#academicdance

On December 9th as part of the course Writing Dancing of Utrecht University, we had the chance to meet Loïc Perela, a French choreographer who is currently working in the Netherlands under the umbrella of Dansateliers. His new work is named HASHTAG and will premiere at the Dutch Dance Festival in October 2016.

In this meeting, we had the opportunity to discuss with him his artistic practices, attend an early rehearsal of the piece and give him our first thoughts and reflections about his work. As Loïc expressed, the initial point for his projects are impressions based on sociocultural phenomena. In this case, his new work HASHTAG is inspired by the interaction among humans, the internet, and digital displays.

Loïc has chosen to address issues of presence, new identity, architecture of physical and virtual space, and the overabundant degree of layers created in the digital realm.

His main questions are:

·       What is like to be physically in a different space than the one the displays are emerging you into?

·       How the new content of human representations in digital art impacts our perception of the human figure and identity?

·       And accordingly, how the alteration of our perception can be detected in the new ways we enact ourselves in the social media; what is our digital persona?

“Media determine our situation”[1] or better – as the infamous dictum of Media Studies has been renewed – “media are our situation.”[2] The emergence of a new medium reflects modifications happening in the way we conduct. Reality is in instant relation with the medium we use;[3] the medium we use can alter and define the way we function. If we follow Friedrich Kittler’s thoughts, the realm of the internet and its products (e.g. social media), in combination with the appearance of electrically operated display devices had to have significant effects in the way we perceive ourselves.

The last few decades, “[p]eople increasingly move with, for and through technology.[4] Displays and the evolution of technology do not only effect our perception but also our movements and gestures. Our most favourite digital displays: our smartphones are always carried with us as extensions of our hands. Only in the last decade, new kinds of movement have been created in accordance with the functional features of these devices. We learnt how to scroll upwards and downwards, how to swipe left and right and we lost the necessity of the button by learning how to tap a screen. New minuscule movements have become automated gestures while we associate with digital displays.

Another main topic in Loïc’s research is what alters in the presence of the body while we are simultaneously in two different spaces: the physical and the digital space.

A great example of the division between these two spaces is the new YouTube 360° virtual reality videos. These new videos are not only taking you into a new realm but are making you move as if you were into them. The video corresponds immediately with the way you move and the hypothetical angle of your sight in space. The new realm, as Hansen states, can influence what we do, where we move, and in particular how we move.[5]

For these reasons, the examination of different realms and of the multitude of layers that internet and screens can create is of the utmost importance.

These issues are formed in his work as questions of:

·       How to disguise the space and its levels.

·       How to create different realms and layers for the audience and performers.

·       What are the different processes we experience while we emerge in a different space than the one we physically are and how can this experience be portrayed and performed on stage.

In combination with the realm of internet and screens, an additional determining factor in the way we perceive ourselves is digital art. The human figure representations in the art can be considered as the reflection of the idea of the human in an artist’s mind. In that case, I believe that it is crucial to examine how these representations have effected our ‘idea’ of the human figure; especially the works that have derived from digital art. What is their impact and what distinguishes its products from the conventional art?  

The main question that better coincides with Loïc’s research is how the modifications of the human representations throughout art history have effected our ‘idea’ of the human figure.

“The human figure is both a realisation and a precursor of identity, each identity an imaginary unto itself, lodged within the larger collective imaginary as the images, symbols, metaphors, and representations found at the centre of the arts, entertainment, advertising, and popular musings. These figures affect one another in proximity, configuring together within a mutual formulation of identity.”[6]

According to James Haywood Rolling Jr., the human figures in the art are responsible for the configuration of identities as they enter the collective imaginary. Therefore, it appears essential to examine how the emergence of digital art has created new concepts of the human figure and how in accordance with the realm of the internet has created new and/or multiples identities and representations of ourselves.

I would like to underline that Loïc Perela is not creating this work with the intention of being judgemental. On the contrary, his purpose is to have a meaning for the audience without giving it. For him, there isn’t a specific and exact conclusion. As he claims, “We – the performers, the audience and I – embark on a journey that will resonate with us, raising felt consciousness through different entrance doors.”[7] I would say that he tries to propose different experiences; possibly, the experience of recognising and realising our relationship with screens and social media. He wants to create an independent, stimulated spectator that will experience the physical and the digital architecture. In his words, he desires to “raise consciousness” [8] and propose the experience of grasping or feeling differences between the physical and ‘real’ realm with the digital.

[1] Friedrich A. Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, ed. Timothy Lenoir and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999), xxxix.

[2] W. J. T. Mitchell and Mark B. N. Hansen, Critical Terms for Media Studies (University of Chicago Press, 2010), xxii.

[3] Friedrich Adolph Kittler, Grammophone, Film, Typewriter, trans. Toula Sieti, Arts 3 (Athens: Nisos, 2005), 364.

[4] Lise Amy Hansen and Andrew Morrison, ‘Materialising Movement–Designing for Movement-Based Digital Interaction’, International Journal of Design 8, no. 1 (2014), doi:http://www.ijdesign.org/ojs/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/1245.

[5] Ibid.

[6] James Haywood Rolling Jr., ‘“The Human Figure” - Encyclopedia of Identity (headword Entry)’, Encyclopedia of Identity (Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2010), https://www.academia.edu/307320/_The_Human_Figure_-_Encyclopedia_of_Identity_headword_entry_.

[7] Loic Perela, ‘About Me’, Loïc Perela, accessed 19 January 2016, http://www.loicperela.com/about-me/.