pre-made/re-made:

A Process as Product Installation

BY

Maxx Passion

THESIS

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of Master of Fine Arts (Dance) in the University of Michigan

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Thesis Committee:

Christian Matijas Mecca (Chair), Associate Professor of Dance and Music, University of Michigan

Amy Chavasse, Associate Professor of Dance, University of Michigan

Melanie Yergeau, Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Michigan

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I send my sincere gratitude to the many people who have supported me artistically, emotionally and financially throughout the creation of pre-made/re-made, as well as during my time at the University of Michigan. To my thesis Chair, Christian Matijas Mecca, thank you for seeing the smallest seed and urging it to grow. For two years, you have pushed me further than I thought was possible and none of this could have happened without you. Thank you for your kind words and stern tone. To my thesis committee, Amy Chavasse and Melanie Yergeau, thank you for asking me all the right questions and using your unique perspectives to steer me toward answers. To my gracious, inspiring and talented dancers, CJ Burroughs, Chloe Gonzales, Hillary Kooistra, and Luna Lemus-Bromley, I felt your love every day and in everything we created together. To Brittany Whitmoyer, without you, my time in Michigan would not have been the same. I thank you for keeping me on task, for always knowing my schedule better than I did and for being a great partner in work and friendship. Many thanks to Angela Kane and the Department of Dance Faculty for opening doors I didn’t know existed by accepting me into the program. My utmost gratitude goes to the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies and the Department of Dance, whose generous fellowships and grants provided the financial support necessary to complete my research, pre-made/re-made, and my studies. And finally, thank you to my family, friends and the love of my life. Nothing I do is greater than the love I have for you.

Table of Contents

Title Page                                                                                        

Acknowledgements                                                                                

Table of Contents                                                                                

Abstract                                                                                        

Process and Presentation

Artist Collaborators

Three Screendance Vignettes

Instaphrase

Choreography, Performance, Production & Design: Presentation

CPP&D: Contributor Responses & Choreography

CPP&D: Instaphrase

CPP&D: Response and Next Steps

Duderstadt Gallery: Set-up and Organization

Duderstadt Gallery: Instaphrase

Conclusion

ABSTRACT

pre-made/re-made set out to experiment with an audience’s expectation of both the dance making processes and the presentation of dance by showing work that is in a finished, but not terminal, state of completion. This project posed the question, “Can the product be the process and the process be the product?” pre-made/re-made was composed of three sections that were each created using a different dance making technique. Each could have existed as a solo work, but pre-made/re-made was a presentation of the process of making a work, rather than the presentation of the work. Although the installation no longer exists in the Duderstadt Gallery, each element of pre-made/re-made has the potential to be presented elsewhere with any number of new elements added, rearranged, and expanded upon by a different group of artists in a different space. The premiere iteration of the installation was free and open to the public at the Duderstadt Gallery April 21st-26th, 2014.

PROCESS AND PRESENTATION

Throughout the making, assembling and organizing of pre-made/re-made, it was necessary for me to facilitate and negotiate a large number of moving parts. In addition to creating choreography of my own, I filmed and edited a screendance, and invited artists from multiple genres to contribute work which would subsequently live in the gallery alongside the other processes. As I have never created a work in this model, nor have I seen one that was structured in this manner, I relied upon skills I have garnered as a dancer and dance maker in the traditional sense, and applied them to this less traditional mode of dance presentation.

If we were to compare the structure of an installation to the structure of a traditional dance performance, we would notice that there is no break in action when experiencing an installation; the viewer experiences all elements of the project simultaneously. In pre-made/re-made all of its parts are physically present at all times, and when the space is entered the work is more likely to be perceived as one continuous idea. When developing a traditional dance performance, two ideas can be choreographed into two separate dance pieces and be presented with a blackout that separates them. Since they do not occupy the stage at the same time, the audience has space to make distinctions between the two without the assumption they are linked together. pre-made/re-made required me to create, transform and organize a group of art pieces in a way that was aesthetic and logical, as well as build connections that allowed space for other choices to be made by the viewer.

There were two distinct processes that would ultimately result in the Installation presentation of pre-made/re-made, Instaphrase, and the work with contributing artists. In addition, there was a third project that would be in collaboration with Brittany Whitmoyer. The following is an outline of pre-made/re-made that includes the groups, their subsections and the artists involved:

1. Artist Contributors

1. Group One

1. caught in, Maxx Passion/Sydney Fine
2. Untitled, Brian Garcia
3. preservation, Mary Ayling
4. preservation (video), Maxx Passion/Mary Ayling/Brittany Whitmoyer
5. It’s Complicated, Matthew Adkins
6. A Meeting Between Ann and Video Ann, Ann Bartges
7. Untitled, Raphael Szymanski

2. Group Two

1. to begin, you must begin, Maxx Passion/Sydney Fine
2. Cobbled, Karen Cribari
3. Leftovers, Adrianne Pope
4. Meta-analysis of Exaggerated Kibble Non-Acquisition Duress Level (KNADL) data, Nate May
5. Draggin’ Peel, Diana Sussman

3. Group Three

1. stuck, Maxx Passion/Sydney Fine
2. No Gravity, Kyla Ernst-Alper/Kevin Keller
3. Obstruction, Ariel Poster

2. these things move me

1. Photographs/Slides, Maxx Passion
2. Instaphrase Solos, Maxx Passion, CJ Burroughs, Chloe Gonzales, Hillary Kooistra, Luna Lemus-Bromley

3. From the Inside, Maxx Passion/Brittany Whitmoyer

ARTIST CONTRIBUTORS

I have chosen to use the language “contributor” vs. “collaborator” when discussing the relationship between myself and those artists with whom I worked over the course of pre-made/re-made, as I find the word “collaboration” is often used to incorrectly define art making relationships. These artists have contributed their work to my project, however, aside from asking them to create work that was inspired by my screendance vignettes, I played no further role in their art making. Subsequently, the artists did not assist me in how I decided to construct the various pieces of work that were contributed to the process of pre-made/re-made.

My initial idea was to create a system of art making that combined Exquisite Corpse with pen-pal communication to create an inter-art assemblage. The first version of this system worked as follows:

1. Compile a list of art makers from the University of Michigan and New York City

2. Email both groups with an outline of the system and describe how my project would be implemented

3. Divide the single group of artists into three small ones, with each medium (music, visual art, poetry etc.) equally represented

4. Send each group one of the screen dance vignettes between October 2013 and February 2014

5. Collect the responses and use them to inspire my own choreographed response for my dancers to perform

The first email that I sent outlined my idea to graduate students in the School of Art & Design and the School of Music to inquire as to whether anyone would be interested in being a part of my thesis project. As a graduate student with multiple school and teaching responsibilities of my own, I was careful to impress upon the email recipients that they were welcome to spend as little or as much time working on their response pieces as they wished or were able. I sent a similar email to friends who were not students at the University as I was interested in having as many approaches to this project as possible, and people who are outside of the institution would have an undoubtedly different perspective. Once I received confirmation from those who were interest in the project, I sent an email with more specific instructions about what to expect in the coming months.  

Email One:

Email Two:

I was surprised and excited by the number of participants that my emails garnered. However, I was cognizant that the return rate would differ from the initial number of people who agreed to lend their talents to my project.

Original Twenty-Six Participants:

Toby Billowitz, Kyla Ernst-Alper, Angela Boswell, Aimée Cucchiaro, Barbie Diewald, Jesse Nelson, Sintija Silina, Karen Cribari, Aidan Feldman, Ariel Poster, Noah Bedrin, Rachel Wells, Juliet Hinley, Brian Garcia, Carisa Bledsoe, Eric Sheffield, Matthew Adkins, Adrianne Pope, Isaac Levine, Kyra Hauck, Kenzie Allen, Nate May, Diana Sussman, Mary Ayling, Raphael Szymanski, Ann Bartges

After I received the initial participant list, I asked each artist to respond via email with the medium they would likely use in their response. With this information I could split the large group into thirds with each medium represented equally within the three groups.

Final Groups and Due Dates:

November 6, 2013: Brian Garcia, Mary Ayling, Matthew Adkins, Ann Bartges, Raphael Szymanski

January 8, 2014: Karen Cribari, Adrianne Pope, Nate May, Diana Sussman

February 21, 2014: Kyla Ernst-Alper, Kevin Keller, Ariel Poster

I scheduled the first collection of responses to be delivered by November 6, 2013, which allowed me the time to develop a plan for how I would present these elements in the Choreography, Performance, Production & Design (CPP&D) concert on Wednesday, December 11, 2013, as well as create a choreographed response of my own. For the CPP&D showing, I followed my original plan to compose a choreographed response based on the first group of contributed art pieces that I received; the artist contributions and my choreography were presented along with an orated description of my process and the onstage happenings.

THREE SCREENDANCE VIGNETTES

During the Summer of 2013, I spent two weeks at an arts residency program, CAMAC Centre d’ Art, located in Marnay-sur-Seine, France. While there I filmed myself making dances in various locations in both the CAMAC compound and the neighboring town. Later in 2013, I also filmed myself dancing in a New York City location. I hired UM Screen Arts & Cultures undergraduate student Sydney Fine to edit the footage to create three screendance vignettes that I sent to my three groups of contributors. I worked with Sydney while we were both enrolled in Screendance 1: Collaborations in New Media 542, a course where we created film projects that involved movement and dance. I was impressed by Sydney’s ability to link movements together from different clips, as well as the rhythmic and dynamic quality of her edits; I was eager to use her creative and aesthetic prowess in my project.

Prior to editing the raw footage, Sydney and I discussed the general look, feel and duration of each screendance. We agreed that each vignette would have its own baseline reality, as if the dancer existed in her own space and time, and the viewer would happen upon the scene. These vignettes would be non-realist as I intended that each vignette should function outside of reality, it would give my contributors space to interpret and respond in any way they felt appropriate.

Sydney did the bulk of the editing during three, three-hour sessions, and once she had a solid framework in place, I helped her fine-tune the edits. Sydney was accustomed to editing screeendances that had musical accompaniment as either a sound track or as a narrative device; but for my project, sound was a separate component that would only be added by a composer later on in the process. I did not want to add sound to the vignettes because I wanted the contributor’s responses to only be influenced by the visual experience of watching the video that I sent to them. Instead, Sydney edited while listening to music that the footage inspired her to use, and timed her edits to the internal rhythms of the temporary soundtrack.

The first vignette we edited was titled caught in. Unlike previous projects in which Sydney and I collaborated, caught in did not have a specific narrative arc, but instead was built upon a sense of atmosphere. The long moments of the dancer in the phone-booth are intercut with quick scenes of a spider moving through a web.  

In the second video, to begin, you must begin, we created a short vignette that was built upon the idea of how a dancer prepares to “do” by entering space, clearing space, and trying out new ideas one after the other. to begin… physicalizes and demonstrates these ideas with the dancer entering a studio, cleaning the studio and finally putting on, dancing with, and interchanging pairs of shoes.

In the third vignette, stuck. the dancer is filmed through the slats of a locked gate that stood locked but without a connecting fence. While filming, I captured images from all angles. However once we were in the editing room, Sydney and I were most interested in the shots that showed the dancer seemingly stuck within boundaries that did not physically exist. She could “escape” if she wanted.

INSTAPHRASE

Throughout our rehearsal process, my dancers and I practiced making solo and group dances, and we used a number of approaches to spur our creativity, one of the methods that I developed I named “Instaphrase” because the dance phrases are made instantly. After its success as part of CPP&D, the method became an integral part of pre-made/re-made.

I treated our entire rehearsal process as not just a rehearsal for my work, but as practice for all of our dancing futures; how to make dances, how to interact with dancers, how to interact with the viewer, and why these questions can be asked and answered with every movement and performance choice we make. We were in constant conversation about how our work in the studio would impact our lives outside of this specific experience. The purpose of our rehearsals was not just to create pre-made/re-made, the rehearsals gave us all new information that would ultimately affect our current and future creative decisions. Even though pre-made/re-made would not be a live performance, we performed for each other in every rehearsal.

Every week, I gathered photographs that I took with my camera or iPhone and brought them into rehearsal. Each dancer chose one photograph, and keeping traditional compositional tools in mind, they had five minutes to build a thematically sound and performance-ready movement vignettes; these phrases were not about the photograph, but a response to the elements of the image (time of day, shadow, shapes in space, motion, tone). After each dancer “performed” these solo Instaphrases, I adjusted elements of the movement compositions to heighten their specificity. For example, in order to highlight certain moments of the composition, I might adjust the dancer’s orientation in space, ask her to repeat a movement three times in a row, or suggest that she slow down or quicken the pace of specific moments. Once I watched all four dancer’s original and modified solos, I would put two, three or all four of the solos together and have them perform their compositions again. In addition to creating movement modifications for them to employ while dancing, I asked them to respond to their fellow dancers who moved around them, it was important to me that they each stay present and aware of everything that was happening in space and not become singularly focused with their own presence in space. These exercises and procedures were as much about creating concise movement vignettes, as teaching the dancers my principles about performance; I believe that there is nothing more powerful as a performer than to be as engaged with those who are dancing with you as with those who are watching you dance.

CHOREOGRAPHY, PERFORMANCE, PRODUCTION & DESIGN: PRESENTATION

At the end of the Fall Term 2013, the Choreography, Performance, Production & Design course concluded in a lecture-demonstration of the thesis works created by Amy Guilmette, William B. McClellan Jr., Brittany Whitmoyer, and myself. As the name of the course implies, we were given the task as a group to create a self-contained show. This consisted of the choreography, producing the show including the publicity, lighting and costume elements for each work. For me, this also involved integrating three contributor responses that took the form of two visual art pieces and a video into my twenty-minute presentation. The structure of the course required me to create a live performance for the Betty Pease Studio Theater, however, pre-made/re-made was never intended for a stage, and so I needed to find a way to “perform” the processes that my dancers and I were inventing to create pre-made/re-made.

CPP&D: CONTRIBUTOR RESPONSES & CHOREOGRAPHY

I received three contributor responses that I presented alongside of my choreography for the CPP&D lecture-demonstration. I had expected a fourth, in the form of a soundscape from a University of Michigan graduate student in the School of Music. However, I did not receive the promised submission, a possibility that I anticipated when I began the project. It was risky to incorporate other people into the creation of my thesis project as they would be a variable that I would not have control over. But the reward outweighed the risk because it was important for me to have artists from multiple genres and locations be a part of this art making experiment to create a diverse set of responses.

The list of contributors for the CPP&D show were as follows:

Maxx Passion: Video, caught in

Matthew Adkins: Sculpture, It’s Complicated, NYC

Ann Bartges: Video, A Meeting Between Ann and Video Ann, UM

Brian Garcia: Digital Painting, Untitled, UM

Upon receipt of the sculpture and the digital painting, I was struck by their similarities. The two artists, one based in NYC, the other in Ann Arbor, MI, created two pieces with inherent similarities; from a common inspiration came thematic relationship. It’s Complicated, is a sculpture in the shape of the Empire State Building and is covered in words and images. In Untitled, the images are arranged in such a way that there is a shape that runs down the center that resembles the Empire State Building. To highlight this connection, I projected the digital painting against the back wall of the stage, and placed the sculpture in front of a second projector in order to use its light and cast a shadow against Untitled and mirror the center shape. The floor projector was also used to project A Meeting Between Ann and Video Ann against the back wall and overlap Untitled so that “Ann” was interacting with her video self as well as with the fragmented images used in Untitled.

For the CPP&D presentation I followed my original system; to choreograph a response based on the artist contributions. I choreographed a series of movement phrases inspired by different elements of each artist’s response; “projection” Ann points to “video” Ann, the literal and figurative pointedness of It’s Complicated, the four quadrants of Untitled. I assembled these choreographies into a longer phrase of movement and they were performed in front of and through the visual art pieces in the space. CPP&D became the only time I followed my original system, later in my process, my response came in the form of how I arranged and integrated the elements of a group together.

CPP&D: INSTAPHRASE

While developing a plan for how best to “perform” process, I was reminded of an an earlier project that I developed during my first semester at UM, #tweetdance, where inspiration for improvised dances was crowd-sourced via Twitter. It seemed to be a logical step to ask the audience for photographs as a part of the Instaphrase presentation. As the audience arrived at the theater I distributed business card sized calls-to-action:

Send Me A Photograph!

instaphrase@gmail.com

267.210.2660

landscapes or objects please!

And made a series of brief announcements that requested their participation in my upcoming presentation:

The Announcement:

Hello everyone, if you are interested in participating in my presentation, please email or text a photograph that you have taken with your mobile phones. My dancers are back stage, and each one will create a short dance vignette inspired by the photograph they have each chosen. Photographs that feature landscapes and objects instead of people are the best to send. The dancers will perform their vignettes for you later in the evening. The cards have the necessary contact information.

As the CPP&D performance began, I sat backstage and created a set of Power Point slides of the photographs I received from the audience. The slides would be projected on the back wall while the Instaphrases were performed. Although only four photographs could be chosen to make Instaphrases from, I put all of the photographs I received into the slideshow as a “thank you” for participating. It has been my experience that people always appreciate that their actions have been noticed. The dancers each chose a photograph and created their Instaphrase in the time allotted.

         During the time slot for my presentation, the dancers sat on one side of the stage while I stood at a podium across from them. With the slideshow running, I introduced each dancer and the photograph they chose to Instaphrase. Once all the dancers showed their Instaphrases, we followed the same process that we did in rehearsals; performance, adjustments, incorporation of other dancers.

CPP&D: RESPONSE AND NEXT STEPS

The audience response to the two processes that I presented in CPP&D was mostly positive, and the criticisms I received were considerations that were already on my mind. The CPP&D concert did not involve text or sound elements, which may have troubled audience members accustomed to traditional modes of dance performance, and while the lack of sound was due to an artist not sending their work on time, and the lack of text was due to their not being a writer in the group, the conversation solidified my innate understanding that the sum of pre-made/re-made’s parts is what would make it one whole experience. Even though the separate processes, art pieces and sections were whole in and of themselves, the success of my project would lay in how well I could place them together in space so that the viewer could enter the installation and experience each part alone, or find connections between the groups. In Deborah Jowitt’s 1988 Introduction to Marmalade Me, she references Kurt Schwitter’s visual art term “Merz-Painting” that Schwitter coined in 1919 and defined as such, “the combination of all imaginable materials for artistic purposes and technically the fundamental and equal valuation of the individual materials” (xxiv). The many items that constituted pre-made/re-made (poem, sound, digital painting, sculptures, photographs, video) were equal and individual entities that were placed in space at my discretion, and viewed as one whole work.

THE DUDERSTADT GALLERY: SET-UP AND ORGANIZATION

it all lives here (for now) was a dual presentation between myself and fellow graduate student Brittany Whitmoyer at The Duderstadt Gallery located in the James and Anne Duderstadt Center at the University of Michigan. Whitmoyer’s screendance, Points of Perspective, and my installation pre-made/re-made inhabited the space equally.

The Duderstadt Gallery is a hexagonal gallery space. Its front wall runs parallel to the main hallway of Pierpont Commons and is comprised of floor to ceiling windows that allow all passersby to see inside the Gallery as they walk down the hall. As the viewer entered the Gallery from the main door, pre-made/re-made is on the right, and Whitmoyer’s work Points of Perspective on the left. The contrast between the two sides was striking; Whitmoyer’s dance films were presented on sleek, modern, and uniform monitors, and my own work was displayed on an array of television monitors that ranged in age from ten to thirty-five years old. The back wall of the room is a shared space between Whitmoyer and myself where a large video was projected from the ceiling.

A program excerpt describing the three sections of pre-made/re-made:

1. Dancers and dance makers are often inspired by artwork from outside genres. In this case, a screendance began the process and a selected group of artists responded in their own medium.  

2. The dancers composed a set of thematically and structurally sound movement phrases in response to a chosen photograph. These short phrases were edited together into a larger screendance demonstrating how unrelated stimuli can be woven into a unique whole.      

3. Moments of inspiration, documented.

While these sections have numerical demarcations for description purposes, it was not necessary for the viewer to look at them in this order. In fact, the sections were not placed in that order in the gallery, which was a decision I continue to question. How “mapped” do I want this project and space to be? My compromise was to use white gaffers tape to draw a square around each pedestal that held a video vignette that I created, and tape lines toward each individual piece of work that was made as a response. It was my intention to build an easy-to-read connection between the elements; the viewer could see a physical connection between my video and the subsequent response work, or they could ignore the tape entirely. Both options were possible and welcomed. I remain unsure if the mapping helped or hindered the viewer’s experience, but I found that people from varying disciplines (artistic or otherwise) had different reactions to the lines of tape. When I asked persons from visual arts and film backgrounds, or those with experience in viewing installations, how they felt about the relatively unmapped environment, they did not feel that the connecting lines were necessary. However, dancers expressed that they would have benefitted from more direction/mapping.

I spent the majority of the four months leading up to the installation not only concerned with the creation of choreography, as would be the case were my project a traditional dance performance, but negotiating the logistics of how best to integrate the multiple elements into pre-made/re-made. This task was made more difficult since many of the physical elements that constituted pre-made/re-made (art pieces and presentation tools alike) were not yet in my possession. The situation required me to create theoretical ideas of how to organize the space, and to fully depend upon my instincts once the work was loaded into the Duderstadt Gallery. I was concerned with all aspects related to the presentation of pre-made/re-made including the aesthetics of the objects in space, the relationship (physical and thematic) of each piece within and across the groups, and the pathway(s) between and around each art work.

I gathered nine television monitors of various ages and sizes; eight were connected to DVD players with RCA cables, one had an internal VHS player, and each played a different video on a loop. I spent two days organizing the monitors in space for both aesthetic impact and logistical reasons. The size and shape of each monitor, as well as what each displayed, were as important as where they were placed in space. However, my choices of where I could place these items were limited by the proximity of electrical outlets. I needed to organize the space in such a way that it was not only aesthetically appealing but that each element of the installation was close enough to the required number of electrical outlets for them to work. One of the ways that I hoped to achieve a feeling of wholeness when the viewer entered pre-made/re-made was to use the television monitors as presentation tools that would build a visual connection between the many pieces of video work within each group, as well as across the groups. Due to the individual characteristics of each monitor (size, shape, age) each video work would continue to be distinct.

Just as a dancer or choreographer adjusts spacing and direction when they rehearse on stage for the first time prior to performing, it was necessary for me to organize my installation with many of the same ideas in mind. What is the proximity of each item to light? How easy is it for the viewer to see each piece of work separately or as a whole group? What are the sight lines from inside the gallery and from outside the gallery?  I traded short pedestals for tall ones and vice versa, tested DVDs on different monitors to see which content looked best where, and adjusted the angle and space between each piece of work for optimum approachability and appeal.

Menu of physical pieces used to present the various works:

·      Nine television monitors

·      Eight DVD players

·      Eight DVDs

·      One VHS tape

·      Three modulators

·      One balun

·      Two 35mm slide projectors

·      24 35mm slides

·      Thirteen pedestals

·      One roll of gaffers tape

·      Nine RCA cables

·      Three hanging pieces

·      Two sculptures

THE DUDERSTADT GALLERY: INSTAPHRASE  

It took me a considerable amount of time after the CPP&D presentation to decide how best to transform the Instaphrase processes I showed as performance, into another ingredient of the installation. The audience participation and the relatively instant performance of created phrases was both intriguing and exciting, but I felt there was not a place for live dance in the gallery space. After much deliberation I decided to present the Instaphrases in two different modes:

1. Film a series of Instaphrases in a documentation format. Each dancer performs their Instaphrase in front of one camera, from one angle, and in one take. Edit the Instaphrases together into one looping video.

2. Choreograph movement sequences of my own, and teach them to the dancers. Combine my choreography with the Instaphrases from Mode One. Film the dancers on location at the atrium of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy from multiple angles and in multiple takes. Edit the raw footage into a screendance.

Mode One was stylized documentation. I chose an outdoor tennis court as the location because the court was smooth and easy to dance on, and the color palette of the environment matched the clothes the dancers wore. I am hesitant to use the word “costume”, as the connotation is of garments that are unnatural to an environment other than the stage. In this case, I bought clothes for the dancers that were natural to the campus environment; tank tops, sweaters, and long pants all in earth tones, and they wore comfortable footwear of their own. The dancers wore the same clothes when I filmed Mode Two. I chose the location for Mode Two based on logistics and aesthetics; a self contained indoor location where there would not be much foot traffic, and floor to ceiling windows that allowed us to film in natural light. Again, the color palette of the atrium complemented what the dancers wore.

Instaphrase proved to be an extremely versatile process; they were presented as a staged performance, used to generate new movement material, and were easily fused together to create a longer choreography and screendance. I found the Instaphrases particularly interesting to film because they are inherently scene-like; it was simple to film the dancers as solos, duets, and from multiple directions.

In the Duderstadt Gallery, Instaphrase Mode One & Two were played on two television monitors simultaneously. I converted the digital photographs the dancers chose for their Instaphrases into 35mm slides and projected them on the wall alongside the monitors and placed instructions on the slide projector that invited the viewer to “Change My Slides”. As the two videos played, and the slides changed, there was always the potential for choreographic moments to align with each other, as well as with their inspiration photograph. In Tere O’Connor’s 2009 essay Dance Writing, he discusses a similar style of dance making:

The use of extreme fragmentation is for me a homeopathic remedy for the impossibility of coming to terms with the disparate nature of the events in a life … I attempt to create a network born of these concepts in my dances, something that is logical as an experience, not as an explanation. (O’Connor)

His statement “something that is logical as an experience, not as an explanation” is particularly useful when discussing not only the Instaphrases, but when thinking about the nature of pre-made/re-made as a whole. Borrowing his terminology, I have created a network of ideas that can be intertwined with each other, or experienced as separate moments. I have not attempted to explain any singular art piece; rather I have attempted to open up the “making” process to show the logic behind how choices and dances can be made.

CONCLUSION  

During the months that led up to the final installation, I was repeatedly asked how I envisioned all of the various elements that formed pre-made/re-made fitting together in the Duderstadt Gallery. While I could not offer a definite answer, since I did not have all of the art works in my possession, nor did I have access to all of the presentation materials (podiums, television monitors), I knew that once all of the parts were loaded into the gallery I would have an innate sense of how to arrange the seemingly disparate pieces to create a cohesive and dynamic whole. Once I had all the pieces to the puzzle, I was confidant that the full picture would reveal itself. However, much like the processes that composed pre-made/re-made, Instaphrases that could be directed, arranged, or shared separately, or artist contributions that could each become the new nucleus for a set of responses, the arrangement and organization of these many elements was open to variation. I drew certain connections between pieces and acted accordingly, but it was just as likely that a different viewer would see a different set of connections entirely. Everything about this was exciting to me. O’Connor writes in his essay that:  

Imagination, the daytime cousin of dreams, allows for the pairing of opposites in an artistic setting, allows us to put them together rather than define them separately. I am not looking to extract a theme, but rather to look at a theme relative to the profusion of other themes around it. (O’Connor)

The idea of these items in space together, and especially presenting dance in such a way as to intermingle seamlessly with art works from a spectrum of genres, satisfied my interest in realism (I drew logical connections) and nonrealism (another viewer might not see a connection at all). The process of making, rearranging, and organizing was not entirely dissimilar to how a choreographer might place a dancer in space and organize their movement patterns; the viewer knows that for every choreographer there is an infinite number of choices to be made. The way that I divided the space was not the only way to do so, it was my choice. The suggestions I made to my dancers regarding their Instaphrases were not the only possibilities, simply the choices I made. The connections I built between the art pieces were based on my personal aesthetic and the physical obstacles in the space. In each new iteration of pre-made/re-made new photographs can be chosen, new dances can be made and new artists can contribute work; the presentation of the process allows the presentation to grow.  

Works Cited

Jowitt, Deborah. "Introduction." Marmalade Me. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988.

 O'Connor, Tere. "MRPJ#25/Dance Writing: Dance Writing." Movement Research. 2 Aug. 2009. Web. 20 Jan. 2014.