Feedback from Programme Day Research

I got lots of recommendations in the feedback from my programme day talk so I collated and reflected on the list here. 

Labanotation - style of dance step notation

I had never heard of Labanotation before Brendan suggested I look into is as contextual research for my line dance drawings. Its incredible to me how Rudolf Laban created such a complex and versatile language that is simplified to blocks with different shapes and shading. After reading further into the symbols I understood how complicated it actually was and didn't spend too much longer trying to understand it. This image was a good reference point as a key to reading some of the notations.

Labanotation or Kinetography Laban is a notation system for recording and analyzing human movement that was derived from the work of Rudolf Laban who described it in Schrifttanz (“Written Dance”) in 1928. His initial work has been further developed by Ann Hutchinson Guest and others, and is used as a type of dance notation in other applications including Laban Movement Analysis, robotics and human movement simulation.

This notation system could be used to describe movement in terms of spatial models and concepts, which contrasts with other movement notation systems based on anatomical analysis, letter codes, stick figures, music notes, track systems, or word notes. The system precisely and accurately portrays temporal patterns, actions, floor plans, body parts and a three-dimensional use of space. Laban's notation system eventually evolved into modern-day Labanotation and Kinetography Laban.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labanotation#:~:text=Labanotation%20or%20Kinetography%20Laban%20is,Written%20Dance%E2%80%9D)%20in%201928.

 

Lines: A Brief History by Tim Ingold (book)

I have borrowed this book from the library and may keep it to read after deadlines are submitted because Brendan said it would be a lot to process. 

See also: Kuzuo Shiraga, a Japanese Gutai artist from the 1950's.

I am slowly coming round to the idea of mess. The idea of hanging on a rope in the middle of a studio and thrashing and dancing my way through paint is one that I would not say no to if the opportunity was to arise but the logistics include so much prep and cleaning that its not something I could see as a real possibility at the moment. I love the energy of the Gutai artists and want to honour Kazuo Shiraga and the Gutai movement's legacy with my aspirations to transform and redefine art and continuing to work on activating art through moving my body in space and exploring the role of performance in contemporary drawing and painting.

Kazuo Shiraga was a Japanese artist best known for his performative painting practice. Shiraga’s gestural style was influenced by American Abstract Expressionism and indicative of his participation in the Gutai avant-garde movement. The object of Gutai was to allow action and everyday life into the creation of dynamic artworks. The artist would suspend himself over his canvases, swinging back and forth, creating marks with his feet, creating a unique texture and thickness to his abstract swirls and splatters. “I want to paint as though rushing around a battlefield, exerting myself to collapse from exhaustion,” the artist once proclaimed. Born on August 12, 1924 in Amagasaki, Japan, he graduated from the Kyoto Municipal Special School of Painting in 1948, and joined the Gutai group in 1954. In a seminal early work, Challenge to the Mud (1955), the artist explored the gesture of sculpting clay by throwing himself and contorting his semi-naked body in a pit of mud. Through the following decades, Shiraga continued to work on activating art through moving a body in space. He died on April 8, 2008 in Amagasaki, Japan. Today, the artist’s works are included in the collections of the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Hiroshima City Museum of Art, among others.

The group’s manifesto dictated that each member should follow their own individual path, and, in the words of Yoshihara, ‘Do what no one has done before!’ Gutai translates loosely as ‘concreteness’, and reflects the group’s readiness to engage with a remarkable range of materials, from paint to tar, mud, glue, newspaper and water.

‘Shiraga wanted to create art in a way that no one had ever done before. His pioneering techniques and philosophy inspired many European and American artists such as Yves Klein and Georges Mathieu.’

http://www.artnet.com/artists/kazuo-shiraga/

https://www.christies.com/features/The-Story-of-Gutai-9464-3.aspx

https://www.google.com/search?q=Kazuo+Shiraga&rlz=1C1GCEB_enGB917GB918&sxsrf=ALeKk00AovTGTaRdrb-H0Z4iW5ToXtJNvQ:1618399356561&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiFoYK2z_3vAhVRuHEKHbdRBUEQ_AUoAXoECAIQAw&biw=1536&bih=722

Karen Lyons Dance project for the peace pavement

This project was heart warming to see and the finished clay slab is wonderfully textured with footprints that reap with energy. I wanted to do something like this last year but I have a tendency to impulsively throw myself into projects without properly thinking them through so I put this idea on hold until I have the facilities or the opportunity arises because I would love to create something like this. During my conscious dance sessions I have realised how much we can actually feel through our feet that goes right through our bodies. All this feeling and energy is translated onto the clay or through the charcoal into the shape of a footprint, the subtlety of the differences between prints will give away the energy put into the print.

image from Karen Lyons website

image from Karen Lyons website

karenlyons.co.uk/paving_the_way_to_peace.html

Lisa Cullen, PL BA (Hons) Dance

Get in contact to use dance studios to create work in

 

Tim Isherwood, MA leader

Discuss using the New Adelphi auditorium to display work

Here's Tim's email: t.isherwood@salford.ac.uk