OPEN STUDIO
Interdisciplinary seminar and workshop with a focus on videodance

Introduction: January 27, 2010: film presentation
Workshop dates: January 28-29, February 1, 2010, 5pm to 8pm
Public presentation: February 1, 2010

Studio Emad Eddin Foundation, 18, Emad Eddin Street, Downtown, Cairo, Egypt

Open Studio is an interdisciplinary seminar with workshop that will focus on videodance - the relationship between dance performance and video - through practical work and theoretical discourse. It is conceived as a collaborative project of international artists and specialists with participation of dancers from local art scene. As a special genre of video, videodance relates to the interaction between dance performance and video. According to that we can discern four videodance sub-genres: stage/studio recording, camera rework, screen choreography and creative documentary.

Dance performance & video
The seminar will research and elaborate the interdisciplinary potential of video as a technological tool and artistic means of expression and its capacity of image manipulation in real-time and in connection with live act. The collaboration between video artists, dancers, dramaturges and choreographers can convey an unexpected additional value to the project-in-process that take place in real space and real time. Moreover, when accompanied by the contemporary art theory and criticism such collaboration can experience an enthusiasm as well as a valuable (self) reflection.

Zemira Alajbegović & Neven Korda (ZANK), Icht, 24'
TV Slovenija, Ljubljana 1993

PROGRAM OF THE SEMINAR & WORKSHOP
PRACTICAL PART

Experimental laboratory of video (dance) performance and its final production will combine sensorial, analogue experiences in front of the public with digital processed realities on several levels:

• interaction of performers' movements with interventions by dramaturgy;
• choreography and video;
• simultaneous transmission on screens and loudspeakers;
• computer manipulation with streamed data;
• manipulation of time.

Open platform will be constructed of audiovisual equipment that will co-create space/time: projection screens, mobile carriers of video projectors and other transmitters of light and sound, cameras, wireless microphones, sensors, computers, midi controllers, monitors, projectors and sound system.

THEORY PART

• historic in theoretical presentation of videodance genre and the transmission of live act to performative video
• video document as research material and archive
• historic outline of video art and its role in the time of transition and democratisation
• panel on video/dance potential

PRESENTATIONAL PART

• screening of selected video dance programs (Slovenia)
• public presentation: Neven Korda and Egyptian Artists participating in the workshop/seminar (February 1, 2010)

LABORATORY AND VIDEO PROGRAMS

Workshop leader

• Neven Korda (video artist/director, Ljubljana, Slovenia), a leading artist in this genre, will explore in his workshop manipulation of real time video and the interaction between performers and image. The main characteristic of Korda's video dance performances is the manipulation with video and audio signals in real time. Such a procedure enables the artist to gain a kind of interaction between a dancer/performer and video in real time. A basic setup which Korda uses consists of three cameras, three computers and three video beamers.
  
  

CONTEXT

SCCA-Ljubljana has been collaborating with Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, already since 2007. We (and also La Friche La Belle de Mai, Marseille) were partners at the residency and exhibition project Light, Illumination and Electricity (Santral Istanbul, Turkey) where Adham Hafez was one of the participating artists. In 2008, Laura Carderera, responsible for curatorial education participated at From Elsewhere - a Symposium of Curatorial Practices in Ljubljana in May and October 2008, Videodance_6, the program conceived by Barbara Borčić from SCCA-Ljubljana was presented at Townhouse Gallery in frame of Connections Festival, organised by Adham Hafez and his centre HaRaKa.

Light, Illumination and Electricity (Santral Istanbul, Turkey)		From Elsewhere - a Symposium of Curatorial Practices in Ljubljana, May and October 2008

PARTNERS

HaRaKa (performative platform, Cairo, Egypt), Townhouse Gallery (Cairo, Egypt), SCCA-Ljubljana, Center for Contemporary Arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia), Studio Emad Eddin Foundation (Cairo, Egypt)

Special thanks to Adham Hafez and HaRaKa, a leading Movement and Performance Research Project in Cairo (EG) that operates since 2006 through several vectors (research, production, publications, seminars, ....etc). The whole project is organized within the framework of HaRaKa's Artists Residencies and the Monthly Programs.

The program is partly supported by Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and Municipality of Ljubljana - Department for Culture.