Author: wasswasswass

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The Need for Context

The need for contextualization exists because humans can not free themselves from the good-bad binary. That being said, contextualization is also needed because we are now in a post-disciplinary moment. How long that moment will last is another question.

Because we are in a post-disciplinary time and still are saddled with the evaluative binary, we need contextualization to help us determine where a given work of art/documentation/performance/representation lies on that spectrum. For better or worse, we are no longer saddled (not really but roll with it) with the evaluative binaries of disciplines, which are themselves shorthands for contextualization.

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Osama

Hmm…Osama is now dead and his body was dumped out to see. Of course, the U.S. military observed strict Islamic protocol before they dumped his body. So as not to enrage anyone. When are the photos of the Navy Seals or Delta Force or whoever caught him going to surface? The photos with the soldiers posing with empty beer cans, hot dogs and Osama’s dead body?

That question aside, I think it is quite remarkable that the US found him without co-operation by the Pakistani government. We give them billions every year, his compound was within spitting distance of a Pakistani military base. What I bet happened is that the Pakistani government co-operated fully with the understanding that the US government would make a big stink about how they received no co-operation. That way the Pakistani government gets full deniability(sp?) and the US gets Osama. A win-win situation. Yes, there have been some deaths due to do protests/retaliations by Osama supporters.

But imagine how much worse it would have been if the Pakistani government had publicly supported his capture and been excited by his death?

Also, what happened to due process of law and trial by a jury of peers? Or are those not unalienable self-evident rights…?

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John Cleese on Terrorism

The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have therefore raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.”

Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.” The English have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies nearly ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to “A Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was in 1588, when threatened by the Spanish Armada.

The Scots have raised their threat level from “Pissed Off” to “Let’s get the Bastards.” They don’t have any other levels. This is the reason they have been used on the front line of the British army for the last 400 years.

The French government announced yesterday that it has raised its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Collaborate” and “Surrender.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.

Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”

The Germans have increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbor” and “Lose.”

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual; the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

The Spanish are all excited to see their new submarines ready to deploy. These beautifully designed subs have glass bottoms so the new Spanish navy can get a really good look at the old Spanish navy.

Australia, meanwhile, has raised its security level from “No worries” to “She’ll be alright, Mate.” Three more escalation levels remain: “Crikey!”, “I think we’ll need to cancel the barbie this weekend” and “The barbie is cancelled.” So far no situation has ever warranted use of the final escalation level.

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There is no bad art. Only bad craft.

Recently tweeted that. It is another iteration of the burrito/taco/shoe/title idea.

Craft as defined by dictionary.com is – an occupation requiring special skill. It is also a verb defined as – to make or manufacture.

Craft, then, we could say is to make or manufacture something requiring a special skill.

Art, coming from the Latin ars, means craftmanship. But why go back to the roots of the words. Useful? Maybe, but the meaning and relationships to those meanings change with fashions and trends of the day. (insert appropriate dead French philosopher quote here).

I prefer to use my relationship to these words now. Art and artificial, similar, no? For me art is anything that is intentionally created, something that did not already exist in nature. Nature is the opposite of art (insert dead German philosopher quote here). To create art, all one has to do is something, anything.

Craft, on the other hand, has a set of skills and expectations. To craft a chair from walnut wood and leather requires a certain set of skills – cutting, measuring, sanding, staining – that must be executed in order to create an object that can fulfill a certain function. In this case, someone has to be able to sit in the chair. If the chair cannot fulfill this expectation – it breaks, hurts the person sitting in it, isn’t comfortable – it is not a very good chair.

Another layer of craft, the visual component, then, comes into question. Does the viewer like the way the chair looks.

Hmm…just had the thought that craft is many layers of either/or statements.

Art, on the other hand, is a henna tattoo for an Indian wedding. Yes, and doesn’t have the same level of either/ors. In relation to dance, many dancers are more craftspeople. They spend many hours trying to get a specific sequence down pat. They are not creating anything new, they are not creating anything artificial, but crafting, getting the either/or statements as correct as possible. They are simultaneously creating and defining an infinite number of either/or statements.

Art happens before craft. Only down the road, as time passes, does craft come into being.

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Definitions of C and I

Choreography:
That which has a higher degree of reproducibilty a larger percentage of the time.

Improvisation:
That which has a lower degree of reproducibility a smaller percentage of the time.

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Sidewalks

I had the thought yesterday or maybe it was the day before that. Sidewalks, their width and culture of a city.

My basic thought is that the wider the sidewalks in a city, the more interesting the city. New York and Berlin have wide sidewalks and are very interesting cities. San Francisco is also an interesting city and the sidewalks are not as wide as Berlin’s and New York’s. This follows as San Francisco is not as interesting as either of this cities.

Austin, though, has terrible sidewalks. At least the parts I have visited. In one area, the sidewalks disappeared and my wife and I were almost hit by a car. Other parts of Austin that I visited were quite interesting.

This small modicum of data made me change my hypothesis to the amount of foot traffic. The more foot traffic a city or section of a city has, the more interesting that city or city section is. People like to look at each other, no? The most popular shows have little activity in them and it’s just people sitting around talking, giving the viewers plenty of time to just stare at other people.

Foot traffic, it’s all about the foot traffic. The more a city has of it, the more interesting it will be. The more interesting a city is, the more people will flock to it. The more people flock to it…you get the idea

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Federal Oversight

I am not sure about the Republican argument against Obama’s socialist takeover/makeover of healthcare in the United States, something about how the Constitution doesn’t allow for the Federal Government to require people to have health insurance.

SIDE NOTE – Please check what the Constitution has to say about marijuana (nothing, yes?) and the internet (nothing).

And from what I know, the Federal Government has the right to oversee and regulate businesses that cross state lines. I don’t think there is a national health care commission. There is a person who oversees insurance in California. Maybe other states have such an office.

I can’t imagine that the health care in any state does not cross state lines in many ways. The doctors are educated in another state. The test tubes, pipettes and needles are probably made in China. All the diagnostic equipment – MRIs, Ultrasounds etcs – if not made in another state of the Union or Germany are probably made in China. The billing services that the health insurance companies use probably are involved in more than one company and one state. The patients who get sick are crossing state lines bringing illness home from other states. Food, a known vehicle of pathogens (spinach, eggs to name a couple of recent vectors) crosses many states lines.

With all of this interstate business involved in the business of health care, shouldn’t the Feds be involved to make sure it all runs smoothly? Maybe they already are, but if so, they sure are doing a crappy job.

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Critique of piece I saw during the S.O.D.A. audition

In order to relate what I saw without being descriptive I will offer a short list of whats that I saw:
1. a tattoo
2. a cube
3. black tape
4. gestures
5. white tape
6. a hypodermic needle
7. blood

My feedback about the piece would be to simplify. The piece has at least three different pieces in it – Man with Cube, Man with Tape and Man with Needle. He should pick one of them and investigate it more deeply. I would suggest that he keep his manipulation of the tape to a minimum and not rearrange the tape once it is on the wall. Also I would suggest that the black tape movement section occur further downstage facing the audience. The tape is already abstract and geometric and his focal and spatial choices re-enforced that. Maybe it was his intention to replicate the impersonal nature of the tape. But what I saw was more of a coping mechanism than an artistic choice.

Black tape plus movement plus white tape plus the downstage space plus low level movement plus text plus needle plus blood. Eight dimensions in all. Is this piece, then, about the progression towards the multidimensional, the ultra dimensional he said he was seeking? I do not know. I can not say whether or not this piece worked as I do not know what he was trying to achieve. I can say whether or not I liked the piece. I did not. But whether or not I liked it is of little importance. I can say what it made me think of. The use of the cube made me think of Donald Judd. The black tape pictographs on the white wall made me think of Lawrence Wiener and Robert Motherwell. The piercing of the skin made me think of Chris Burden and Marina Abramovic.

Any of these references, though, is at best a stretch and more present in my perception of the performance than in Riccardo’s presentation of the piece. This brings up the question of what does an audience need to know about the work. Do we need to know what the artist knows? Do we need to have the same frame of reference? Do we need those references to get out of the piece what the artist put into the piece? Is it important for the viewers to get what the artist is saying? Or is the artist creating something for us the respond to with our own references?

Despite not liking it, I feel that of the pieces I saw yesterday this piece had the richest vocabulary to be investigated. And I intend on taking his Man with Tape piece and investigating it further.

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Critique for SODA application

Below is a reworked critique of a dance piece I saw in 2009. This was part of my application for the SODA program here in Berlin. Here is the “original“

Accords by Thomas Hauert/Zoo, which I saw last summer during Tanz im August, consisted of sections delineated by performers entering or exiting the stage through the spaces between the back panels. The movements within these sections were governed by either the simultaneous initiating and halting of movement, flocking, or awkward partnering. Flocking is when people move in a clump changing spacing/facing with no discernible leader. Awkward partnering is skilled bodies coming in contact in an improvised manner consciously eschewing the Contact Improvisation movement paradigm.
As someone who performs and teaches the tool of improvisation, I appreciated the clarity in this improvised performance. It is very satisfying to see an improvised piece by people who have been working together for more than just a handful of rehearsals. All to often, improvised performances have three rehearsals. During the first one, half of the group doesn’t show and the half who are there just talk. For the second rehearsal 80% of the cast is there and some dancing actually happens. The third rehearsal is on stage in front of the audience, i.e., the performance. In Accords, the hours sweating together in the studio came through during the performance. I saw no moments of searching or moments of awkwardness when performers are in between inspirations.
Dance improvisation is a nascent art form. Because of this, there are many assumptions about improvisation and its uses. The three main assumptions about improvisation are that it is not supposed to be rehearsed, be well produced, or have a point. Also due to the newness of it, improvisation based work is in a vicious cycle. The work is underfunded, therefore the work cannot be well rehearsed and produced. The work is not rehearsed, so the quality is not consistent. The quality is not consistent so producers and curators do not want to show the work. The work is not shown, so artists making improvised work can’t get funding. They can’t get funding so they can’t rehearse. The cycle continues.
Thomas Hauert, it seems, has been able to break this cycle and to get beyond two of the three main assumptions about improvisation. His piece Accords is well rehearsed and has a high level of production value. The lighting was not left over from the previous performance. The costuming, consisting of black mesh body suits over primary colored pants and shirts, was not thrown together right before the performance. The set, more than just a black box, was simple — black, one meter wide panels, each the height of the stage. The panels, which covered the back wall, were wide enough apart for the performers to slip between them. At times acting as either a visual backdrop or an obstacle course for the movement, the set was well integrated into the performance.
Where Hauert failed was topic. His piece had all the production value of a choreographed piece, but not the point of a choreographed piece. An improvised piece can have just as much of a point as a choreographed one. What was Hauert trying to reveal to the audience besides the tool of improvisation? Is it the means or the end? If improvisation is what he was trying to show the audience, he succeeded. We saw people improvising. But listening skills and group awareness in and of themselves do not make a good piece. If all it takes to make a good piece using improvisation is good listening skills then any sequence of memorized movement is good choreography. This, we know, is not the case. Even if improvisation itself were the topic of the piece, nothing was developed strongly enough to become the point of the piece. The dancers did not work flocking, group timing or any of the tools I recognized for such an extended period of time to take it to a new level.
Maybe Hauert intended to provide the audience with an enjoyable visual and auditory experience for 90 minutes. As an artist using similar tools, I want to see the tools create something besides themselves.