Writing body/annotating gesture

Brown, Katrina ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9651-5233 (2019) Writing body/annotating gesture. In: Annual Conference SAR 10, March 2019, Zurich University of the Arts.

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Slideshow (Timed pptx Annotation as part of performance presentation) SAR_Zurich_gesture_March 2019 (1).pdf - Presentation Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (13MB) | Preview

Abstract / Summary

Writing body/Annotating gesture: 'intersect' as methodological suspension

A performance proposition by Katrina Brown

This presentation evolved from my participation in the Research Academy, hosted at HDK Zurich University of the Arts (3-12 October 2018) and facilitated by Scott DelaHunta and Suzan Tunca, in which an international group of interdisciplinary artists met to experiment with video annotation as a research tool.

The presentation consists of a single moving body and projection. A body (my body) engages in a process of moving and forming itself – and yet is never quite arriving or settling into a shape; a self-generating, self-transforming and self-erasing gestural dance, working with what remains in the body to connect, listen and orientate to itself, others and surroundings; this dancing body is working with the rhythmic traces - previous and still to come - that lightly score and linger in the body – and extend as gestural suggestions of what is not yet named – a dance of formless. Alongside this not-quite-a-dance, written annotations appear projected on the flat surface of the wall/screen of the session-room that offer descriptive observations of what is happening for performer and viewer.

With this short event, I would like to invite the conference audience to a particular kind of watching/reading and to prompt a discussion on how gesturing body and projected annotations usefully interrupt and intersect each other. What is appearing in the gap or 'intersect' between moving body and annotated observation, between performed gesture and reflective note, between action and thought, between breath and light. And what possible future annotations might be provoked in the intersect of presenting, watching and reading? What kind of philosophical or poetic narratives emerge from a descriptive mode of annotating?

The presentation introduces a notion of 'intersect', proposing 'intersect' as a conceptual and practical investigative device which opens a space of observation, a place to linger; a performance-making tool that can suspend judgement and slow a making-process down, allowing time for small shifts and nuances to be considered. In the context of SAR2019, an 'intersect' is operating less as a gap to be bridged but as a conceptual skin and screen, allowing the unexpected detail to surface and generating an observational mode of working, noticing and describing, so that philosophical themes and connections can take shape from within the conditions of practice.

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