Blind Spot @ Teatr Nowy / Warsaw

Blind Spot
Installation / performance

November 14th, 2009
Teatr Nowy, Warsaw
18:00 - 22:00


Blind Spot (now Atomic 5.1), is an installation for 5 stroboscopic lights. Set in a large empty space in a circular formation, the lamps are programed to go off at different times and in varied rhythms in a sequence lasting several minutes and continuously looped over the evening. The spectator is invited to observe from a distance and/or to enter the circle, becoming a performer for the other spectators entering and leaving the exhibition space. The lights illuminate the room and the figure(s) in the space at different angles, producing a sensation of movement. The set-up literally makes the room and the people in the space seem to be dancing.

With the strobe effect images are retained by the retina and are held in place by the same "visual editor" that eliminates the blind spot. The viewer focuses on the last position of anyone he or she is looking at and is somewhat disoriented when the next flash shows the person's new position. The mind attempts to link the images, producing a continuity where there is none. Using multiple sources of light at different angles, a change of position is perceived even if there has been no real displacement. Working with depth, real movement can seem to happen on different planes and in unnatural succession. The installation (and performance) plays with these real and perceived movements.

Commissioned by Teatr Nowy, Blind Spot was realized during a week-long residency in Warsaw and presented as a project-in-process on November 14th, 2009.

Performed by: Ramona Nagabczyńska

Viewmaster @ Teatr Nowy

Viewmaster - upcoming shows

VIEWMASTER
upcoming shows :

30/08/08 _ 20:00
31/08/08 _ 16:00
05/09/08 _ 20:30
06/09/08 _ 21:30
SHUFFLE
Kaaistudios / Brussels
www.kaaitheater.be

08/10/08 _ 22:00
09/10/08 _ 22:00
10/10/08 _ 22:00
11/10/08 _ 22:00
14/10/08 _ 22:00
15/10/08 _ 22:00
ALMOST CINEMA
Vooruit / Gent
www.vooruit.be

Considered a tool for gallery spaces as well as the theaters, the Viewmaster
is a transportable mini-theater and live-cinema machine in one. It’s peculiar
architecture and function is inspired by the Pepper’s Ghost Illusion, a well
known optical trick made popular in the theater during the late nineteenth
century, before the invention of cinema. Using the illusion as a central
mechanism, the Viewmaster produces a cinema based on the sequence
of reflections rather than projected images.

Viewmaster (2007)

The viewmaster explores pre-cinema technology - using a well know optical illusion called the 'pepper effect', the viewmaster proposes an archaic cinema, one that uses live images in the form of reflections versus projected ones.

Since the invention of projection in the late 19th century, film has become practically synonymous with the cinema or movie theater. Modeled after the traditional theater dispositive, the place where films are shown is a divided space: on the one hand is the screen, acting as a window onto an imaginary depth, and on the other, the auditorium, acting as a single, shared point of view, occupied by an audience that sit immobile in the dark.

The viewmaster reconfigures this traditional set-up, proposing a cinema where auditorium and screen are reversible, where multiple view points are possible and where the visitor can be both viewer and participant within a live image making process.

Based on an optical trick made popular in the theater and predating the invention of projection technology, the viewmaster make use of light, reflection and the presence of the spectators to create an ever changing array of moving images.

Considered a tool for gallery spaces as well as the theaters, the viewmaster was co produced by in Netwerk / Center for Contemporary Art for an exhibition September 15th - October 20th, 2007 with performances the 5th and 20th of October.

next performances -

Dedonderdagen @ DeSingel, Antwerp February 14th
Kaaitheater Studios August 29th - September 7th
Vooruit Gent, Almost Cinema October 7th - 18th


Concept / performance Heike Langsdorf & Ula Sickle concept / architecture Laurent Liefooghe sound design Peter Connelly light design Hans Meijer production management for Rebecca September vzw Natalie Schrauwen With the support of: KC Netwerk Aalst, kunst-werk / f,r,o,g,s - OS, Nadine, wp Zimmer and the Flemish Minister for Youth, Culture, Sport and Brussels Affairs. A Rebecca September production.




Photo: Josephine Hirschi / Film: Sebastian Koeppel

Knockout (2005)

"A dreary night in Rome, on the soundtrack the click of a cigarette lighter, the sound of smoke being inhaled. A woman in a long raincoat with a platinum blond wig lounging on a street corner. It could not be more typically film noir. These few details hint at a world of seduction and betrayal, of double moral standards and romantic cynicism. It is precisely that twilight zone from which the collective Rebecca September drew its inspiration for its first performance, Knockout."

The collective’s name refers to Hitchcock’s American debut: Rebecca. The performance Knockout noticeably uses Hitchcock elements as well: the two dancers are each other’s mirror image, their faces hidden behind a blond and dark wig. Just like the splitting up of the mysterious main character Madeleine/Judy in Hitchcock’s Vertigo, the performance plays on the two-sided suggestiveness of eroticism and morality: the femme fatale veiled in platinum blond virtuousness.

Knockout could very well be a choreographed variant of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive; an out of joint montage of constructed fantasies, desires and expectations."
Elke Van Campenhout, De Standaard

Concept Rebecca September | Choreography Ula Sickle | Developed & Performed by Tawny Andersen & Ula Sickle | Sound Design Peter Lenaerts | Scenography Alexis Destoop | Assitant Nele Ana Riepl | Produced by wp Zimmer for Rebecca September vzw | Co-produced by Pact Zollverein Essen. | With the support of Dans In Kortrijk, Netwerk Aalst, Nadine Brussels, The Canada Council for the Arts & the Flemish Minister for Culture, Youth, Sport and Brussels Affairs.

A Rebecca September production.






Photo: Alexis Destoop / Film: Peter Lenearts