PROJECT PROPOSAL:
Theme: Transition
Title: "Trans-dance"
Opening night:
A party/performance, video/audio- installation
a) Projected onto a wall /or through a big window:
Various people dancing and at the same time walking from one part of the room to the other, and then disappearing out of view (the transitional phase where people are still dancing as they leave the dance floor, or are preparing to go dance and are already dance-walking towards the dance floor). A person is seen dance-walking from the left to the right of the screen.
b) The interior space is dark, with party lights - or possibly strobe lights - moving around as if on a dance floor. Possibly live DJ dance music plays as the sound of people talking can be heard (just like the sounds of a real dance party). On the opening night, this audio will be mixed with the sounds made by the visitors. One enters an installation that gives the feeling of a real party (party lights/ strobe lights, decorations, a live DJ performing, etc.).
(This is a draft and I’m not shore about part c) yet)
c) Somewhere in the room I will construct a small cloakroom, with an attendant to hang visitor’s coats... (Allowing people who come in to also make the transition from being outside, taking off their coats as they prepare to go inside).
e) Performance: On the performance opening night, I will dress up in party clothes, and alternate between dance and walking around in the gallery, like in a dream, not responding to my environment.
f) The opening evening will be videotaped and be part of the performance evening.
g) The space should stay 'as is' for the rest of the exhibition (a leftover, next-morning atmosphere), dirty glasses and ash trays included!
A sound scape should be in the gallery with the sounds of the opening evening.
The video will show the trance-dancers coming on and going off screen.
Material: 2 Video projectors, 2 DVD players, sound installation, light installation, 1 monitor, party dress, drinks,
I’ll need somebody who wants to dj for 3 hours.
One person to be the cloakroom attendant
Carina Gosselé
P.S. I still have to write out a scenario for the performance part
My plan is to start filming in March/April
Find people/dancers to participate in the video
Find 2 people who want to participate in the performance of the opening night.
Arrange for a camera person to tape the opening night performance.
Arrange to rent or buy a second video-projector.
TRANS-DANCE
Dagmar De Pooter Gallery, Antwerp
Carina Gosselé’s latest work draws deeply from an inexhaustible well of inspiration: her own personal experience. She confronts the spectator with investigations into the realms of the all-too personal running so deep they all at once become over personal and universal. While it is primarily through our eyes that we gain access to the artist’s world, our entire body is held in sway as our degree of involvement oscillates between active and passive voyeurism. Indeed, our most private moments arise out of the presence of others.
Even in overcrowded nightclubs the flow of our bodily movements creates a space that encapsulates us when we dance. However, we are not alone and as we continue we feel the many gazes piercing our shell, causing us to recoil ever further into privacy. We feel observed. This affects us and changes our behavior. We no longer dance for ourselves, but for undefined others – we dance for everyone.
TRANS-DANCE #2 is comprised of two videos that isolate the movements traced by people on their way to an imaginary dance-floor and captures their awkwardness. A neutral white backdrop helps to further divest the actors of any protective covering: they have nowhere to hide. Although they are fully clothed, their movements seem naked as we gape at them like teenage peeping-toms. In one sequence a black grid, reminiscent of a window frame, functions as a binary structure that exaggerates the size of each figure and creates a surprising dynamism by letting grey dots appear and disappear at its intersections, as in an optical illusion. As our gaze moves in and out our pupils widen and contract, building up a tension culminating in something like visual jouissance. The second video shows close-up shots of these peoples’ movements, doubled and out of sync, which has a staccato-effect in league with the disquieting mood of the accompanying sound scape.
A little further on, in some derelict building a young girl is dancing. We, enchanted by her delicate movements like a contemporary Degas, watch her as she slowly gyres towards our lens. She comes to a halt and stares in our direction. Now she has noticed us, if she continues dancing she will be dancing for us. Clearly uncomfortable she begins to vent her anger. Her outburst is directed at us. Yet we keep staring, unmoved and shielded by the skin that separates our reality from that of the young girl, who almost seems trapped inside the video TRANS- DANCE #1.
David ULRICHS
Dagmar De Pooter Gallery, Antwerp
Carina Gosselé’s latest work draws deeply from an inexhaustible well of inspiration: her own personal experience. She confronts the spectator with investigations into the realms of the all-too personal running so deep they all at once become over personal and universal. While it is primarily through our eyes that we gain access to the artist’s world, our entire body is held in sway as our degree of involvement oscillates between active and passive voyeurism. Indeed, our most private moments arise out of the presence of others.
Even in overcrowded nightclubs the flow of our bodily movements creates a space that encapsulates us when we dance. However, we are not alone and as we continue we feel the many gazes piercing our shell, causing us to recoil ever further into privacy. We feel observed. This affects us and changes our behavior. We no longer dance for ourselves, but for undefined others – we dance for everyone.
TRANS-DANCE #2 is comprised of two videos that isolate the movements traced by people on their way to an imaginary dance-floor and captures their awkwardness. A neutral white backdrop helps to further divest the actors of any protective covering: they have nowhere to hide. Although they are fully clothed, their movements seem naked as we gape at them like teenage peeping-toms. In one sequence a black grid, reminiscent of a window frame, functions as a binary structure that exaggerates the size of each figure and creates a surprising dynamism by letting grey dots appear and disappear at its intersections, as in an optical illusion. As our gaze moves in and out our pupils widen and contract, building up a tension culminating in something like visual jouissance. The second video shows close-up shots of these peoples’ movements, doubled and out of sync, which has a staccato-effect in league with the disquieting mood of the accompanying sound scape.
A little further on, in some derelict building a young girl is dancing. We, enchanted by her delicate movements like a contemporary Degas, watch her as she slowly gyres towards our lens. She comes to a halt and stares in our direction. Now she has noticed us, if she continues dancing she will be dancing for us. Clearly uncomfortable she begins to vent her anger. Her outburst is directed at us. Yet we keep staring, unmoved and shielded by the skin that separates our reality from that of the young girl, who almost seems trapped inside the video TRANS- DANCE #1.
David ULRICHS
