FRONTIER BODIES / METABODY__Morphogenesis
4.0.0
ANTIBODIES
OF SURVEILLANCE _ MICRODANCES
a techno-guerrilla of the post-queer body
a transmedia metaformance
by
REVERSO___Jaime del Val & OLINTO
Jaime del Val – REVERSO
Águila Real 24,
28230 Madrid, Spain
Tel: +34-687 558 436
Concept and
development: Jaime del Val
Performers: Olinto
and
Computer Programming: Jaime del Val
based on a programme by Gregorio García Karman
Attrezzo: Higuerasarte
Production and Hardware: REVERSO
ANTIBODIES OF SURVEILLANCE __MICRODANCES is a transmedia metaformance
(performance-installation-intervention-architecture-instrument-process-metabody)
that uses wireless micro surveillance
cameras on the naked body as interface to generate cross-media,
analogue-digital, interactual, intersensory
and emergent environments, liquid and poetic spaces of the body, which subvert the technology of surveillance and
the camera in order to question implicit mechanisms of power and control, to
defy the categories of gender and sexuality, and produce a (meta)body of
relational intensities, expanded and diffuse, pangender
and metasexual, an Antibody that defies the viral
mechanisms of signification, control and standardisation in the latecapitalist market-society.
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Wireless
micro surveillance cameras on the body as an interface for the production of
audiovisual environments in interaction with the audience.
Some
parallel ideas, intentions, potentials:
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The
images, projected onto large translucent screens like a landscape of moving
body fragments, are analysed in real time and the outcoming
movement parameters process the voice of the performers, spatialised
in four channels, distorted until it becomes a fluid landscape, a granular
chorus of multiple voices. Performers, wearing partial illumination on their
bodies are immersed in the same space with the audience, surrounded by large
projections and sound, an intimate space for an intimate interface, where the
performers move and interact with each other, and with the audience, whose skin
may become part of the landscape, generating new uncertain possibilities of
(post-intimate) relation.
The
proximity of the cameras, placed all over the body, with no distinctions of
discursive or normative boundaries, offers a landscape view that is both
intimate because of the proximity and absorbing because of the scale of the
projections. There is often a confusion to our eye,
used to cartesian reproductions of known forms, so
that it is not clear what part of the body you see, or what it is doing.
The
micro evolutions of movement, in minimalist chains are indeed choreographies.
These micromovements seem quite essential in
character, they may be the kinds of micromovements
that we as bodies are unconsciously doing all the time, yet suddenly they
acquire a completely new scale of meaning and potential. Since we cannot adscribe precise meanings to the movements they relate
often to palpitating organs and proximities such as they are at times perceived
and embodied in the formless flow of sex. Every organ could be a sexual organ
that palpitates, and yet the impossibility to fully recognise it as sexual
organ breaks down the lines that define the territory of sex as such, and with
it of pornography, in fact it erases the territorialisations
of the body and every movement is a potential organ of an intensive body that
resists organicity, therefore truly a body without
organs.
It's
also about a deterritorialisation of the body: any
part of the body, and any movement it may do can be
performed in front of the camera, and it becomes something other. It is not a
parody of the body's actions, but an open redefinition into an unknown field.
Yet I try to explore the disturbing threshold where you are not sure any longer
of what it is that you are seeing: the threshold of the morphogenesis of
representation. Intimate transaction that are hardly
legible or not legible at all, open to multiple understandings.
What
is at stake in this process is of the highest importance since it means
negotiating the frontiers of the legal, of viable subjectivity. What kind of
political redefinitions of viable subjects and bodies can we do if we operate
in the frontier of the intelligible? Can the intimate interface challenge the
frontiers of viable embodied subjectivity?
The
surveillance cameras are oriented towards intimate transactions and parts of
the body, however they fail to reproduce the framework of representation in
which they are intelligible and thus cannot be subjected to control.
In
fact the image of the cameras is analysed in a software
to extract parameters of movement that serve to interact with the expanded
audiovisual environment, that consists of the processed voice, and the
processed image of the cameras.
The
data of analysis of movement serve the purpose of generating an environment in
which the fixity of the body and its intelligibility is further explored into
the realm of dissolution, rather than concreteness. The discreet formalisation
of the body through surveillance cameras is thus at the service of dissolution
and amorphousness, of further opening the lines of intelligibility into the
unspeakable. The bodies of surveillance
collapse into the realm of the amorphous.
ANTIBODIES
is about challenging technologies of representation that constitute us, as
bodies and subjects, a guerrilla of the transmedia
body that exceeds queer, transgender, posthuman and postporn discourses and practices, a post-visual, post-musical,
post-architectural, post-coreographic, post-performative experimentation, that defies contemporary
mechanisms of power, surveillance, control, asismilation,
standardisation and serialised production of bodies and subjects in latecapitalism, a laboratory for the production of pangender, mesatesexual
bodies-territories that flow unseizable, beyond the
lines of foreclosure, standardisation and control.
The
project started around 2002 as a photography project, later around 2004 evolved
as a video project, and around 2005 became an interactive performance and
installation, or metaformance project. It is number
4.0.0. from the series Morphogenesis of the project
FRONTIER BODIES / METABODY by REVERSO.
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION
One
to eight wireless surveillance cameras are placed anywhere on the bodies of the
performers, without distinctions between parts. The images are transferred to
large projections on translucent screens that conform
a vast landscape of nearly abstract body fragments in motion.
The
images are also analysed in real time in a software
created in Max-MSP-jitter that analyses the movement of the body fragments
captured by the cameras. The resulting movement parameters are used for the
life processing of the voice of the performer in another specially designed
programme don in Max-MSP.
The
voice is fragmented, multiplied, granulated, and spatialised quadraphonically
in real time, in interaction with the moving body parts, conforming a chorus, a
multiplicity that dissolves.
Occasionally,
in some setups of higher complexity, the movement parameters are also used to
process the images from the cameras in a third computer and to generate 3D
structures in transformation, in a fourth computer using a programme designed
in Virtools, fluid architectures in transformation
and motion, like microdances of the organs of a
virtual body.
The
performers are immersed in the same space as the audience. The performers
approach the audience with the microcameras and the
skin of he audience becomes part of the landscape. An intimate and new kind of
relation and proximity is generated between performers and audience, and
between these and the space, the visual and sonic processes, and the movement.
TECHNICAL SET-UP INFORMATION
Duration: variable, normally
presented in six slots per evening of 30 minutes each, for groups of up to 25
persons.
Spatial Requirements:
Adaptable
to different kinds and sizes of spaces, in closed and open spaces, auditoriums or
unconventional spaces, in the streets, and online at the internet, preferably
black box setting, average size ranging from 10 x 7 meters, to 12 x 8, although
smaller spaces are also possible, down to 3x3 m. This implies different degrees
of complexity in the setup. In case of an auditorium only the stage will be
used, surrounded by screens, the public will stand in the space of the stage,
and the seats will be covered with large pieces of cloth. In winter time the
space must be well heated.
Materials to be supplied by the hosting organisation:
(For
setups in
Materials supplied by REVERSO:
Time required for setup: In
the more simple setups, a minimum of 4 hours. In the more
complex ones, preferably two days and a minimum of one day.
WE
WILL SUPPLY A PRECISE SETUP MAP,
SCHEDULE AND RIDER DESIGNED FOR THE SPECIFIC SPACE WHERE THE PERFORMANCE WILL
TAKE PLACE.
BUDGET: PLEASE ASK. STANDARD
BUDGET: 3.000 PER SHOW/INSTALLATION / 1.000€ PER CONFERENCE-PRESENTATION --(Subject to negotiation)-- plus travel, hotel and per
diem.
DOCUMENTATION: www.reverso.org/antibodies-microdances.htm