Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Reading : A - Art
‘Ballet’ incorporating a solo exhibition and a film ‘Ballet’, 2009. Dur: 11:47, HD DVC Pro, 2009.
Museum of Rural Life, Reading Dec 2009-Feb 2010 (solo exhibition). Film screened at festivals/venues, incl. Moves 10, Blue Coat Gallery, Liverpool, 2010; Club Attend, Rotterdam, May 2010, Rotterdam; Festival VideoDanzaBa, Microcine in Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010; and MacKenzie Art Gallery, 2011
Through the production of a filmed performance ‘Ballet’ 2009 (and its subsequent evaluation) this project explores the potential of ideas of ‘social choreography’ (the linking of dance and the aesthetics of everyday movement to ideas about social order) as a way of engaging with the archives at MERL (Museum of English Rural Life, Reading). The research stages and tests the potential of performative engagements with the archives as a way of evaluating the role of gesture as a physical marker of convention and ideology. The initial archival research focused on 16 informational films (1930-80) produced to inform rural communities about official procedure in case of viral and nuclear catastrophe. This involved developing a choreographed score from the gestural performances of background actors in these films, where members of the rural community were used to act out idealised versions of ‘everyday’ rural life. This score was further developed in performance workshops involving groups of local artists and students, re-enacting selected scenes from the films and re-performing the choreographed actions. The final filmed performance was developed through collaboration with Canadian choreographer Michele Sereda, using local farms as film sites and farm machinery as props. http://vimeo.com/20639047The film was first screened in a solo exhibition installed within the collections at MERL, 2009-10, where it subsequently became part of the archive (funded by an individual artist grant from Arts Council of England). Following this the film was exhibited in a solo show at the MacKenzie Art Gallery (supported by Canadian Theatre company Curtain Razors); and rescreened at a series of international film festivals, including ‘Moves 10’, Liverpool. http://www.szuper.org/ballet.html. Clausen addressed the idea of performative research in the paper ‘Ballet-Performing Normality in the Face of Crisis’, Image Conference, University of California, LA, 2010 (published in International Journal of The Image, Common Ground, 2011, http://ijx.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.202/prod.39
