22.1.15



Lead by Natasha Rosling and Antoine Bertin in collaboration with students of KKH.


We expect to be working between the following times on the days below:
  • 29th & 30th Jan 10am - 5pm (with breaks)
  • 4th Feb (10am - 4pm) Rehearsal  * Some of you told me you have a meeting at KKH this day. The other alternative is that we do the rehearsal on the 3rd of Feb, if everyone is available then instead? Everyone, please confirm your availability and preference asap.
  • 7th Feb: 10am - 1pm Final event followed by group discussion 

/Introduction:

As a response to the wider thematic context of the OuUpO Session ‘The Fugue’, this workshop will focus on how it might be possible to use time-based practices such as sound, music and choreography to explore concepts of amnesia and identity loss. 

Through discussion and artistic experimentation questions will be confronted such as: What is our bodily relationship to memory? How does memory affect our listening experience of the present? How can movement and rhythm be used to configure new identities?

The main focus of this workshop will be on production. You are invited as collaborators in the development of an event.

Our starting point is to invent an archive re-imagining the relationship between materiality, identity, and memory(loss). Through focused practical activities we will 
investigate how embodied or performed acts re-frame and transmit knowledge.


/The Set-Up at MDT:

  • The studio space at MDT will be set up as a 'hybrid radio theatre' throughout the duration of the workshop and the final performance. 
  • There will be 7 workstations each using different tools and techniques to gather material for the 'Amnesiac Body Archive'. 
  • Each work station will be hooked up to a microphone, one of 7 channels running to a central mixing desk. Throughout the workshop we will gather live recordings of experiments and improvisations. We will also make video and photographic recordings.
  • These recordings will be edited, mixed and woven into the live activities of the final event.

/Tools and Techniques:

  • Binaural recording
  • 3D imaging and sculpting software: you can already download this free software to create 3D visualisations of physical objects and spaces (123dCatch and 123dSculpt)
  • We will be making small scale alginate moulds and plaster casts of a range of physical fragments/objects and body parts. These will then be scanned re-translated into 3D digital models.
  • We will explore and develop a range of interview techniques and association tools in order to gather improvised and imaginary material about the objects that we examine and re-configure throughout the workshop.


/Key Words and Phrases to Explore:

  • ARCHIVE
Frame, collect, associate, falsification, make-believe, document, contextualize, fake, classify, oppress, hide, obsess
  • CAST
Surface/sound imprint, recording, conservation, capture traces, reproduce
  • SCAN
Surveillance, observe, re-present, absorb, track, contemplate, take stock of
  • FRAGMENT
Compartmentalise, focus, incomplete, polarize, forget, loss
  • RECONFIGURE
Re-learn, adapt, adjust, re-interpret, metamorphosis, hybrid, transform, remember, realisation



/Research Context:
Notes from Diana Taylor, 'Staging Social Memory':

  • How does embodied memory/knowledge differ from the ‘archival’ usually thought of as a tangible resource of materials available over time for revision and reinterpretation?


  • ‘Archival’ memory maintains a material core - records, documents, archaeological remains, bones that are resistant to change. Bones might stay the same whilst their story may change. Depending on the palaeontologist or forensic anthropologist who examines them.


  • ‘Repertoire’ on the other hand, stores embodied memory: Performances, gestures, orature, movement, dance, singing and traumatic flashbacks, repeats and hallucinations. In other words, all acts that are seen as ephemeral non-reproducible knowledge.