Lindsay Seers - Optograms

Lindsay Seers - Optograms 2

Seers' Optograms are a series of photographs taken by the artist using her mouth as the aperture and shutter. Placing a piece of photographic paper in the back of her mouth Seer's photographs are tinted red due to the light coming through her cheeks and are often framed by her teeth. 

The human camera photographs are placed alongside documentary style photographs of the situation where the Optogram was taken. Acting as though she was a biological camera Seers has assumed a number of different characters in this series including a vampire, a ventriloquist and an alien. Often seen as a performative work her objective stance to image making has lead Seers use her body as a mechanical device that produces images. 

Trisha Brown - Homemade

Trisha Brown Homemade
1966

Premiered at Judson Memorial Church, New York, in 1966, in Homemade dancer Trisha Brown performs wearing a projector showing a film of herself made by Robert Whitman.


Brown activates and animates the space and the surrounding stage with her body physically present and doubled as a moving image. Brown has often mixed visual art and choreography in her work and  has collaborated with artists such as Robert Rauschenberg, Donald Judd and  Laurie Anderson. Homemade is an excellent early example of Brown’s ongoing exploration of technology in dance. 

Dori Deng and Meta Drcar - Measuring Series

Dori Deng and Meta Drcar - Measuring Series, Work No.5

The Measuring Series by Deng and Drcar explores the relationships between space, time and the human form in motion.

During the performances the duo articulate their bodies in reference to geometrical forms projected onto a thin fabric. Navigating a series of gestures informed by the projected light the performances become an exploration into how we relate to space bodily. The formalism of the almost roboticized movements contort the organic form of the body into a series of poised instances which have a relationship to its surrounding architecture. 

Sidsel Christensen - Study For A Composition I

Sidsel Christensen Study For A Composition I (Excerpt)

Sidsel Christensen's works explores the complexity of the relationship between modernism, rationalism and the spiritual and esoteric. ‘Study for Composition I’ is a video which shows the artist in a state of hypnotic regression. She gives an animated and emotional of the workings and practices of a secret cult in Greece 2000 years ago. The artist's figure is set against a geometrically patterned background reminiscent both of modernist pure forms and new-age 'sacred geometry'. The scenes she describes are at times violent and sexual in nature creating a confrontational work that invites you to position yourself in relation to it.

Plastique Fantastique - Golem

Plastique Fantastique - 'Golem'

Performance held at Banner Repeater, London, August 2011

Hosted at Banner Repeater in 2011, 'Golem' by Plastique Fantastique saw a mirror faced 'avatar' appear on platform 1 of Hackney Downs station. Walking in to the project space where a droning video set into a mirrored surface was playing, the 'Golem' asking that a member of the audience read to him a set of questions as he started at the screen. Clutching incense sticks behind his back the ritualised performance had a ludicrously sacred appeal.

Plastique Fantastique are a collective of artists interested in politics, the sacred and popular culture working in performance, installations and comics. Alongside the 'Golem' performance their comic '...a history of the visitation' was published, where a swirling range of images bombards Earth and an alien culture enters the human blood stream. The collective is formed through a group of human and inhuman avatars, who deliver communiques from the extreme past and future, their manifesto written by Simon O'Sullivan states that the groups intentions is to shift the participants of their projects "from work time (utility) into sacred time (play)" by creating a ritualised practice. 

Samekhmem

Samekhmem at The Event, 2011

There has always been and will always be Samekhmem.

Seek not to understand the birth of Samekhmem.

True comprehension of this is beyond regular thought.

Place your mind, instead, in the center of the universe and allow yourself to dwell in the infinite.

When you know Samekhmem, you will realise that you have always known Samekhmem.

This truth extends beyond all imaginable constraints.

You will know the eternal message of Samekhmem.

It has always been heard by you and you will always be part of it.

A cleansing ritual and eternal drone performance conceived by AAS. Like all their projects  Samekhmem is an immersive and extensive 'performance fiction' which AAS invite you to enter into. Introduced as part of Birmgingham's bi-annual Event festival, Samekhmem continues as a web-based project at samekhmem.com inviting you to remote view their performance and recount your experiences.

As AAS put it: The performance invites you to participate in the sacrament, and enter into the collective mystery of the Sacred Eternal Drone. If you cannot attend in person, we encourage you to cleanse yourself, meditate on the silence, and tune in to the performance whenever you are ready.

By using ‘remote listening’, our followers have learnt to experience past and future Samekhmem performances, which exist in flux between eternal duration and linear time.