Reflecting Kezia Alyssa Sandy's "Hari Itu, Hari Ini" (2021) on Elizabeth Diller's "Liveness and Mediation" (2003)
look at the bottom right corner of every photo of Kezia that I screen shot through the video conference last night. given the yellow serial numbers and the number of Kezias on each space, it is clear that the three performance scenes had been previously recorded and edited. titled "Hari Itu, Hari Ini", Kezia demonstrated how a performance of 'that day' could be presented differently from that of 'today'. yes, the one dance of 'today' was perfromed live as the fourth scene after the recording ended, using Kezia's own laptop camera in the virtual conference room.
well now you may ask how is the 'today' part look like...
hehe.. my bad.
i was hipnotized by the sudden contrast change from the overlayed recordings to the single view one. a subtle difference but enough to take me some time to make sense of the different ways of looking that i was experiencing -referring to the text by Elizabeth Dliller below; from “passive viewing” to “witnessing”.
so yea, when i was just going to take the screen shot, Kezia covered the camera with her palm to end the show -too bad, haha.
now about the two words, "liveness" and "mediation". they cannot be more highlighted today, now that with the pandemic many performances are mediated through video streaming apps (like youtube) and video conference apps (like zoom). what's funny about these two media is that they both adopt each other's nature. youtube, a video streaming platform that allow people to watch the same thing in different time, now has youtube live. while zoom, being a video conference apps which gather people to meet at the same time, has a screen sharing feature that can roll a pre-recorded video.
however, i believe, performance artists must realize the flip side of this coin more than anyone else. it is true that both video streaming and video conference platforms play an important role in bridging the distance gap we cannot cross atm. but since we only meet virtually, the veil that is inherent in the media's own nature, reduces the experience that the audiences may otherwise grasp.
here is where i love Kezia's piece. instead of seeing the veil as a reductor, kezia exploits the veil to allow her to show something else. i mean, of course i cannot spatially perceive Kezia's movement using my own body (most of the dance was done on 'that day' anyway), but Kezia got me experience the beauty of the visual composition through the video editing techniques. i wonder if she has even more techniques to be explored next time.
one more thing i would like to note in a performance presented through this kind of media is the power of the camera. how many camera are there? from what perspective? how far is the camera from the dancer? what about the color filter? All of those features do not only determine what the audience can witness, but also the political stand point in which the piece itself is made.
this got me thinking. does Kezia plan to make this piece serial? cuz i bet: “that day” and “today” will keep on... along with the dancer's embodied relationship with the space she lives in and the camera she performs for.
