Flow, embody • in site
Decomposition in Composition by Jeremy Pauly, photo by Jamie Gannon
Flow, embody • in site is a unique opportunity to work with international performance artists who work in public space at this online symposium from April 22 – May 9, 2021. The Out of Site community of artists envisioned the idea for this public performance symposium in one of our bi-weekly meetings in the fall. The idea grew from a commitment to building spaces for experimental performance practices and the possibility of being able to provide practice-based workshops online that considers this current moment in time. The outcome of this is the Flow, embody • in site symposium where attendees can participate in workshops with acclaimed performance artists and attend twelve lecture/presentations. In week 3 symposium attendees can sign up to perform on May 7 and May 8. Do you know how to live stream? If not, you can also attend a Live Stream training as part of the symposium offering.
Marilyn Arsem (Boston, USA) is offering a workshop called Being in Place exploring presence and this workshop is in conjunction with the launch of her new book, Responding to Site: The Performance Work of Marilyn Arsem edited by Jennie Klein and Natalie Loveless. (Please read my previous blog post about this). This workshop is every other day of the symposium on Thursdays & Saturdays. To hear Marilyn in conversation with Paul Couillard about her upcoming workshop and the book please check out this link: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/978100801
Martine Viale, (Canada/France) the live action artist is giving a workshop called The Body and Public Space where workshop participants will be invited to create public actions in their locales, document the act and discuss the action in the aftermath. Dimple B Shah (Bangalore, India) is creating a fascinating workshop entitled Negotiating Ritual where she invites all genders to think about creativity in connection with their feminine energy exploring the symbolism of natural materials. Kirsten Hershusius’s workshop called In Situ and she invited workshop participants to select a site to research and respond to. These sessions are spread over three weeks. I’m particularly fascinated by this as it is part of my own practice to observe a site first prior to creating a public performance. I enter the space at the scheduled time of my performance and create an anthropological study of the space. This process involves observations and note taking in my sketchbook looking at how people move and engage with a site. Sometimes there are other thoughts that arise in this process of observation. From this study of site, I am able to ascertain where I will place myself as the performer. The fifth workshop is by Calum Eccleston who is inviting people to respond to performance documentation using a narrative, consultative approach. And lastly, I will be giving a series of live stream training workshops for performance – thinking about the physical relationship between the body and the screen. How can workshop participants shape and define their own voice in the context of the frame? The conceptual framework will be blended with the basics of live streaming to more advanced techniques using the creative platform of OBS.
Being a practice-based symposium, we also wanted to share the opportunity for symposium attendees to perform to a live audience. We have arranged with our partner organization to schedule two nights for live stream performance by symposium attendees. When you register for the symposium, you can sign up for a date or you can decide later by attending any of the info sessions dispersed through the symposium. We are excited to bring people together from all over the globe in this time to create and be inspired and contemplate our relationship to public space.
By Carron Little
08.04.2021
