User:Luisa Moura/reading/book/documentation

Documentation on dance:

Preserving the remnants of an art form and cultural activity dependent on time and space requires no less creativity than that needed to create the dance itself (Catherine Johnson, 1999) - Struggle: demands the use of other arts, like film making, to document itself; - The Impartial footage (fixed observer, overview from the stage) reveals to be surprisingly uninteresting (“notational documents”). What would in principle be the most accurate way to document the event reveals no efficiency on showing what actually happened. - The dynamic of perception appears to be a fundamental key to add on this documentation attempt; film techniques are called in to work it out. The film gathers then different points of view, different distances to the subject and moves together with it. It raises the question: “what is exactly viewing a dance or experiencing a process?” - Accurate VS appropriated: In order to be more “accurate” the film must indeed more “subjective”. Accurate might not be the best work to describe it; its just more appropriated.

On fragmentation: - Representation might be built up of a collective of individual fragments - Provision of small fragments of information through which a viewer might be able to actively reconstruct an imagined version - There is an unavoidable gap between live and representation, we can choose to ignore it, lessen it or enjoy it (Moulderings, 1984) (…) use of editing with the camera itself, do a live selection of footage instead of a full length footage for later editing: creation of meaningful fragments of information that document the film maker perception. - Difference between film and video; video abolishes the tension of choice that allows the creation of great films (Andrzej Wajda)

A duet: (…) Choreographer Fiona Wright: the process that lead to an intrinsic collaboration between performer and documenter. - Act of documentation becomes part of the performance and new communication codes between both get to be found; - Documentation might be a subjective and expressive view of events. Does representation equals reproduction? Do we aim at a sameness or otherness? Sameness equals recognition? Are documents art works? (Lycouris, 2000)

The photographer was thought to be an acute but not interfering observer, a scribe not a poet (Susan Sontag, 1971)