Everyone is working really hard right now on final preparations for the Performance East critique on Thursday. This will be recorded and used for the purpose of the site-seeing project. We hope you guys in Cape Town are developing your projects in interesting directions - have been checking out the blogs you have set up. Encouraging to see the blogs and various channels starting to grow. This should continue somehow... Hopefully everyone is getting something out of this, a learning experience; realisation of how possible it is to communicate in this way. Yes, it requires commitment and time (can be very time consuming - but also rather addictive..).
Our project has taken us from a short improvised performance/idea, through experiments with video, photography and more performance. Spatial connections have been woven into the fabric of the choreography (placed back, finally at the Whitechapel Gallery) - working out ways of experiencing a space 'through new eyes'. As designers, this skill of conceptual and improvised techniques, using ourselves as a tool to test spatial qualities - and how we, as occupiers of space, connect when we use or pass through space, is a valuable one to nurture.
Students have used a range of techniques; from graceful cartwheels, jumps and mimicry, poetry, dance, measuring, drawing to observations and recordings... and found, through this journey, the joy of the accidental discovery - as we now have evidence that the creative process, specifically through random and improvised initial experiences, has given the final outcome a raw, beautifully unique quality, yet carefully developed and individually performed.
It has been, and will continue to be, an experience to observe, from where I stand, the growth of process, the ideas and discussions, the laughs and 'happy accidents' that made it all a memorable project.
After Thursday's presentations we will report back here on e-site-seeing and then continue to keep our collaborative sites open for a while longer. I would encourage students to carry on using blogs and other communication e-channels.
More later......
