It can be found here
No direction found via link
That´s what we want
The previous page cannot be found
Or: I remember what was there, but I want to forget in order to redirect
Layer upon layer
It´s moshy
I sink in
// image path is relative to sketch directory
String imgFileName = “MyImage”;
String fileType = “body”;
I have been invited to write about DATAMOSHING, where dancer and choreographer Emilie Gregersen has invited Marina Dubia, Cruz Proxy, Paolo De Venecia and Sigrid Stigsdatter to join her in a two-week residency facilitated by HAUT. I meet the group for first time in a sharing session, where they have been working together for just a couple of days.
The framework for this residency is as the title suggests data moshing, which is the process of manipulating the data of media files in order to achieve visual or auditory effects when the file is decoded. When I google it, images pop up where it´s clear that layer upon layer has been merged into one another, altering yet at the same time showing all the layers. It reminds me of cover songs, adding your own to something pre-existing. It´s a potent image for collaboration, where different styles are both retained but also obscured.
In a morning session at HAUT`s office space, Gregersen starts by sharing her thoughts and articulates how she has noticed that in her work, she has in the past jumped from project to project without having time to either take in what has happened nor react in the work in a way which is not habitual. Therefore, she wanted to make a collaborative process, where a classical structure in an overarching timeline and framework is still present, yet the process deals with creating without aiming for a finished “product”. Instead, in this residency, each of the artists share parts of their habits/ways of working, while examining them and having time to pause and investigating how to alter them or make them anew with input from the others.
The talk circulates and it is clear that a space for contemplation as well as care has been established within the group. A word that comes up several times is pleasure – how to create that space/emotion; what does it take and how does it come into being? And in thinking about the obstruction of status quo, we discuss the necessity of reevaluating the normal speed which comes with deadlines, production and ideas of finishing a work, and how this connects to ego.
It´s not a secret that the artworld is fueled by neoliberalism, which forces each artist to position themselves as hyper-contemporary, to be more post than even Rosi Braidotti could have imagined; to sell an art practice via a presumed imposed identity; a uniqueness is forefronted, where we each fend for ourselves, and often lack community and care while producing.
The set-up of DATAMOSHING´s pleasure-driving-egoless-work is alluring, and the sharing sessions leaves me intrigued and looking forward for more.
Let´s mosh our data together
Datamoshing
Frames moving in and out of each other
Reflective physical process
Feeling of jumping
Solid frame to be unsure
Similar process but in different ways
“freedom”
Enhancing situations that are forgotten
Meditative euphoria
Someone comes out of the eye of someone else
The eye of someone else
Eye of
Someone else
Eye of the tiger
Glitch
Gitching
// repeat the process this many times
int iterations = 5 beauties;
// use result image as new source for iterations
boolean recursiveIterations = add audience as participators.
// shift the image vertically true/false
boolean shiftVertically = erase hierarchies.
// shift the image horizontally true/false
boolean shiftHorizontally = how to dance a dance.
A week later we are invited to meet up at Teater Zeppelin in Vesterbro, where the sun has made the black room with vinyl floor warm. Before entering the room, we are asked not to sit on the tribune with chairs where the audience are normally seated, instead we should sit on the chairs which are placed around the stage or directly on the floor. The artists greats us as we enter, with soft smiles and a relaxed attitude, while Niki & The Dove´s Play It on My Radio is humming as a background soundtrack. Sentences as nobody plays it nowadays, but it made me so happy, now it’s all that I´m looking for reaches my ear and takes me back to the utopian thinking that was present with me when I left the last meeting.
After we are all seated the group shares their thoughts on how they have interpreted data moshing, and what their process has been about, so the audience can catch up to the present moment. There is still an emphasize placed upon not producing a product, but instead being present with what is happening in the space and thereby how creativity can be kept alive. Transitions between formats and how to combine knowledge in unexpected ways is present as a doing. It´s not a showing of a work, instead this is still a part of the process and what will end up happening has never been rehearsed.
A common warm up starts up, where all are welcome to participate yet only if its feels right to do so and where consent is the focus.
Outsider
Outsider?
Portals into improvisation
Intro Impro
//Consensual massage // consensual revenge body // consensual ice block // consensual voicing // consensual social release //
After the warmup the group asks all of us who are participating to choose a direction for the session via objects that are placed in the room and that serve as portals for improvisation and that can be activated. The first choice/portal is the book Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde. The book is in this context used as a generator for what will happen, as a cue to generate some kind of action, and is therefore not read or used literally.
The group divides into two sections and they begin moving in a way which seems simultaneously to hold the other(s) and provide care as well as getting the support needed to move. In this exercise the balance of the individual member and the group are constantly negotiated. Movements are caught and flowing in between being fluent and stagnant, funny and sensual. Supporting and releasing is happening in an ever-evolving choreography:
Try to put your head into my stomach yeah like that oh can you hold my head please yes like that ah can you use more weight put your hands on my cheeks uh okay Im going to lift you up oh how does that feel does that feel okay ehm can I climb on top of your back can you carry me does that feel okay
As I watch them, I strangely feel like they are pushing, holding, brushing, stroking my body as well. There is something about the intensity and sincerity, the presence they have towards each other as well as the room as a whole, which makes me feel less lonely and held, even though I am sitting by a window, letting the summer wind caress my back.
Three more portals are opened and entered: a sowing session, where those who want to can gently slide a sewing needle and thread through thick skin somewhere on their body and thereafter pass the needle to the next one in the circle, in the end making the participants entangled by the thinnest of thread through the porousness of skin. And a writing session working as a scrabble – people gathering in small groups, adding words which fits to the pre-existing ones.
A potent image is when the group use climbing harness´ that they strap on, interlinking with one another via slings and climbing cord, giving way as well as pulling, in a bodily conversation, where nothing is final and binaries such as strong vs weak are pulled apart into an image of suspension.
The group ends the session in a check-in, timed as to give equal voice to whoever wants to speak, this is what I remember, what I take with me from a couple of hours in an utopian dream, that I hope can exist when I wake up.
// I want to talk about this / Allowing yourself to create / how to make that possible / what are the circumstances to make something appear / we are allowing for different moments / but
// That make me want to say / All these different modes / letting go / how to facilitate / insecurities in not having a plan / hard to improvise / how to be generous / how not to be in someone else’s feelings / automatic mode / happy
Times up
; Remove next 10 I-frames
^f::
Loop 10 {
Send,{Up}
Sleep, 5 beauties
Send,[
Sleep, participators
Send,{Right}
Sleep, summer
Send,]
Sleep, restrains
Send,{Delete}
Sleep, moshymoshy
}