne Lab, as well as parts of costumes and papers with notes, etc. During the train ride between Cologne and Copenhagen, the Cologne students added material on the way and took pictures of the suitcase in different situations and locations. On the first day in Copenhagen, they unpacked the Time Capsule. The material - once released and set into action - became the base of a one hour open improvisation which served as a means to get to know each other through non-verbal and playful action.
(Connected) Methods and Tools: Practice-based research; Testing artistic materials in Lab groups; Relaying; Meandering; Passing through/on, Lecture
Participants: CNDB Adnana Cruceanu, Ana Papadima, Corina Cimpoieru, Ionuț Cherana, Mihai Mihalcea, DASPA Joaquim Bigas, Malin Astner, Max Wallmeier, Micalea Kühn, Rasmus Ölme, HfMT Benze C. Werner, Dimitrii Remezov, Emma Stacey, Henrike Tünnermann, Isabel Carvalho, Jan Burkhardt, Javier Vazquez Rodriguez, Juliana Garaycochea, Juri Jaworsky, Indumati Das, Laura Lang, Leandra Hardt, Leonie Stöckle, Michael Beil, Miroslav Srnka, Natacha Hüfken, Rita Klos, Sergej Maingardt, Vera Sander, Yeojin Kim, SIKINNIS Asimina Michelakou, Athina Kazouri, Evita Tsakalaki, Ismini Roussou, Konstantinos Tsakirelis, Maria Arkouli, Maria Levantinou, Maria Kritsotaki, Maria Solanou, Sissy Karpoutzaki, Sofia Paneri, Stella Malliaraki, UNATC Andreea Duta, Andrei Bouariu, Antonia Itineant,UNMB Agnes Vrânceanu, Andrei Petrache, Cătălin Crețu, Păiș George
In-between
RELAY paid great attention to the in-betweens of the events.
At the end of each event a ‘time capsule’ with artistic material was produced and passed on to the next event to be opened up and continuously transformed. In this sense, each event stays connected to both past and future and creates an over-arching temporality of the entire project. The time capsules travelled with participants from one event to the next.
Furthermore, RELAY principles and methods were implemented beyond the project itself, for example in the curriculum of teaching
activities outside the project, such as seminars and lectures.
These activities investigated trans-digital practices of indistinction by exploring sound and movement-material as well as compositional and choreographic structures focusing on transferability, intertwining, reversibility and principles of handing over in creative procedure. The seminars also used the “RELAY technique” of “feedforwarding” and “feedbacking”: it (time-shifted) exchanged artistic material with students and teachers from UNMB Bucharest. A description of the “in-betweens” can be found below here..
