Between Faces (screendance-performance-presentation, 2018)

Output

Single screen performed film (30mins/stereo)

Summary Statement (300 words)

Between Faces is practice-research presented as an experimental screendance comprised of various forms: performance, presentation, video, lecture, essay and computer desktop presentation. Together these forms constitute an approach to understanding the computer screen as a site for choreographic thinking and discovery.

The work examines the ways in which the hyper-presence of mobile screens is changing screendance practices, thinking and development. It does this through discourse (with a more conventionally scholarly tone) and the manipulation of videographic, text and photographic elements on the screen.

The research draws on the artistic research practices of Rabih Mroué, Lee Friedlander, Fiona Wright and Becky Edmunds and Marisa Zanotti, as well as emerging screen-based practices such as desktop documentaries and video essays.

In Between Faces the screen becomes a site for the movement, gestures and thinking of screendance scholarship and practice. I draw attention to the movements, timings and spaces that characterize our interfaces with screens. Indeed, this word — interface or “between faces” — speaks to the heart of this artistic-scholarly research. What is the choreographic and screendance potential of this between?

Research aims:

1. To build a screen-based creative-scholarly work with formal properties that reveal, complicate and contradict the scholarly content.
2. To critique screendance conventions and explore the ways in which mobile technologies have the potential to change screendance practices and scholarship.
3. To explore the screen — and the everyday actions and icons of the computer desktop — as a site for screen-dancing.

Contextual Information

• Concept, Performance, Screen Choreography, Script and Asset Development: Simon Ellis
  
• Length: Single screen screendance-performance-presentation: 30:19 minutes
  
• Live performance première: 9 November 2018 as keynote performance for Light Moves Festival of Screendance, Limerick. The Light Moves 2018 catalogue PDF is at lightmoves.ie/s/Light-Moves-Brochure-2018-Screen.pdf
  
• Online publication: 14 November 2018 on Vimeo
• Project website: skellis.net/between-faces
  
• Related documents and publications:
  • Ellis, Simon (2018), Between Faces, a keynote at Light Moves International Festival of Screendance, Limerick Ireland, 9 November 2018.
  • Between Faces transcript: skellis.net/_assets/_between_faces_transcript.pdf
  • Response by Katrina McPherson as part of International Journal of Screendance: screendancejournal.org/article/view/6660/5234