26 juillet 2009
Suzon Fuks - Liquid skin
Suzon Fuks - Liquid skin
Site : Igneous
Page sur You Tube
Suzon Fuks is a Belgian-born and Australia-based dancer and choreographer. “Fragmentation” caught our attention because it is a performance piece, choreographed specifically for the camera, with a very strong narrative quality. We asked Suzon to tell us more about her background and creative interests, and how she worked with her “Fragmentation” collaborators:
"Fragmentation" has been partially made during a residency at Dance4, Nottingham, UK. Rob Tannion, James Cunningham and I were given time, space, equipment, and support to collaborate and reflect about our own creative development. We decided to work on the theme of fragmentation during these five weeks.
We started the process by interviewing each other about “what fragments our lives?” We fed each other by telling personal stories and describing situations we encountered in daily life. One of them was how, in the subway, amongst the crowd, people were making personal spaces, ramparts, by reading their newspaper or having mobile phone conversations. So we developed performative material with these two props. James and Rob were performing, and I was an outside eye, recording and proposing scores for improvisations. After each take, we were feedbacking about which moments felt strong and why they felt strong, in order to articulate and refine the material.
The context of the residency was fantastic: we didn’t have to have a public outcome, which was really liberating. Consequently, we generated so much material in the studio as well as outdoors! One part went into an installation performance presented for two days at the end of the residency, in order to see how audience would interact with the work, and also to get peer feedback.
The other part was stacks of recorded video and audio material, which slept in a drawer for five years. It’s only in 2007 that I revisited this footage and edited it. James then became the outside eye: questioning my editing decisions, encouraging me to be more drastic in the movement choices and the fragmenting of the frame itself.
The action of reading the newspaper, unfolding it, establishing its size, is often used in public space as a barrier, a protection, partitioning the space into a personal one, separating people, so they can dive into their own world. From their isolation and non-communication, little by little the deadly serious characters build a consensus by sharing space, using each other's bodies to become eventually one person with two heads and interlaced limbs, managing their various thoughts, dynamics. I like to suggest through the artwork but I do not intend to tell a story as such; I prefer that people connect with the images and the emotions, and elaborate their own narrative. I like hearing the audience laugh, directly participating in the action, entering the frame with their own perception, interpreting, as a means for them to be able to reflect upon their own lives and places.
My work is intrinsically experimental. My research is oriented on how to mesh the different artforms and how they inform each other. I am deeply committed to making and developing art that examines, reflects upon, and helps us survive in today’s disjointed worlds. Using the live body as a starting point, I focus on process, interaction, and diversity, compelled by small human gestures that are shared across cultures and that communicate and reveal the depth and complexity of our human experience. My practice is characterized by a holistic post-humanistic approach that focuses upon magnifying details, synthesizing wholes, collaborating, coordinating, weaving between extremes, playing with contrasts and emphasizing presence and space. Some samples can be seen on the IGNEOUS website. IGNEOUS is a company that I created in 1997 with James Cunningham.
My interest in performance for the camera comes from my performing arts and visual arts education. I discovered the camera when I was at La Cambre in Brussels, a school formed on the philosophy of the Bauhaus, examining how different artistic disciplines inform each other; La Cambre is where I completed my Masters in Visual Arts. The camera was a great tool to unify the performance and visual spaces and it allowed me to notice the dance of light: the light in perpetual motion, revealing what we see. The camera became like a pen: documenting but also writing and refining ideas, drawing the frame. At that time, it was a super8 film camera, with the tactile feel of cutting and pasting the celluloid in a linear fashion. With the digital reign, I became more and more interested in editing, which allows the designing of the space visually and auditively.
"Fragmentation" has been made for the camera, exploring its conic field, and the editing attempted to translate this field by redistributing it within the frame, which can move within itself, finding the depth within the bi-dimensional perimeter of the rectangle. It is very syntax oriented! I am interested in finding a grammar, a syntax, and styles in terms of writing the frame space and the conic space of the camera. In parallel, it could be also the music terminology: composition, harmony, counterpoint, and spatialization of the sound. I will be able to continue this research through a Fellowship received recently from the Australia Council for the Arts, Dance Board. I will start it in September this year by watching dormant footage accumulated over twenty-five to thirty years, then edit three new works, write a blog about my process and research, sharing my findings with people who will be able to comment. I will also visit screendance festivals in New York, UK, Amsterdam, and Banff, and will deepen the networked performance research that I started in 2003. "Screendance," alternatively called "videodance," is a genre made for the camera where movement is the primary expressive element in the work rather than dialogue (as in conventional narrative movies) or music (as in music videos). Screendance's definition is expanding to also include live performance, installation and the use of multiple and multi-dimensional screens. "Networked performance" is a performance event happening simultaneously in multiple spaces, including the Web, using telecommunication tools to link people and places.
(texte paru sur "Ninth letter Arts & Literary journal")
22 mai 2009
Suzon Fuks - Rings - #1 à #6
Suzon Fuks - Rings
Site : Igneous
Page sur You Tube
with James Cunningham, Helen Varley Jamieson, Scotia Monkivitch
and Suzon Fuks. Improvised choreography multi-reprojected on body
parts, counterpointed by a text by Fernand Shirren, Maurice Bejart's
music advisor and rhythm teacher of many dancers and choreographers
14 avril 2009
Suzon Fuks - Thanatonautes, navigateurs de la mort
Suzon Fuks Thanatonautes, navigateurs de la mort
Site : Igneous
Page sur You Tube
Suzon Fuks is a director, choreographer and multimedia artist exploring
the integration and interaction of dance and moving image through
performance, screen, installation and online work.
Born in
Brussels in 1959, trained in dance, theatre & music at Lilian
Lambert Academy (69-76) and completed her Masters in Visual Arts at La
Cambre (79-84). She has lived in Australia since 1996 and has been
co-artistic director of multimedia and performance company Igneous
since its inception in 1997.
She has directed 14 movement-based
multimedia performance productions, created film/video-scenography for
18 productions, directed and edited 19 films and videos including 11
videodances, and co-devised 6 online interactive performance works. She
gives lectures and workshops in tertiary institutions in Australia
& Europe integrating video with the performing arts & fostering
multimedia artistic collaboration, as well as tailoring workshops for
community cultural development projects. Following a mentorship with
Keith Armstrong, she has been researching and developing networked
performance since 2003.
In 2008, she won the Green Room Award
for Outstanding Video-Scenography in Theatre (New Form), was
short-listed for Australian Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in
Independent dance, was nominated for Australian Dance Award for Dance
on Film and was a finalist in the ReelDance Awards. In 1986, Suzon made
the film-scenography of the Mandragore Theatre's highly successful show
The Strange Mr Knight, which toured internationally for 5 years, with
more than 1,000 shows.
Her photographic exhibition Keeping the Light toured from 1997 to 2001 to seven capitals of the world, and her photographs
are part of the State Library of NSW and the National Library of
Australia collections.
Suzon's work has been shown in over 50
festivals throughout the world. In recognition of her expertise, she is
being made Adjunct Research Fellow at Edith Cowan University and will
be an Australia Council for the Arts Fellow from September 2009 to
March 2012.
22 mars 2009
Fragmentation - Suzon Fuks
Suzon Fuks
Site : Igneous
Page sur You Tube