RECENSIONI/REVIEWS

 

The Glitch and the Fire

Interview with Mizuhito Kuroda

 Q
I have learned in the film description that this piece is about the "sabbath", but as a Japanese, I am not familiar with the theme. Where did this theme come from and what does it mean?
A
“Sabbath” is a distorted version of an ancient Hebrew term (Shabbat) that means “feast”. The Sabbath is a gathering of female folklore creatures, similar to Japanese Onibaba, called “witches”. The witches are women with supernatural skills: they can fly, create magical potions, cast spells and perform magical rituals. In the Sabbath they meet, sometimes in a carnal way, the Devil, the antagonist of the Christian God. In western iconographic tradition, they’re often depicted as naked women dancing in the forest at night, illuminated by the full moon or by the fire of pyres, flying in the sky with hallucinated faces and disjointed positions of the body, prey to a kind of possession. Sometimes they are depicted as old women, sometimes like voluptuous young girls.
In 1653 the King of France Louis XIV, a figure devoted to dance and responsible for the birth of baroque dance (the forerunner of classic ballet) staged a gigantic ballet show titled “Ballet Royal de la Nuit” (Royal ballet of the Night) lasting 13 hours and divided into several sections. One of them was titled “The Sabbath”.
In 2018 The International Video Dance Festival of Burgundy (France) called 13 screendance creators and 13 musicians to realize one hour of videodance inspired by this event. I realized a video inspired by the Sabbath section. This video (The Glitch and the Fire) is a short, and completely revised version of it, with a different editing, postproduction and music.  Together with the classical elements connected to the iconographic tradition of the Sabbath (the naked female figures, the fire, the forest, the fool moon) I added a digital one, the glitch, to create a sort of digital Sabbath.
Q
A glitch being a screening error by the computer and the provocative art style miraculously matches this film. I thought this film's purpose was to be a media mixed work instead of just documenting a dance performance. Please tell us how your views towards media mixing are reflected in this film.
A
Errors are always fascinating, mostly when they are made by machines. I believe in the concept of “Choreography for Camera” by Maja Deren: when a choreographic event becomes an audiovisual object, has to transform itself and enter in total symbiosis with the machine. Something made only “for the camera”. So the figure of the body itself has to transform into something else. As the witches are possessed by a supernatural force, so the glitch is the visual result of a machine going completely crazy. A “possessed” machine by primitive forces that a computer cannot understand. So the media mixing is the symbol of an encounter-struggle between the “cold” numbers of the machine and the “warm” iconographic tradition of the Sabbath.

(2021)

http://www.dance-media.com/videodance/2021/pg1291.html#TheGlitchandtheFire

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Anatomy Theater

Anatomy Theater rientra in un corpus di opere in cui l'aspetto apocalittico è magnificato dallo slancio sinfonico della musica. Grandissimo rilievo riveste il suono nelle opere di quco tale da poter affermare che la fusione dei linguaggi videografici e dali, mescolano la video arte con i videoclip, la danza e l'animazione 3D; dando vita a un genere ancora indefinito se non come metamorfosi di immagini in movimento sincrono con l'ambiente sonoro. Soggetto di Anatomy Theater è una raccolta di antichi disegni anatomici degli organi interni e di modelli scorticati, su cui si contorce un vitale corpo di danzatrice le cui movenze ricordano lo stadio debuttante della vita, stranamente coincidente con le contorsioni post mortem.

Piero Deggiovanni in Piero Deggiovanni, Valeria Roncussi, Camilla Roversi Monaco (a cura di), Le regole del corpo. Norma e arbitrio, Minerva, 2016, pg 125

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Concert for Shadows 1-10

Alessandro Amaducci‘s video dance work, Concert for Shadows 1-10, is a darkly evocative journey through mindscapes both lyrical and chaotic, straightforward and abstract. It is a dichotomy grounded in the viewer’s natural resonance with the dancer/choreographer Eurinome’s nude body and expressive face. Yet even this foothold provides little purchase in a realm where the recognizably human form may morph into a headless creature of multiple limbs, shimmer and flow like water, or become a phantom described by a digital overlay that seems to exist somewhere between lacy adornment and an x-ray view of bodily structures.

Concert for Shadows 1-10 is an exemplary work, melding dance and technology into an alloy that withstands the exploration of some of the larger themes of human existence, of struggle and survival, elevation and decline, at the same time effectively mirroring the microcosm of individual human interior and exterior experience. Movement and image create a solidly integrated form that attains a rare equilibrium, and results in a particularly well-functioning vehicle to convey concepts. The third vital element of sound has been partially outsourced through the processing of pre-existing scores. In the main this approach is successful, with the rhythms of visual effects, the dancer’s movement and sound mutually supporting and enhancing each other. There are brief segments when the music can seem questionably epic, as though, as with some mid twentieth century film soundtracks, the viewer can be manipulated into a more significant emotional spike than might otherwise have been experienced. However, these momentary lapses do little to impede the video’s overall success. Despite any minor flaws, Concert for Shadows 1-10 is obviously an evolutionary creature with a substantial and conceptually disquieting life of its own.

The video commences in shifting darkness coordinated to the sounds of vintage technology, the crackling of a scratched LP record. There is an abrupt break to full music and an image of the dancer, Eurinome, contracted into a fetal-like pose, her tense face and body superscribed by moving columns of digits or momentarily frozen in the spotlight of intense digital flares. She eventually unfurls but without escaping this encompassing bodily tension. Abstracted by lighting that serves to create a high contrast between shadows and highlights, her body is in part obscured and externally manipulated, as it will remain for much of the rest of the video. Unlike a live dance performance or documentary concert video, the technique of consecutive still images of the choreography provides an impression of movement similar to that used in stop motion animation and gives additional creative control to the video editor/director. From the beginning, Concert for Shadows 1-10 is as much or more a result of the digital choices used to animate and illuminate the dancer’s body as it is the performer‘s time based ability to locomote expressively through a physical space.

In each of the concert’s ten segments, Eurinome interacts with digitally imposed forms to progress through trials that segue between a recognizably physical world and an inner realm of consciousness where notions of normal reality have little place. Her physical choreography symbolically mirrors and reacts to these changes through recurring bodily expansion and contraction. The dancer’s commencement in a fetal pose is followed by vertical movements that bespeak strength and assertiveness but again contract horizontally within the parameters of technology, defined through visual overlays. In one significant segment her return to the vertical meets an onslaught of falling dust and fragments, as though overhead an off camera architectural structure rained debris. It is a threatening world where the performer must remain tense throughout, whether curled protectively in upon herself, or seemingly poised for combat, struggling to contain the elemental forms of water and fire or overlain by a screen of bullet shattered glass.

The total nudity of the dancer’s body in Concert for Shadows 1-10 does more than provide a suitably blank canvas to inscribe with light, but rather is intrinsic to a successful integration of digital manipulation and concept with form. The body unclothed, this basic denominator of human life, is the individual clarified and made timeless. The tense strength of the performer’s internally initiated movements, underscored in flesh and muscle, also provides a rather unique version of the powerful female nude that is in subtle opposition to most contemporary examples of female beauty and/or eroticism. While nudity may be used to underscore vulnerability, in this work it does double duty as a means to convey strength in the onslaught of surreal and apocalyptic visions, thus elevating the solo figure to a near mythic status that calls to mind the nude sculptures of classical antiquity. It also represents the logical meeting point for the worlds of external and internal force, outside the skin and within, a theme of dichotomies that seems to propel this work throughout.

Art has always sought to make visible the invisible, acting as a shared medium to open the isolated interior world of individual consciousness to the minds of others, whether that individual vision be an appraisal of what the eye perceives, an attempt to convey conceptual processes, or a means to invoke emotional states. The technical innovation of the digital arts, with their facility of image creation and manipulation, provides a previously unparalleled means of partaking of another’s vision, a communication that moves beyond many material confines into a realm precariously poised on the brink of shared mind. The visual fusion of the human body and abstract images to create Concert for Shadows 1-10 epitomizes an uneasy sense of seeing through another’s eyes, of dreaming in tandem with another mind. At the same time the work sounds an ambivalent note of alarm about the means that created it, using overt symbols like the oppressive overlay of resonating waveforms and charts or repeated visual cues such as the eponymous shadows that darken this world with a pervading anxiety.

Concert for Shadows 1-10 is a work that both requires and merits more than a single viewing in order to grasp the multiple layers intertwined in the creation of its intriguing harmonies and dissonances. Together these form a strangely resilient armature from which to suspend concepts resonant with the classical physics of Newton’s third law: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” It is a maxim that could also be seen as a universal metaphor, characterizing the many near archetypal ideas that are the underpinning of our frequently bilateral human understanding.

 

Diana Heyne’s multidisciplinary work has been performed and exhibited across the United States, Europe and Asia. She holds a fine arts degree from Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in the United States. Heyne is the recipient of awards and fellowships for work in sculpture, performance, writing and music. Her art is found in public and private collections in the United States and Europe and her work in natural materials features in books published by the New York Botanical Gardens, Chicago Botanical Gardens and a PBS television documentary on the New York Botanical Gardens. She currently lives and works in France.

Diana Heyne, (2014) https://screendancestudies.wordpress.com/2014/05/18/concert-for-shadows-1-10/

 

Le film que nous vous proposons de découvrir aujourd'hui relève pour ainsi dire de la peinture en mouvement. Les influences picturales héritées de la Renaissance nous semblent en effet ici évidentes, et qui plus est, remarquablement contrôlées. Elles contribuent à métamorphoser ce qui aurait pu n'être qu'une simple performance parmi d'autres en un magnifique feu d'artifice chorégraphique et cinématographique qui laisse le spectateur dans un état de délectation esthétique des plus poussés.

Cette série de dix tableaux promène le spectateur au sein d'un environnement d'une noirceur d'encre, rendu vivant par la présence d'une danseuse (Giuliana Urciuoli) dans le plus simple appareil (ce corps humain perçu de pareille manière, quasi anatomiquement, véritable "mesure de toute chose", fait automatiquement penser à certains croquis de Léonard de Vinci - "L'homme de Vitruve" par exemple). Le spectre coloré de l'oeuvre, qui tend vers le noir et blanc, demeurera d'ailleurs limité à un clair-obscur permanent qui exclue toutes les couleurs vives, qui se limite aux teintes associées, pour aller vite, à la peinture flamande (on peut d'ailleurs effectuer ici des rapprochements esthétiques avec le travail de Peter Greenaway, ou de Rembrandt - en plus baroque, peut-être).

L'interprète débute le film dans une position fœtale qu'elle abandonne dès la fin du premier tableau. Elle alternera les séquences debout ou à-même le sol, vives ou contemplatives. Son corps, tout du long de ce concert aux allures d'opéra, servira de surface de projection (de superposition)  pour une multitude d'effets visuels et de jeux de lumière qui soulignent ses mouvements. Tantôt volutes lumineuses, tantôt grilles révélant les courbes de son anatomie, tantôt prismes démultipliant l'image de l'interprète, tantôt miroirs déformants, ondulants, ces divers effets s'appuient avant tout sur la présence à l'écran de la danseuse, sur son charisme, sans lesquels ce déploiement technique se révélerait vain. Ils appuient, ils soulignent, ils subliment - jamais ils ne prennent le dessus, jamais ils n'écrasent pour ne faire valoir que le simple exploit de la performance technique.

Le réalisateur n'hésite pas à varier les angles, à jouer avec les plans larges et les gros plans, à rendre sa caméra statique ou mouvante,à s'attarder sur telle ou telle portion du visage ou des membres de la danseuse... le tout générant une intensité des plus réussies dans leur échange créatif.

Il n'oublie pas non plus de triturer la surface de projection proprement dite (outre celle de l'interprète), cette toile/écran qu'il fait se morceler à plusieurs reprises, qu'il éclabousse de projections diverses (fluides, fumées, projectiles - toutes choses qui enveloppent le corps de la danseuse, qui soulignent ses déplacement ou qui paraissent s'y opposer), qu'il fait tanguer en tous sens (parfois au ralenti). L'ensemble à l'unisson d'une bande musicale parfois déstructurée, régulièrement frénétique, parfois emplie de chœurs, complètement en phase quoi qu'il en soit avec l'ambiance générale du film. Le résultat est quasi religieux, digne d'une messe macabre, en équilibre entre le sublime et le charnel, entre le vide et le trop plein.

Vous constaterez qu'en parallèle à son travail d'artiste, il écrit aussi de nombreux ouvrages sur l'art vidéo, où il est régulièrement question des images digitales. Il est d'ailleurs lui-même enseignant à l'Université de Turin.

Bodycinema (2013)

https://www.lemonde.fr/blog/bodycinema/2013/07/16/concert-for-shadows-1-10-alessandro-amaducci-2012/

 

Onye Ozuzu, artist and Chair of the Dance Department at Columbia College Chicago chose Concert for Shadows directed by Alessandro Amaducci

​I select this film for a handful of reasons. Its the one I already watched multiple times and still want to see again. I appreciated the unexpected position of the body in the context of the work. The protagonist was not human. While the body remained central, the body was a metaphor for the experience of…..of what? Of whom? At first it was the eye of the camera…some disembodied gaze that imagined itself in this woman’s body’s movement. Then it was the sound personified, intentioned; sound as entity. And then in was something less defined some sort of pure, “pure?” digital beingness. I appreciate the sense of release it communicated to me, the permission to see the multi-disciplined, collaborative work as a whole; a permission prompted by what I experienced as a swallowing of the dance.

​Onye Ozuzu, Dance Film Festival 2013

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Greetings from Hell
Un inferno godibile questo, popolato da splendide creature femminili clonate che intrecciano danze simmetriche tra le fiamme. Cambiando ad un tratto il ritmo e la qualità della musica, incominciano a cadere a suolo ad un ad una, mentre le sopravvissute continuano con eleganza a danzare. Un balletto della morte svolto con glamour e asettica nonchalance e grande sapienza organizzativa."
Maria Campitelli, catalogo Catodica 5, 2010

 

Set to music created by Amaducci, this filmmaker’s vision of hell includes mannequin-like figures, flames, a solar eclipse and vogue-ing.  As the figures break free of their sharp movements and move into a state of liquidity, they collapse one by one. Strike a pose!
Anna Brady Nuse http://pentacleblogs.org/movetheframe/2009/10/greetings-from-hell/ (2009)

Not with a Bang

Interview with Damon Smith

What was the inspiration behind Not with a Bang?

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"This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper."

These are the final verses of a well known poem by Thomas Sterns Eliot, "The Hollow Men". Sincerely, I heard them for the first time in the beginning of a movie by Derek Jarman, "The Last of England". So: the end of the world won't be something very spectacular, but a slow fade in black. Maybe we are living in that fade, and we don't know. In my video there are a lot of bangs and explosions, but they are quite digital, artificial. They don’t really destroy anything, because everything is already destroyed. Images destroying other images. The central idea was the making of a sort of theatre of memory made by images, directed by a "black widow" with two crutches: a fragile and very strong female figure. The crutches and their symbolical meaning are a reference to Salvador Dali's paintings. She is the conductor of an orchestra of destruction. Maybe the ghost of a victim war taking her revenge, maybe the vintage heroin of a vintage videogame.

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What do you hope a viewer will take away from the film?

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​Of course not the entire process I described before, but some traces. There's a sort of narration, so I hope to lead the viewer in a mood that is related to a general meaning. I hope the viewer will ask some questions, and give his answer.

​Catalogo Bubblegum Online Fim Festival, 2010

 

Spiriti liberi
Alessandro Amaducci (...) si confronta con l’esperienza coreografica di Irene Pulzoni dando vita ad una partitura visionaria per macchina da presa. Il riferimento al cinema d’artista degli anni ’60 è evidente senza che però siano presenti citazioni precise; la danzatrice è avvolta da una materia magmatica, in contnuo movimento e agisce creando segni su uno sfondo in perenne mutamento. È una vera e propria danza degli spiriti, una invocazione e una preghiera agli dei assenti, vissuta come un soprendente corpo a corpo tra la danzatrioce e la telecamera.
Luca Scarlini, TTV Videofestival XXII Edizione, Riccione, 1997, pg.100.

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