Concept as Context.
An idea to me, of the future. Televisual bodies as objects but beyond a state of empathy to which we have no return. The choreographic idea derives from here, so absorbed are we in the reality that exists through screen that we will soon be one with this dystopia. 98 Interlude as an idea explores what the future is for dance and choreography, how technology will at one point replace the very entity it has been created and developed to advance. What is the future of dance and can my choreography place itself as an artistic vision of this future. The sense is that 98 Interlude presents these two, body and technology, as organisms that are as real as the other, differed by the reality they perceive.
But first the beginning, the idea for this work was initially inspired by the digital art of George Stone, a fellow student and friend at Falmouth University on the Fine Art course. I was inspired by the idea that as these animations moved, if I were to improvise in front of them on the occasional chance I would look like I was interacting with the work or that we were somehow linked together, 2015. This was a touch and go experiment until 2016 where I had the pleasure of working with Finnish exchange student Mikko Turpeinen, this was the first time I worked with the projections as an outsider. I don’t think any substance came from this as we were both not exactly sure what to make of it.
Mikko Turpeinen - Before 98 Interlude was 98 Interlude.
Fast forward to 2017 and I decided I would come back to this project, I’ve had so much time and trial and error with it that I feel there is a conversation I can convey out of this. This was during my time at Laban, twas the first attempt of projecting both body and digital art side by side with a performer in the middle in the shape of Tom O’Gorman. Inspired by the works of Renee Cox & Pipilotti Rist, I felt maybe I had finally found substance.
Tom O'Gorman - 98 Interlude: In the Future (research and development)
We arrive in 2018 and I have been fortunate to receive Arts Council funding to carry on this escapade of an idea. 98 Interlude now feels real, but I find myself asking, what is this? A product of ubiquitous assimilation in its depiction through various states that attempt to illustrate a future of which it does not know, in that, can the present present itself as the future? The future 98 Interlude envisions is one of disassociation as screened experiences of the body become where we build essential skills for the very essences of humanity. Televisual bodies as an illusion “signifies the possibility of passing beyond matter into the realm of the virtual” where over time we will possibly subconsciously lose the ability to have empathy through failure to differentiate from the hyperreal.
The choreography acts as a structure for the idea to be brought into the physical world, image intention - "to copy images from an imagined future and paste them into the present". Working through improvisational practice to compose, we will work with textures in the form of feelings such as softness, sadness, destruction and joy. The ambition is to produce a visual that is its own entity, the rules of this imagined future will be presented as an absolute truth. The nature of law for this reality that solely exists through its occurrence and disappearance at the end of its duration. The movement and visuals are inspired by thoughts and concepts of the future, where body and technology replace and coexist with the other.
Such is the ongoing distance between spectator and body on screen that inevitably a hyperreality expands. If Kerry Washington dies in ‘Scandal’ although sad it may be, we know that that is not real, so then, I ask, do we have the capacity to then watch the news and convince our psyche that the dead baby washed up on a beach is different and in fact, a real life situation? This thought has brought the idea and supposedly the desire to structure this work with assumed realities. As Jean Baudrillard once wrote that there is a “romantic concern for the loss of the real, the natural and the human” through 98 Interlude, I aim to reach a place where I am satisfied with what I birth from this romanticism.
98 Interlude: In the Future
Bakani Pick-Up - Choreographer
Daniel Longhurst - Dancer
George Jasper Stone - Visual Artist
This work is supported by Dance4, Falmouth University and Arts Council England.