ERIKA TSIMBROVSKY
The Book Practice, a conference presentation
by Erika Tsimbrovsky
11.22.2019
Dance & Speech: Erika Tsimbrovsky
Music: Grundik Kasyansky
Video recording: Katelyn Stiles
PFS 200 mini-conference UC Davis, Della Davidson Studio
The Book Practice’s underlying research focus is constant transformations in contemporary dance and their inclination towards performance art to create new discourses. Reflection on the distinction between conventional arts and their convergence in performance art merges into the question: What is the essential aspect of these art mutations? In my opinion, the relationship and position of Time and Life categories constitute its main characteristics. When it emerged, performance art brought liberation from time constraints in space. Michel Foucault suggested in his quote on art-making, "What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists. But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?" Avant-garde dances unfold life and become non-definable immersive multimedia experiences.
The Book Practice is a contemplation on dance-mutations resulting in the contemporary dance morphing into visual art installations and vice versa. I am interested in analyzing changes that happen in the relationship between the new dance-entity and language by observing other choreographers' approaches to the relationship between Text and Dance (Vaslav Nijinsky, Tatsumi Hijikata, Yvonne Rainer) — generating my example of three-dimensional free-writing in the conference space, implying a time category as an eternal with no beginning and end of doing time and life moment by moment.
List of references:
Griffin Tim. “Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language": Museum of Modern Art, New York. Artforum International, December 2012
Nijinsky Vaslav, Acocella Joan, FitzLyon Kyril. The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky. The Missouri Review, Volume 21, Number 3, 1998
Rainer Yvonne, Julien Isaac, Goldberg RoseLee. https://flash---art.com/article/yvonne-rainer-isaac-julien/ 19 December 2016
Tatsumi Hijikata, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Nanako Kurihara. Plucking off the Darkness of the Flesh. The Drama Review, Volume 44, Number 1 (T 165), Spring 2000, pp. 49-55 (Article)