The artist as choreographer.
Turner Prize Thursday: Introducing The Visitor Audience Art, Performance and Dance.
I arrived early and got myself a bottle of water and a chocolate at the café. Turner Prize Thursday: Introducing The Visitor Audience Art, Performance and Dance, 7th January 2016, 7pm, was going to be a packed evening with interesting ideas and brilliant speakers.
Panel: Siobhan Davies, Roanne Dodds, Rosanna Irvine, Tim Nunn, Saffy Setohy.
Thoughts post-event, relying on notes taken in the dark, memory, and interpretation.
The panellists introduced themselves and two things sparkled my attention. First, Siobhan Davies’ assertion that dance is made by a community; and second, Saffy Setohy’s consideration that her surroundings influenced her move to the museum context. S. Davies talked about how in dance the work is made by a community, and not by an individual person (as it is the case of how most visual artists work). Her experience of building the S. Davies studios with a team of architects, designers, sound engineers, colourists and so on, heighted this understanding of making as a collective endeavour. S. Setohy, a dance artist currently engaged in a mentorship program at S. Davies spoke about her practice, and how her context in Cornwall influenced her work. Her stay in Cornwall where venues such as theatres and dance spaces were scarce challenged her to consider other forms of presenting and different types of spaces to show work. This led Setohy to work in public spaces and galleries, to find other ways to explore the audience/performer relationship, and to engage in installation practices. Siobhan started working in the gallery as she wanted to share something that goes beyond the dance framework; Saffy went the same route for lack of other options. Understanding that these practitioners took over presentation formats traditionally employed in the visual arts mostly for practical reasons related to how to make work or how to share work, does not totally dismiss the historical and philosophical causes that accompany this trend, but somehow shortens their importance. The making of work comes first, and then theory follows. Challenges happen in practice, which then leads to changes in the field. Seeing so clearly the case here, made me consider how artists, and artistic practices are in fact at the forefront of change.
Rosanna Irvine briefly introduced the current and historical relationships between visual arts and dance in the context of the Turner Prize. She described Assemble’s work (Turner Prize winner) and proposed similarities between them and contemporary choreographers, considering processes, concepts, and concerns, such as the involvement of the public, and duration of the work. She proposes that dance and choreography need to skill up, know their history, and document their practice. On whose skills are we going to skill up?, asked S. Davies. She spoke about embodied knowledge, for which dancers and choreographers have not yet found systems on how to make this knowledge accessible: how the ‘live–ness of the actual exchange’ between teacher and performer, the ‘river of knowledge’ (S. Davies words) that flows through decades, can be substituted by physical paper, is a question that stays in the air. This led to a discussion later on modes of documenting dance and installation and its inherent challenges. But I want to go back to the suggestion that dance and choreography need to skill up. I have not yet heard the voice of the artists in this discussion. Artists are a major source of visual knowledge; they have been operating in the gallery and museum for a long time. As choreographers must skill up their practice, and as they are currently operating within the museum, I propose that they engage in an open dialogue with visual artists, who are now their peers. I am not advocating for more collaborations between choreographers and visual artists, what I feel that needs to happen is a dialogue that shares the particularities and specific knowledge of both practices and allows artists and the choreographers to ‘skill up’ through learning from one another.
The session Turner Prize Thursday: Introducing The Visitor Audience Art, Performance and Dance, focused on contemporary intersections between choreography and the museum, but the conversation missed the voice of the artists, with a panel composed mostly by choreographers. The program notes, which mentions ‘the choreographer as artist’, made me want to ask where was the ‘artist as choreographer’ in this discussion, which I felt was the elephant in the room. With several artists-choreographers in the audience, there is a need for that conversation to take place; perhaps we will see it in further events and discussions. Or perhaps I should organise it myself.
Turner Prize Thursday: Introducing The Visitor Audience Art, Performance and Dance took part at Tramway, 7th January 2016, 7pm
