No abstract availableThis text-based adaptation of a performance-presentation was originally published by Parallel Press, an imprint of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, as part of The International Journal of Screendance, Volume 1 (2010), Parallel Press. It is made available here with the kind permission of Parallel Press

Ellis, Simon

English

OSU Libraries Digital Journal Publishing (Ohio State University)

	 127Artists’ PagesSimon Ellis[The following is a text-based adaptation of the performance-presentation, Watching, presented at OpenSource{VideoDance} 2007, Findhorn, Scotland on November 23, 2007.]Watching Video (available to stream at http://vimeo.com/11016394)This video was screened simultaneously with one other video.Both videos had only one audience member each.The videos were rear-projected on screens that were 1.5m away from their respective viewers.What lies outside of the frame?In dance-on-screen writing and thinking there has been an invaluableemphasis on overcoming the problems of framing and screeningmovement. The language is strong: “the rigid, rectangular window”(Nagrin 33), “the often-deadening space of the screen”(Rosenberg 13).1 Within this screen we witness the body’s “flattening”(Preston 79).2 The screen topples three dimensions into two. This flattening,powered by what André Lepecki calls the “reductive operation of thecamera as perspectival machine” (75), has occupied our thinking,acting as a reason to engage with screendance (and a reason to avoid it).3At the heart of this language is an overwhelming concern for what thecamera sees, and consequently, what is produced on screen. DougRosenberg describes the phenomenon of camera-looking as an actthat “implies a reverence for that which is framed and eschewsall that is outside the frame” (14–15). However, to (over)emphasize whatis within frame (or onscreen) is to run the risk of joining conventionalcinema in presupposing the viewing experience. Our sharedperformance heritage—itself a critical aspect of screendancehybridity—necessitates an acknowledgement that screendancecontent also lies beyond the frame.There were also two live performers.Both audience members watched their “own” performer  (but were able to see the other if they chose to).But before I talk about aspects of the nature of content, I need to back up a bit.128 	 The	In T ernaT Ional	Journal	of	ScreendanceThis is a love storyIn 2000, I was teaching choreography to final year dance students atthe Victorian College of the Arts in Melbourne. We were dealingwith a rather formalist approach to choreographic ideas, andthe question of form-content existing on some kind of continuum wasraised. That night I was talking about this with my girlfriend atthe time (that’s the love story part)—a visual and installation artist calledElizabeth Boyce—who suggested a small book by ThomasMcEvilley: Art & Discontent (1991). Actually, she didn’t recommendthe book so much as give me an old photocopied handout of a sectionof the book called Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.The book’s language is plain, and clear, and is an excellent exampleof arts theory writing that is inclusive, provocative and evocative.Better still, McEvilley appears to hold no fears in tackling many ofthe ‘givens’ in arts theory. That is, to discuss in detail the things wemight believe are self-evident (or even obvious), but so easily forget,ignore or avoid.“Every critic should give indication of the sources and limits of his knowledge” (Pound 56).4Some confessions:This paper is heavily based on McEvilley’s writing.I am not suggesting that I am an expert on questions of form and content.Occasionally I read art theory because I feel a little obliged.Each audience member was located on a viewing platform.The ambient sound of the live performance (prior to the video performance)  was miked and sent to the audience’s headphones.The principle concern for McEvilley in Art and Discontent is toforcefully debunk any notion that works of art—of any kind—existin a formal vacuum. In other words, that the formalist dream ofexcluding non-audiovisual elements from how work is experienced isimplausible.To attempt to deprive work of content probably sounds a little bizarreconsidering our contemporary awareness for the cultural imprintingof how (and what) we watch, but this is what formalists desired.In 1966, Susan Sontag wrote: “It is the habit of approaching works ofart in order to interpret them that sustains the fancy that there really issuch a thing as the content of a work of art” (11).5But, for McEvilley, such formalist ideals are seriously compromisedsimply because he wonders how, when viewing works of art, we canever avoid the “associative habit” (45) of the human mind.6The question becomes not whether content is present, but rather thearT IS TS’	PageS	 129nature of its relationship to form. Here, McEvilley uses semiologicalterms to clarify the form/content relationship as being eithermotivated or unmotivated.If the relationship is motivated, then content is inherent in the formalproperties of the work. If the form-content relationship is unmotivatedthen content is added to the work by the work’s audience— includingthe artist or artists (McEvilley and Denson 38).7Each audience member had a pillow under the head.Each audience member wore high quality headphones.It was all very comfortable.The distinction is more subtle than it first appears. Many things thatare “outside” of a work can easily—and intuitively—be placedwithin it. Examples might be the reputation of the artist, her record ofearlier work, or even the assumption that an artist has seen acertain work (McEvilley and Denson 37–8).“What is content, anyway? And, are we involved?” (McEvilley 69)In this paper I am going to consider some aspects of content in danceon screen that are typically (and easily) forgotten as being content.These are derived from a selection of McEvilley’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (70), and are: content added to a work over time; content arising from the genre or medium of an artwork; andcontent arising from context.Before the videos were played, audience members watched their “own” performers live.This performer was also the “subject” of that audience member’s video.Content added to a work over time“Whatever occurs to a work as its history unfolds becomes part of theexperience of the work, and part of its meaning, for later generations” (McEvilley 79).An example of this is the German-born, Australian-basedchoreographer and dancer, Tanya Liedtke, who died tragically inSydney in August 2007. The 30 year old, known in the UK for herwork (in particular) with DV8, was about to take over the artisticdirection of Sydney Dance Company—an extraordinary challenge,and one she clearly was excited about. Content is accrued to her workas its “destiny” is added to through time. Tanya’s work becomes thework of “the emerging choreographer whose life ended tragically atage 30.” In effect, and I mean this with sensitivity and a certainamount of sadness, her death has added to the content of the work130 	 The	In T ernaT Ional	Journal	of	Screendanceshe has made, and impacts on how it is experienced and viewed as itcontinues to be presented around the world.A more banal (and less terrible) example might be a screendancework that is re-edited some years after its first cut. In much the sameway as Ridley Scott has treated us to various versions ofBlade Runner (1982), it is not so much that footage (or voiceover) hasbeen added to or removed, but that a reedit has occurred that contributes toand becomes part of the meaning of the work through time. Ofcourse, the edits also shift the content of the work—but that goes without saying.Content arising from the genre or medium of the artworkImplicit in the notion that genre adds content to an artwork isthe categorization of artworks as existing within particular genres(and not others). Such categorization invariably leads to questionsabout popular versus elitist works of art. In screendance, this, perhaps,is evident in the rather fraught relationship that contemporary dancepractices have with music videos.I am currently editing a project called Tuesday that could, in effect,be described as a music video. Recently I was working on anapplication for a festival and read the following guidelines:“Illustrative or interpretive work, (e.g. music videos), will notbe suitable” (Threshold).8Is this what I am doing? Illustrating a song? Indeed, is this all thatmusic videos do—illustrate or interpret songs? Don’t some genresof dance performance do precisely this? Is this bad? Are there rules?How do I get a copy of the rulebook?When asked, “What is taste?” Marcel Duchamp replied “habit.”Spike Jonze’s work is wonderfully unsettling in this respect.His video work in the late 1990s with the fictitious Torrance CommunityDance Group simultaneously parodied modern dance and dance videoclips. And in How They Got There (1997)9 Jonze creates what mightbe described as a familiar screendance scenario, including a delightfullittle ditty between two dancing strangers, only to have the 3-minutefilm end in a massive out-of-nowhere car crash sequence.In order to watch the videos, both platforms were manually rotated  from vertical until they were almost horizontal.And what about questions of format? To shoot on filmunquestionably adds content to a project. But then, so too doesshooting on my camera phone.Another example of genre adding content to artwork might be ascreendance director deciding to return to a single fixed camera setuparT IS TS’	PageS	 131filming live performances in a proscenium-arch theatre. Consideringscreendance’s origins in documenting live performance, fora choreographer/director to work this way adds political and culturalsignificance and content to the project, and the screendance fieldmore generally.Content arising from the context of the workKatrina McPherson’s DVD—Five video dances (2006)10—exemplifies this idea. Billed as a companion to her bookMaking Video Dance (2006),11 the DVD effectively “bundles” thesefive works together, encourages them to be viewed together, andcompared with one another.But, perhaps more importantly, by connecting the DVD with thebook, the works take on pedagogical content: Tools for the aspiringscreendance artist to watch, learn, and even imitate.The five video dances are no longer the same works when firstpresented: not only has the physical format of their presentation beenaltered, but they have taken on alternate contexts and arenow reframed as essential undergraduate screendance viewing.The presence of screens above the audience (as they were tilted backwards)  was a surprise to them.Whilst the videos were playing, the two performers remained active  in the (peripheral) performance space.As a Physical Education undergraduate in the late 1980s, whenBobby McFerrin sang Don’t Worry, Be Happy and U2 was stillreasonably cool, our most feared Professor would occasionally, atthe conclusion of a student oral presentation, lean back in his chair,stroke his cleanly shaven chin, and ask that most dreaded of allquestions: So what?To remember, to examine, and to consider how content is developedand accumulated in the construction, presentation and watching ofscreendance, invites newness.“By foregrounding an element of content usually taken for grantedand invisible, a whole new artistic mode or direction can bediscovered” (McEvilley 187–88).At the end of the video(s) the platforms were (slowly) tilted back to vertical.This experience of being tilted (very slowly) had a major impact on the watching.  One audience member commented: “At the end I felt I had passed through  something, and had a strong sense that something had been done to me.”132 	 The	In T ernaT Ional	Journal	of	ScreendanceIf one of the current concerns in screendance research and thinking isto articulate the medium and form clearly, then in this paper I havebeen interested in broadening and roughening the edges—in threading movement (or uncertainty) into our critical engagementwith the form—and in questioning the in/stability of the screendanceviewing process in the emergence and development of content.Actually, there’s one other of McEvilley’s thirteen ways of looking ata blackbird that is perhaps worth considering:Content arising from verbal supplements supplied by the artistMcEvilley quotes Edward Said, and although Said is talking aboutliterary texts, I have transposed this word with a more general term:“art works.”“[Art works] impose constraints and limits upon their interpretation. . . because as artworks they place themselves. . . they are themselvesby acting, in the world. Moreover, their manner of doing this is toplace restraints upon what can be done with (and to) theminterpretively” (Edward Said, cited in McEvilley 48).To add content, to constrain the interpretive process.The most blatant example of “verbal supplementation” is the titlegiven to a work by an artist. The project’s title is Inert (Ellis, Corbet et al. 2006).12 www.skellis.net/Inert. Notes1. Nagrin, Daniel. “Nine Points on Making your Own Dance Video.” Dance Theatre Journal 6.1 (1988): 33–36. Print; Rosenberg, Douglas.“Proposing a Theory of Screendance.” Screendance: The State of the Art. American Dance Festival. Duke University, Durham, NC. July 6–9, 2006. Talk.2. Preston, Hilary. “Choreographing the frame: a critical investigation into how dance for the camera extends the conceptual and artistic boundaries of dance.” Research in Dance Education 7.1 (2006): 75–87. Print.3. Lepecki, André. Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement. London: Routledge, 2006. Print.4. Pound, Ezra. Literary Essays of Ezra Pound. Ed. T. S. Eliot. New York: New Directions, 1968. Print.5. Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print.6. McEvilley, Thomas. Art & Discontent: Theory at the Millennium. New York: McPherson & Company Publishers, 1991. Print.7. McEvilley, Thomas and G. Roger Denson. Capacity: History, the World, and the Self in Contemporary Art and Criticism. London: Routledge, 1996. Print.8. Threshold Studios. Critical Mass: Hypnos. Northampton, UK, 2007. Video production commissioning proposal.9. Jonze, Spike. How they got there. USA: Palm Pictures, 1997.3 minutes. Video.10. McPherson, K. Five Video Dances. Goat Media Ltd., 2006. Video.11. —-. Making video dance: a step-by-step guide to creating dance for the screen. London, Routledge, 2006.12. Ellis, S., D. Corbet, et al. Inert. Melbourne: Dancehouse, 2006.

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