User:Zigbe/ThematicProject 1

Week 2

The Task of the Translator - Walter Benjamin
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A Work of Art from A Work of Art - Becky Edmunds
Notes and Thoughts:
Becky Edmunds is a filmmaker with her background in dance and choreography. In this text she talks about the problematic of live documentation of dance performance. Also she talks about her process to capture the essence of aliveness (if this exists at all).
I understand here that Becky is finding solutions for the frustration that emerge from big gap between performance and documentation. Shes proposes that the documentation of a dance performance has to be a work in itself as much as the choreography is. And in the process of making this documentation, the one who documents have to make decisions of what's going to be out of this documentation. As there is loss between the action and the documentation, its the responsibility of the one who documents to choose how to work with those gaps. In order to properly document a choreography, Becky imposes herself a set of limitations which helps her to take the necessary decisions. A performance is an combination of presence, time and space. Which makes every performance unique. I understand here that the only limitation this set of rules imposes to her is how much she has to think about the camera. (for example the in camera edit) As she focus on the action, she transforms her presence as part of her documentation, the documentation becomes an action of documentation, a performance behind the camera. Therefore she grants her presence and time, and focus in the translation of the choreography into a new space.

.....SOOoooo mucH INFrrrmation I cccaAANt't FOcus. My head hurts.. ..