Dance Performance – mapping – tracking – workshops
In a Different Light is a dance performance created site-specific around Europe but performed on stage and for a film. A mobile projection mapping setup is used to alter reality in unusual and ordinary places with a soundtrack composed of the location sounds. Together with a tracked solo dance that will interact with the projection the aim is to create a performance which will be of light: Moonlight, projector light and candle light are being juxtaposed and used as means to deliver the message of the balance between nature and technology.
During the residencies we will also share knowledge on yoga and meditation to the participants of the residency as a part of the research, and with an intention to create workshops around the theme for the audiences to participate alongside the performance events.
We will be joining in for a travelling residency Nomadic Village (www.nomadic.cd) of 3 and a half months through Northern Italy, Cerkno/Slovenia, Northern Balkans, Sofia/Bulgaria and Austria.
A 1968 Ford Econoline Van called “Lufka” will become vehicle, home, studio and exhibition space for the duration of the research.
A Long version / Inspiration explained
In our modern society, digital technology is taking over our lives in an ever growing amount. From an early age we learn to depend on the internet and its means of communication and that we always have to be connected if we wish to be a part of the community. While it is much easier to learn about anything by typing words in Google or switching on the television, the enthusiasm of discovering and learning
and connecting to nature and ourselves is vanishing at a rapid pace and only the virtual experience remains. As inventors and consumers of technology we could be greatly empowered. Yet this power often comes at the cost of increased reliance on the same technology.
By now we all accept that we live under a constant “invasion” of the mind. TV, movies, cars, airplanes, advertising signs, traffic signs, radio, music in almost all the places you go, the mechanical noise of our home appliances, all these invade relentlessly our minds. Originally a spiritual, intuitive soul and a person who was once able to seek answers from within and from nature, has become agitated, urbanized and frantic being afraid to go to the nature. One’s sole purpose of being has become that of collecting technological devices in order to keep up with the newest developments of the tech-age.
Whether we want it or not, we can’t turn the direction of this self-feeding wheel of which pace is beyond comprehension: A single invention may generate 20 new applications, each of which may then generate 20 more. The world has changed every morning that we wake up. Even the current climate of the art-world is inclining towards a combination of technology and art and therefore artists who wish to live and produce naturally, are seen as rare species with ‘little ambition’, and therefore less changes to survive.
Are we at the point where technology has impacted humans so that we have gone through a fundamental change of what it means to be a person? Or are we on our way to that point? Will there be a moment when technology breaks into a personhood so, that it starts to weaken the species? Or could it be desirable to merge technology into the evolution of a humankind despite its superficial nature, and be used as an empowering tool towards self-realisation.
Technology confronts all of us with many challenges and our intention is to embark on an artistic voyage around Europe in order to investigate the questions above, find the silence and home within, take the challenge of starting to understand technology myself and verbalise the challenges in between technology and spiritual being, and create a genuine, in-depth research and performance “In a different light”.
The performances will be combined with workshops of similar spirit for the audience. We will try and find ways to help people utilize technology positively in their lifes by organising yoga, meditation and conversation around the theme. For many, ‘spiritual‘ undertones may resonate as supernatural and peculiar and therefore hard to accept, and one of my aims is to separate this unnesessary mystical baggage of something, that essentially is about centering one’s self. Technology can be a great tool for that quest for the self as well, but finding a middle-path in the use of it and relying on one’s intuition could be difficult. It is a talent to know how to utilize the available information technology whilst broaden our vision with the real experience of our surroundings. Finding a balance is essential to avoid fatigue and confusion and in order to keep one’s creativity and joy of living flowing.