B L A C K on B L A C K
A performance by
Marta Ziółek
Marta Ziółek
Black on black
“Black on black” starts from a surface, from the performative act of overpainting, putting make up. Marta Ziółek commences her experiment on black(ness) in choreography with the gesture of disguise. Inspired by a series of Alexander Rodchenko’s „Black paintings” and the radicalism of the painterly gesture from the beginning of the XX century, she proposes her own detournement into the blackness of motion and its textuality. Her punk inversion and distortion of statements, principles and rules become a tactics of negotiating visibility. What voice, presence, body would emerge from this experiment? Would dance be always here, what is more or less then itself?
THE FIELD OF EXPERIMENT As dance has always been considered that “worse child of art�, perceived as too ephemeral, too charming to be treated seriously, the blackness too, has always been politically disavowed. This project, concerned with the blackness in choreography and dance, is an attempt to approach this paradox, as well as an attempt to give a side-glance to the specificity and limits of medium dance.
Motion The starting point of the project is an affirmation of materiality of black(ness) and speculation on black motor skills of movement. What could the blackness of dance be? What are possible translations of black in physicality, movement, presence of the body? The first hypothesis assumes blackness of dance as a motional and performative emancipation of qualities of movement that are considered to be the “other” of lightness and ephemerality of dance vocabulary. An exploration of expansion and absorption of body’s mass, its weight, density, massiveness and cohesion, volume, as well solidity and density are all the subject of the experiment. An affirmation of gravity and of an excess of bodily mass through movement, accompanies attempts to create other subjectivity of dance; to think dance as a „thing”.
Body The second hypothesis is connected with black(ness) and the paradox of excess and disappearance. Black can be conceived of as the darkest colour, but also as a lack of colour, as a “non-colour”. It is not possible to define its “colour” as it does not reflect the light. Thinking of black and experimenting with black(ness) in motion is intrinsically related to negotiating visibility and a problem of exposure. In his series of „Black paintings” Alexander Rodchenko treated this phenomena as a starting point to focus on the material surface of the painting and its three dimensionality enclosed within frames of one palette of colours (the reduction of colour). In this project this problem is being explored through focusing on layers, stratification and material exposure of haptic surfaces of the body, its layers and its variable, transformative presences. The assumption is that during the process the subject of dance would gradually expand and spread its own borders, layers and surfaces.
Body, carnality, corporeality and movement bring in a „role-playing”, a changeable figure; a play in between layers, an illusion of the mask, bodily cover (make up) and reality; positions in between masquerade, disguise, covering and display, exposure and overexposure.
Blackness is not there to be understood, but to be activated through seeing. Make-up is not necessarily anonymous but somehow it is simply contorted; something you can hide behind. It doesn’t really give away anything, but doesn’t reveal anything either. This is often precisely what the tension in the work is about. One doesn’t get what one simply doesn’t get. Bruce Nauman
Black on Black in Choreography The choreography here is „black on black”, a process of organizing, of imposing layers, a space of negotiating visibility. Plurality of corporeal, motional and performative experiments with black(ness) is the departure point to problematize an issue of display, and a collision, permeation, of what is visual with that which is audible and kinaesthetic. It is a proposition of a perceptual exercise on the eye (so as to make the eye becoming a finger). How to transform, mutate bodily structure, presence, through exposures of layers of its surfaces, and multidimensionality of body’s appearances and mutations of its movement, voice and presence? The search is for methods of erasing, obliterating movement, as well as voice, into a temporarily display. Where does the movement take place? What can become a „black hole” of the movement? Where could be the place in which the body exceeds its status, pre-
sence, where the light becomes a horizon, the body becomes the place of „loss of light” (disappearance of light) reflecting nothing? Textile The „cosmetic and textile work” is a part of the process of exploring black(ness) and its gradation, which is here literally understood as a gradation of make up, costume/ clothing and their layers. In the focus are aspects of formal and performative ways of working with the textiles, with their materiality and textures. How costume/clothing can become an actual part of bodily and physical cover, and a part of movement score? Light Regarding black(ness) the phenomenon of light, its reduction, disappearance and gradation are being explored. Related to this, is the problem of functioning of visibility and seeing/viewing in the exposition space: black box versus white cube. Obscurity, dark-room, lack of light, slot, exposure, overexposure.
Display One of the focal points of the project is an exploration and experimentation with visibility of dance and manners of its presentation/exposition. It is a need to problematize the issue of objecthood, object and diverse temporalities of dance, as well as a need to propose an alternative economy related to object through the medium dance. The project assumes an interaction with theatrical spaces, as well as with gallery and museum spaces.
PRODUCTION: February/March 2015 HetVeem Theatre, Amsterdam, hetveemtheater.nl CONFIRMED PARTNERS: Burdąg Foundation, Burdąg, www.burdagstudio.com Frankfurt LAB Frakfurt, www.frankfurt-lab.de FLAM, Amsterdam, www.arti.nl Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, www.artmuseum.pl/en?langset=true EXPECTED PARTNERS: Ministry of Culture in Poland – a scholarship programme “Young Poland”, www.en.nck.pl/sub/activities.html Polish Institute of Music and Dance, Warsaw, imit.org.pl/en Polish Cultural Institute in New York, New York, www.polishculture-nyc.org STUK kunstencentrum, Leuven, www.stuk.be/en PEOPLE INVOLEVED IN THE PROJECT: Dancer and choreographer: Marta Ziółek Dramaturgical advice: Eleonora Zdebiak Curator, art historian: Szymon Żydek Fashion Designer: Agata Mickiewicz Other expected people joining the project: Katerina Andreou, Tom Engels
Design: SzyĹťy