(Network )
L'animal a l'esquena (Celrà)
From 01/01/2010 to 01/01/2011
Officina, L'animal a l'esquena, El Teatro, Indisciplinarte, HaRaKa
As an initiative of "L'Officina" (Marseille), Miniatures Officinae was launched in 2008, as a new networking project in the Mediterranean region in order to commission several artists to create new short pieces that borderline the visual and the performative. The notions of "choreography" and of "body-art" are put under study here with the support of dramaturges, researchers, artists, and cultural managers.
Currently, the project operates from five different Mediterranean cities or regions: Celrà, Girona/Barcelona, Cairo, Marseille, Terni and Tunis. The project is directed in the period 2010-2011 through a board of five networking partners:
- Officina – Marseille http://www.officina.fr/
- L'animal a l'esquena – Celrà (Girona)
- El Teatro – Tunis http://www.elteatro.net/
- Indisciplinarte – Terni http://www.indisciplinarte.it/
- HaRaKa – Cairo http://www.facebook.com/group.ph
Miniatures is a multi-step development project of itinerant character, based on the creation and dissemination of short pieces in different cultural contexts that emphasize dialogs and exchanges between artists of the Mediterranean basin.
The proposal of L'animal a l'esquena consists on the participation and production of two pieces made by the movement researcher and performer Carme Torrent, and the performer and performing arts maker Leo Castro. Throughout 2010 both artists will develop their own process in reference to two different cultural contexts: Marseille and Cairo. L'animal a l'esquena will make a follow-up of their production and process work. Also L'animal a l'esquena will host in residence and arrange a public presentation of the work by the performer and dance maker from Tunisia Ammar Habli, produced by El Teatro in Tunis, and by three members of the dance company Nanou from Italy, produced by Indisciplinarte in Terni.
Miniatures raises the question of what a miniature form is in contemporary art. It aims at reflecting and revealing the aesthetics of the artists on the suggested notion of a choreographic miniature and that of the representation/expression of the Other/Love that can be solely visual or performative or both at the same time.
For 2011, this new phase of the project will culminate in a large scale public event in Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, with the presentation of the ten miniatures, and several lectures, debates and other manifestations, organized by HaRaKa in partnership with the four networking organizations and other local and international parties/institutions. The main aim of this final event is to present different approaches on the concept of Love and the perception of the other, and the different contexts where the gaze operates to begin with the audience and local arts community in Egypt.
During all its development and process in 2010 a website coordinated by L'Officina will be launched documenting and exploring the process of production, contextualization and dissemination of the different miniatures. In 2011 a book in three languages will be released, coordinated by Toni Cots, which will explore the notion of the "Affected Body" based on the presented pieces and other contributions by specialists.
Miniatures have received a two years support from the EU Program 2007-2013, related to the 'cultural cooperation with third countries'.
CREATION RESIDENCES
NANOU GROUP
From 31st May to 06th June
Presentation in L'animal a l'esquena on 05th June at 18:00
During the horse's gallop there is an instant when all of its legs are lifted from the ground, and not in the position of complete extension.
The body, seen in its entirety, as an instrument of creation, plays the main role.
With the idea and the need to search for a complex and layered theatrical language able to rewrite time and space and to alter perception, the Nanou group shares their own specific characteristics and tackles a practice, based on the languages of 'stage relations', referred to in film editing as a practice of synthesis for a miscellany of instruments without any hierarchy.
Body, text, sound and lights are detected and used as linguistic access to the composition of the stage action; they become terms that are continually able to shift the significance of the action.
The language of each element does not want to shape and / or emphasize the action already in place; nothing exists in the 'service' of the other anymore. All instruments are displayed in the composition, because all are engaged with something in between, in relation , outside itself, and never subordinate.
Since its beginning the Nanou group has been working on the meaning of time as a perceptual loss, by conquering again the value of "time" that flees the value and the cadence of "rhythm". This work has led the company to face the loss related to space and to focus on the perspective quality of the scene, besides its "temporality" development. Perspective understood as the placing of the action and the scene in relation to its depth – geometric perspective, that constitutes a set of future circumstances that can be foreseen from a dramaturgical point of view. To proceed towards a perspective agitation, towards the creation of a temporary loss of perceptual lucidity through the concepts of out of scale, of production and reproduction of the performative elements capable of grabing the slight detachment from the real which makes me again dive with even more violence into reality.
AMMAR HABLI
From 12nd to 18th July
Presentation in L'animal a l'esquena on 17th July at 19:00
Mirror is a project where I show the love for one self by focusing on the soma-esthetics (the body) and the admiration for our sculpture and its evolution towards beauty at its summit. Our external tool to control this evolution is the mirror, through which we daily seek any changes. By constantly repeating this we fall in love of ourselves, and we discover in our own body the first love. At this point we start making plans and projects to improve this morphology by seeking satisfaction. However we never become satisfied, so we try then to change this soma-esthetic by using external elements to see the reactions of other bodies towards our own (love, admiration, jealousy, etc.) This mechanism needs first of all our love as well as the love of others. The tool for transmitting this love to other soma-esthetics is a body exhausting its own bodily means (movement, voice, liquids: tears, saliva and sperm).
Ammar Habli (http://www.myspace.com/526609441) has practiced martial arts in Tunisia since he was a kid and later he has studied contemporary dance in Tunis, Beirut and Paris. His dance making is a reflection of those itineraries influenced as well by street dances. He has shown his dance works in Tunisia, France, England and Lebanon.
CREATIONS
LEO CASTRO
Cairo- from 26th July to 01st August
X: "How do you think about love?
Y: "The body had to be introduced. (...) Leibniz introduced the contingency (...) The contingent truths together with the necessary truths are the daily life"
X: Wouldn't be love the only truthful?
Y: "for that would be necessary love was always truthful. Do you know anyone who knew what love at once?
X: "no"
Y: "for example, at 20' you didn't know what did you love. You have clues; you turn to your own experience.... and say "I love this". Usually everything is mixing. To get to set up completely with whatever you love, whatever you need ... you have to search. That's the truth of life. That's why love is a solution on condition that it was truthful."
(Fragment from dialog in film A bout de souffle from Godard. Interview with the famous writer)
The proposal is to make an exploration with a Video Camera, as a principle tool, to concrete a Look through recording fragments, perspectives and different points of views that show the quality love or short stories where it's possible to see signs and symbols.
Where, when and how I perceive this quality named love in people, places and situations.
How do I link myself to this quality from the observation, from the manipulation of the camera?
What is this kind of recording?
The tracking with the camera includes particular places, not determined yet: I imagine the streets, the markets, the bars in different moments during the day and every situation that could be found, I also imagine how my hands are going to get look through the manipulation of the camera.
I formulate several and general questions that are useful for me to guide and focuse on that exploration and to begin to search inside a culture that is not my culture: What is the view about love? How does the desire move? What does loving body mean? How is the loving body? What is expected from the love? What is expected from a loving state? How is love to search for? How is love to get to? How does survive from loss?
Tracking inside another culture: in the city El Cairo
How is my perception about these questions in a different reality, in a different daily life, in situations and places where the people live in a different way? How I perceive the affection. How I perceive the desire. How I perceive a loving, affectionate or tender body. How I perceive a loving, affectionate or tender situation and what would be the difference?
"(...) the space has to be respected. the film is discovered in a place".
Eduardo Couthino (interview. a question about the importance, the significance of the space)
CARME TORRENT
Marseille - from 27th December to 03rd October
During the period of residence in Marseille, within the project Miniatures, I will make the body available to unfold a question; when we put aside the concept of love, what is then left in us?
Alike an open essay that every night goes back to the same issues, to the same restlessness, to the same gestures, never closing up because it reformulates and questions itself with every new meeting.
That, which is operating in this minimal realm of the small gestures, of the invisible flows,
amongst the shadows... the transgression lies in the affections, in a liquid, organic flow, in an act of decelerations
Minimal sensations, the observation field of the small perceptions, broadening up the events; transforming the micro into macro-perceptions.
This is why I propose to open a field of experimentation in which to encounter persons coming from different fields; generating a body that can both affect and be affected by different intensities. Every encounter contains a kernel of uncertainty, to which we will make us available.
Simultaneously to the contagion the encounter proposes, a space in between is opened. The in-between the bodies will be then a place of connection and differentiation to be displayed from the potentiality of multiplicity.
What will then be exposed will be the results of this collective experience.
L'animal a l'esquena (Celrà)
From 01/01/2010 to 01/01/2011
Officina, L'animal a l'esquena, El Teatro, Indisciplinarte, HaRaKa
As an initiative of "L'Officina" (Marseille), Miniatures Officinae was launched in 2008, as a new networking project in the Mediterranean region in order to commission several artists to create new short pieces that borderline the visual and the performative. The notions of "choreography" and of "body-art" are put under study here with the support of dramaturges, researchers, artists, and cultural managers.
Currently, the project operates from five different Mediterranean cities or regions: Celrà, Girona/Barcelona, Cairo, Marseille, Terni and Tunis. The project is directed in the period 2010-2011 through a board of five networking partners:
- Officina – Marseille http://www.officina.fr/
- L'animal a l'esquena – Celrà (Girona)
- El Teatro – Tunis http://www.elteatro.net/
- Indisciplinarte – Terni http://www.indisciplinarte.it/
- HaRaKa – Cairo http://www.facebook.com/group.ph
Miniatures is a multi-step development project of itinerant character, based on the creation and dissemination of short pieces in different cultural contexts that emphasize dialogs and exchanges between artists of the Mediterranean basin.
The proposal of L'animal a l'esquena consists on the participation and production of two pieces made by the movement researcher and performer Carme Torrent, and the performer and performing arts maker Leo Castro. Throughout 2010 both artists will develop their own process in reference to two different cultural contexts: Marseille and Cairo. L'animal a l'esquena will make a follow-up of their production and process work. Also L'animal a l'esquena will host in residence and arrange a public presentation of the work by the performer and dance maker from Tunisia Ammar Habli, produced by El Teatro in Tunis, and by three members of the dance company Nanou from Italy, produced by Indisciplinarte in Terni.
Miniatures raises the question of what a miniature form is in contemporary art. It aims at reflecting and revealing the aesthetics of the artists on the suggested notion of a choreographic miniature and that of the representation/expression of the Other/Love that can be solely visual or performative or both at the same time.
For 2011, this new phase of the project will culminate in a large scale public event in Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, with the presentation of the ten miniatures, and several lectures, debates and other manifestations, organized by HaRaKa in partnership with the four networking organizations and other local and international parties/institutions. The main aim of this final event is to present different approaches on the concept of Love and the perception of the other, and the different contexts where the gaze operates to begin with the audience and local arts community in Egypt.
During all its development and process in 2010 a website coordinated by L'Officina will be launched documenting and exploring the process of production, contextualization and dissemination of the different miniatures. In 2011 a book in three languages will be released, coordinated by Toni Cots, which will explore the notion of the "Affected Body" based on the presented pieces and other contributions by specialists.
Miniatures have received a two years support from the EU Program 2007-2013, related to the 'cultural cooperation with third countries'.
CREATION RESIDENCES
NANOU GROUP
From 31st May to 06th June
Presentation in L'animal a l'esquena on 05th June at 18:00
During the horse's gallop there is an instant when all of its legs are lifted from the ground, and not in the position of complete extension.
The body, seen in its entirety, as an instrument of creation, plays the main role.
With the idea and the need to search for a complex and layered theatrical language able to rewrite time and space and to alter perception, the Nanou group shares their own specific characteristics and tackles a practice, based on the languages of 'stage relations', referred to in film editing as a practice of synthesis for a miscellany of instruments without any hierarchy.
Body, text, sound and lights are detected and used as linguistic access to the composition of the stage action; they become terms that are continually able to shift the significance of the action.
The language of each element does not want to shape and / or emphasize the action already in place; nothing exists in the 'service' of the other anymore. All instruments are displayed in the composition, because all are engaged with something in between, in relation , outside itself, and never subordinate.
Since its beginning the Nanou group has been working on the meaning of time as a perceptual loss, by conquering again the value of "time" that flees the value and the cadence of "rhythm". This work has led the company to face the loss related to space and to focus on the perspective quality of the scene, besides its "temporality" development. Perspective understood as the placing of the action and the scene in relation to its depth – geometric perspective, that constitutes a set of future circumstances that can be foreseen from a dramaturgical point of view. To proceed towards a perspective agitation, towards the creation of a temporary loss of perceptual lucidity through the concepts of out of scale, of production and reproduction of the performative elements capable of grabing the slight detachment from the real which makes me again dive with even more violence into reality.
AMMAR HABLI
From 12nd to 18th July
Presentation in L'animal a l'esquena on 17th July at 19:00
Mirror is a project where I show the love for one self by focusing on the soma-esthetics (the body) and the admiration for our sculpture and its evolution towards beauty at its summit. Our external tool to control this evolution is the mirror, through which we daily seek any changes. By constantly repeating this we fall in love of ourselves, and we discover in our own body the first love. At this point we start making plans and projects to improve this morphology by seeking satisfaction. However we never become satisfied, so we try then to change this soma-esthetic by using external elements to see the reactions of other bodies towards our own (love, admiration, jealousy, etc.) This mechanism needs first of all our love as well as the love of others. The tool for transmitting this love to other soma-esthetics is a body exhausting its own bodily means (movement, voice, liquids: tears, saliva and sperm).
Ammar Habli (http://www.myspace.com/526609441) has practiced martial arts in Tunisia since he was a kid and later he has studied contemporary dance in Tunis, Beirut and Paris. His dance making is a reflection of those itineraries influenced as well by street dances. He has shown his dance works in Tunisia, France, England and Lebanon.
CREATIONS
LEO CASTRO
Cairo- from 26th July to 01st August
X: "How do you think about love?
Y: "The body had to be introduced. (...) Leibniz introduced the contingency (...) The contingent truths together with the necessary truths are the daily life"
X: Wouldn't be love the only truthful?
Y: "for that would be necessary love was always truthful. Do you know anyone who knew what love at once?
X: "no"
Y: "for example, at 20' you didn't know what did you love. You have clues; you turn to your own experience.... and say "I love this". Usually everything is mixing. To get to set up completely with whatever you love, whatever you need ... you have to search. That's the truth of life. That's why love is a solution on condition that it was truthful."
(Fragment from dialog in film A bout de souffle from Godard. Interview with the famous writer)
The proposal is to make an exploration with a Video Camera, as a principle tool, to concrete a Look through recording fragments, perspectives and different points of views that show the quality love or short stories where it's possible to see signs and symbols.
Where, when and how I perceive this quality named love in people, places and situations.
How do I link myself to this quality from the observation, from the manipulation of the camera?
What is this kind of recording?
The tracking with the camera includes particular places, not determined yet: I imagine the streets, the markets, the bars in different moments during the day and every situation that could be found, I also imagine how my hands are going to get look through the manipulation of the camera.
I formulate several and general questions that are useful for me to guide and focuse on that exploration and to begin to search inside a culture that is not my culture: What is the view about love? How does the desire move? What does loving body mean? How is the loving body? What is expected from the love? What is expected from a loving state? How is love to search for? How is love to get to? How does survive from loss?
Tracking inside another culture: in the city El Cairo
How is my perception about these questions in a different reality, in a different daily life, in situations and places where the people live in a different way? How I perceive the affection. How I perceive the desire. How I perceive a loving, affectionate or tender body. How I perceive a loving, affectionate or tender situation and what would be the difference?
"(...) the space has to be respected. the film is discovered in a place".
Eduardo Couthino (interview. a question about the importance, the significance of the space)
CARME TORRENT
Marseille - from 27th December to 03rd October
During the period of residence in Marseille, within the project Miniatures, I will make the body available to unfold a question; when we put aside the concept of love, what is then left in us?
Alike an open essay that every night goes back to the same issues, to the same restlessness, to the same gestures, never closing up because it reformulates and questions itself with every new meeting.
That, which is operating in this minimal realm of the small gestures, of the invisible flows,
amongst the shadows... the transgression lies in the affections, in a liquid, organic flow, in an act of decelerations
Minimal sensations, the observation field of the small perceptions, broadening up the events; transforming the micro into macro-perceptions.
This is why I propose to open a field of experimentation in which to encounter persons coming from different fields; generating a body that can both affect and be affected by different intensities. Every encounter contains a kernel of uncertainty, to which we will make us available.
Simultaneously to the contagion the encounter proposes, a space in between is opened. The in-between the bodies will be then a place of connection and differentiation to be displayed from the potentiality of multiplicity.
What will then be exposed will be the results of this collective experience.
