The Opposite of a Blackhole: A Participatory Screendance Lab
January 12th 2023
The Opposite of a Black Hole is a digital flaneur, an audiovisual journey through the wandering mind of a pinhole camera, exploring the clashing of old and new technologies in relation to the dancing body and the moving image.
Following the creation of their short Screendance work The Opposite of a Black Hole, Rebecca Douglass, Tasha Hess-Neustadt and Madison Pomarico are returning to the walls of Fieldworks Dance, the site of filming, to propose an immersive and participatory experience for other artists working in fields of dance, film and digital art.
This collective lab will begin with a sharing of some of the themes, techniques and self-cultivated methods that we deploy in a very DIY spirit within our work. We will also take a look at the de-hierarchisation of creative technologies; how the production of exciting new digital artwork should not be limited to the highly skilled; and how the distribution of knowledge and techniques can be accessible and encouraging.
With this in mind, we will then invite participants to join us on a durational dive into a Screendance playground. Within a studio set with cameras, projections, green screens and soundscapes, we will each contribute to a collective performance channelling the ideas proposed in the first half of the day, and bringing in our own unique approaches. We will allow cameras to act as our curious wandering minds, capturing, documenting, archiving the happenings in the space. We will see how technology can greatly shift the physical space around us, influencing the way in which we navigate the body in motion. We will observe how in simply being in an experience for an extended period of time, interesting relationships between flesh and tech can emerge and become immortalised through the lens. We will be working with our long-time collaborator Jake Burgess, sound artist for our short film, to provide a live sonic landscape and sound manipulations throughout the lab.
Extending our reach through the digital ether, we will also invite some participants to join via livestream, researching how technology can allow bodies that exist far from the space can still have a great influence on the happenings existing within it.
To round off the lab, we will screen some of the findings from the workshop, as well as our film The Opposite of a Black Hole. We look forward to meeting and collaborating with you, our fellow digital flaneurs.
Facilitation: Rebecca Douglass, Tasha Hess-Neustadt, Madison Pomarico
Sound: Jake Burgess
Lab participants: Ella-Mari Posti, Daniela Carler, Thea Kallhed Möller, Dominic Mason, Claudia Kappenberg, Jake Burgess, Rebecca Douglass, Madison Pomarico, Tasha Hess-Neustadt
Video Editing: Madison Pomarico
The raw footage from the lab is collectively generated and shared as open source amongst all the participants. We are experimenting with a new non-hierarchical approach to output, in which each person involved has equal access and permission to reappropriate the footage for their own creative means. The outcome will be a collection of short and unique Screendance productions that, whilst filmed within the same parameters, have their own identity.
Supported by Fieldworks Dance London and funded by The Arts Council of England