BREATHSCAPE
an inhabited installation

Emily Sweeney: performance, video, set
Bilwa: sound, video, set
Johanna Porola: costume

What does my body say to your body? What does your skin hear? What do my movements say to your muscles? What does my breath say to your lungs?

Breathscape is an inhabited installation that integrates body-sounds and videos with live performance to investigate the impact of new media technologies on somatic experience. Breath, muscle movement, and touch—basic, universal elements of physicality—become common points of reference around which audience and performer consider the ways our bodies hold images, ideas, and memories in both live and virtual contexts. Breathscape seeks to draw observers’ attention to their own kinesthetic navigation of technological environments, providing a space for meditating on the body’s changing communicative powers in the emerging virtual realm.

opening: March 4, 2010, 18:00 – 20:00

On view March 5 – 12, 2010
Tuesday – Friday, 12:00—18:00
Saturday – Sunday, 12:00—16:00

The Rashomon Effect
improvisation workshop at Kutomo
w/ Emily Sweeney + William Bilwa Costa

The Rashomon Effect is designed to integrate artists from multiple disciplines and explores collaborative memory, reproduction, repetition, and subjectivity. It is concerned with inter-media translation and cultivates a fruitful environment for learning about other artists and their practices. It is a laboratory that asks participants to examine their own sensory perceptions and how they translate information through their work. The Rashomon Effect is open to dancers, musicians, theatre artists, visual/media artists, writers, etc.

workshops:
sat 6th feb 15:00-18:00
sun 7th feb 12:00-15:00
sat 13th feb 15:00-18:00
sun 14th feb 12:00-14:00

performance / reception:
sun 14th feb 15:00

workshop fees:
40€ / whole workshop
25€ / 1 weekend

tickets to performance / reception: 5€
registration / reservations at: info@ehka.net

KUTOMO Kalastajankatu 1 B 20100 Turku
busses 4, 40 Kauppatori-Amiraalistonkatu, last station or bus 1 Kauppatori-Satama, WTC station

www.arte.fi
www.ehka.net

performance installation: a performance installation

There is an event in the space made up of bodies, text, video, and sound. It is improvised—generated in real time with no definite trajectory. Each moment is a decision. Each decision is influential and autonomous. The convergence of these elements and decisions is an installation.

Emily Sweeney and Bilwa, a dance/music duo from the U.S.A. who work together as perpetual mvmt<>snd, are currently in residence in the SUMU space at Gallery Titanik. They are joined by their collaborators Mariella Greil and Werner Moebius, both of whom are from Austria and currently working in London.

january 30, 2010—fluxee-klubi @ tehdas teatteri (turku)

emily sweeney /mvmt/ /usa/

mariella greil /mvmt/ /austria/

maria nurmela /mvmt/ /finland/

bilwa /snd/ /usa/

werner moebius /snd/ /austria/

kimmo modig /snd/ /finland/

january 29, 2010—b galleria (turku)

InCounter Sound – Video – Text

A night of live sonic art, performance and video at Campbell Works. Edgy instrumental improvisation, live electronic mixing, found-sound clashes and spoken word performance are interspersed with videos about language, communication and the construction of narrative within moving image

Live performances:
Anne Bean, Richard Wilson and Susie Honeyman
Melanie Clifford & Melissa Castagnetto
Stephen Cornford
Guapo Esmeralda
Holly Pester
Tone Poem

Videos:
Noah Angell
Steven Ball
Ellakajsa Nordstrom
Laure Prouvost
Stefan Riebel
Paul Rooney
Erica Scourti
Lisa Stansbie
Neil Taylor

Wall text:
Emily Candela

Bilwa and Australian dancer Amelia McQueen conducted some experiments working with live-feed projection and improvised movement and sound at pa-f in St. Erme, France. They gave an informal showing for pa-f residents on November 7, 2009.

„entweder oder oder und“ (either/or, or and)
dance: mariella greil + emily sweeney
live electronics: werner moebius
violoncello, voice, analogue electronics: audrey chen

NEITHER

to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow

from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself
by way of neither

as between two lit refuges whose doors once
neared gently close, once away turned from
gently part again

beckoned back and forth and turned away

heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam
or the other

unheard footfalls only sound

till at last halt for good, absent for good
from self and other

then no sound

then gently light unfading on that unheeded
neither

unspeakable home

-Samuel Beckett

performed at theater akzent in vienna as part of the european rhythmics congress
october 5, 2009

photos by Dominik Greil + Bilwa

performance: emily sweeney
sound: bilwa
visual design/installation: emily sweeney + bilwa

after water—after tremendous weight—air, space, light
after water—thirst
after water—its memory remains heavy on limbs, in lungs, flooding our ears
after water—we are free; we are parched

drops will flood is a performance installation exploring the dichotomy inherent in all freedoms: drowning meets thirst, lightness leads to emptiness. we negotiate to find balance.

presented in the wasserturm favoriten as part of fluten WORK:SPACE
september 25, 2009

ein work:space für KünstlerInnen aus verschiedenen Medien
13. – 26. 09. 2009 im Wasserturm Favoriten
Windtenstraße 3
1100 Wien
Im Zentrum steht, was Brian Massumi kreative Ansteckung (creative contagion) nennt – eine Zusammenschau verschiedener Medien in der Architektur des Wasserturms.
Durch den Austausch experimenteller Arbeitsansätze wird ein offenes System verbreitet, das affirmativ-kritische Arbeitsmodalitäten erprobt und reflektiert. Ein Format das sich zwischen Labor und performativer Ausstellung ansiedelt.

WORK:SPACE for artists working in various media
At the center of attention is what Brian Massumi called creative contagion, a synopsis of various media meeting the architecture of the watertower.
Through exchange of experimental approaches, we diffuse an open system that tests affirmative-critical work modalities. WORK:SPACE is formatted somewhere between lab and performative exhibition.

photos by Andrea Tejeda Korkowski/video still by Synes Elischka

Who’s Afraid Of The In-Between?
A lab hosted by Mariella Greil & Werner Moebius at Prisma Mexico 2009

Maybe manifesto
Maybe we move into the space between yes and no
Maybe we perform the spectacular spectator or performer
Maybe we overcome virtuosity and redefinition
Maybe we question the brute somatic nature of the body and make-believe transformations
Maybe we are all stars and invest in generosity
Maybe we share the in-between
Maybe we look for respect, hospitality and friendship
Maybe we become hybrid
Maybe we distort and recycle our style
Maybe we enjoy cunning concepts and teasing procedures and their strictures
Maybe we move beyond camp, eccentric, heroic and their opposites
Maybe we inverse the structure of the sublime
Maybe we decide for sensitive ambiguity
(response to Yvonne Rainer’s NO Manifesto and Mette Ingvartsen’s YES Manifesto)

Die Kunstpraxis als Werkform.

The lab creates space and framework for exploring emerging practices. “Who’s afraid of the in-between” contributes to a critical discourse on knowledge production in collaborative research and work modes both rehearsed and performed beyond closed categories.

writings from the in-between
emily, july 2009, mexico

the in-between is inherent. it is rich with experience, preserving a space where memory trails into possibility. it is not a state to be achieved, only recognized, and delicately. to focus on the in-between will cause it to shift. the instant we acknowledge a state as being in-between, we have arrived.

in order to find ourselves in-between, we engage with concrete structures. a vacuum is not in-between: it is nowhere.

where are the two poles that we would find ourselves between?
knowledge and ignorance
technique and pedestrianism
planning and sensation
consciousness and unconsciousness
self-consciousness and abandon
isolation and interaction
movement and sound
proprioception and desire
beginning and end

where would we find ourselves that we should feel in-between?
perhaps we will try to find sensitive ambiguity together.

once, in the laboratory, we exchanged rules. each of us wrote a rule on a small slip of paper and put it into a hat. then, we all selected rules that we were bound to follow for the duration of an open improvisation. i selected the rule to NEVER BEGIN!!! i could not predict how this would unfold. i could not conceive of never beginning.

i stationed myself against a white wall at one end of the space. there, i could feel the wind on my body from outside through an open door and i could see the shadows of trees shifting at the corners of my eyes. i had an easy view of the entire improvised event occurring in the space. NEVER BEGIN. i could not move but to breathe. my hair was moving in the wind; i could not move my head. my eyes searched round and round, roving the space; i could not move my head.

sounds, movements, sensations, interactions shifted before me. but i could not move. i stood still. i began (shit!) to feel an immeasurable pressure in my thighs and feet. my hands trembled; my legs trembled; my face contorted; i began to cry. i breathed; i focused; i stopped crying, and began crying again. i arrived in a space between proprioception and desire. i was present between every decision and every action; i filled the space with longing. the space filled with my longing. every actor’s action was infected with my desire.

is it possible to invite another person into my in-between? can i have company there?

is it possible to be alone in the in-between? do i depend upon the presence of company there?

where were we, that we should feel in-between there and someplace else?

where are we going?

does the in-between imply movement, instability, journeying? is it possible to arrive at the in-between?

are we comfortable in the in-between? is it possible to be comfortable in the in-between? do we want to be comfortable in the in-between?

“…if entire systems of representation, of meaning, had been extinguished inside him, entirely new systems had been brought into being.” Oliver Sacks, An Anthropologist on Mars

the in-between is a constant negotiation. the in-between is dependent upon binaries. the in-between denies binaries. the in-between rejects binaries.

i know only that i am in-between. i do not know why, or how. why do i strive for articulation? if i articulate this, will it disappear?

i am an artist who was raised in the united states. i find myself in mexico. all the time (walking, seeing, hearing, speaking) i have a heightened sense of myself living between my individual beliefs, hopes, and sensations, and those of the country i inevitably represent. can i shed this in-between? do i want to shed this in-between? why am i so uncomfortable in this space between myself and my perceived geopolitical identity?

i am a movement artist who was raised by a family of musicians. all the time (moving, listening, sounding) i have a heightened sense of myself living between my senses. do i want to focus on this in-between? will i damage my in-between by concentrating on it?

where is the space generated by this laboratory of in-between?

i am not afraid of the in-between. i fear its obliteration through description; articulation; location.