Abstract
This chapter reviews a period of collaboration between the author and dance practitioner Karen Wood that took place as part of the overarching project Fragments, organised by artists from the collective Five Years. Considering commonalities in language across disciplinary divides, language emerges as a seam that connects the gestures of drawing and dance. A sequence of processual translation is described—both prior to and during the performance of ECHO—in which observed movement first becomes choreographed dance, then material line, and finally returns to movement. The exchange-based methodology corresponds to literary translation in its dependence on interpretation, and privileges process within the contexts of both making and performance. Where ECHO draws attention to the intertwining of distinct disciplines, their identities synthesise in the second performance work, 100 metre line drawing, in which drawing and performance collapse together as dancer turns drawer through direct interaction with a material line.
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Notes
- 1.
Jean-Luc Nancy, The Pleasure in Drawing, translated by Philip Armstrong (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), 110.
- 2.
Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, translated by Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 5.
- 3.
See for example, Move: Choreographing you, Hayward Gallery, London, 2010–11; Dance/Draw, The Institute of Contemporary Arts, Boston, Mass. 2011; Danser Sa Vie, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2011.
- 4.
Helen Molesworth, Dance/Draw (Verlag, Ostfildern; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, 2011): Hatje Cantz, 11.
- 5.
‘Performance Drawing’ is a legacy of art works from the 1960s onwards when boundaries and definitions were expanded and drawing moved beyond the page.
- 6.
For more on this see Katy Macleod and Lin Holdridge eds., Thinking Through Art: Reflections on art as research (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2006).
- 7.
Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A history of translation (Oxford: Routledge, 2008), 13.
- 8.
For information on Five Years, its history and current membership see http://www.fiveyears.org.uk/archive2/info.html (last accessed 14 August 2019).
- 9.
The publication Five Years: Fragments was launched at The Showroom, London in June 2014. A pdf of the publication can be downloaded from http://www.fiveyears.org.uk/archive2/pages/194/Showroom_Fragments/194.html?id=1819 (last accessed 14 August 2019).
- 10.
Summers and Dorrian cited from, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute, translated by Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester (New York: State University of New York Press, 1978); Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation (University of Minnesota Press, 1993).
- 11.
Edward Dorrian and Francis Summers, ‘Our Research: A fragment on fragments,’ in Five Years: Fragments, edited by Edward Dorrian and Mark Hulson (London: Five Years, 2014), 11–14.
- 12.
Five Years, 2014, 9.
- 13.
Blanchot, Infinite, 1993.
- 14.
In addition to my collaboration with dancer Karen Wood, Marc Hulson worked with writer Paul Curran; Rochelle Fry worked with musicians, Squares and Triangles; Esther Planas worked with Tuesday-029 and Edward Dorrian worked with Amy Todman.
- 15.
Five Years, 2014, 9.
- 16.
The Showroom was established in 1983 and is currently based in North West London. ‘We commission and produce art and discourse; providing an engaging, collaborative programme that challenges what art can be and do for a wide range of audiences, including art professionals and our local community.’ See http://www.theshowroom.org/ (last accessed 14 August 2019).
- 17.
Alke Groppel-Wegener, Pairings: Exploring collaborative creative practice (Manchester: Manchester Metropolitan University, 2010).
- 18.
See http://www.fiveyears.org.uk/archive2/pages/061/MORFILL_VANDENHOUCKE/061.html for documentation of this project.
- 19.
Maurice Blanchot, Infinite, 1993, 75.
- 20.
Nancy Ann Roth, ‘Preface,’ to Vilém Flusser, Gestures, translated by Nancy Ann Roth (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), vii.
- 21.
Blanchot, Infinite, 1993, 76.
- 22.
Nancy, Pleasure, 2013, 110.
- 23.
Sally Morfill and Karen Wood in Five Years, 2014, 18–20.
- 24.
A second performance of 100 metre line drawing took place at Backlit, Nottingham, in November 2014 as part of InDialogue ‘a biannual International Symposium that interrogates how artists and researchers use dialogue in practice.’ https://indialogue2014.wordpress.com/ (last accessed 14 August 2019).
- 25.
Maria Lind, ‘The Collaborative Turn,’ in Taking the Matter into Common Hands (London: Black Dog, 2007).
- 26.
Elizabeth Hallam and Tim Ingold, Creativity and Cultural Improvisation (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2007), 15.
- 27.
Nancy, ‘Preface,’ 2014, xii.
- 28.
Tim Ingold, Lines: A brief history (London; New York: Routledge, 2008), 75–77.
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Nancy, Pleasure, 2013, 110.
- 31.
Ibid.
- 32.
I owe this thought to Dean Kenning. In comments made during the panel discussion launching Five Years: Fragments, he connected the idea of ‘conspiracy’ to collaboration, and pointed out its etymology: con—together, spirare—to breathe.
Bibliography
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Lind, Maria. 2007. The Collaborative Turn. In Taking Matters into Common Hands: On Contemporary Art and Collaborative Practices, ed. Johanna Billing, Maria Lind, and Nilsson Lars, 15–31. London: Black Dog.
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Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2000. Being Singular Plural. Trans. Robert D. Richardson and Anne E. O’Byrne. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
———. 2013. The Pleasure in Drawing. Trans. Philip Armstrong. New York: Fordham University Press.
Roth, Nancy Ann. 2014. Preface. In Gestures, written by Vilém Flusser. Trans. Nancy Ann Roth, vii. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Venuti, Lawrence. 2008. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. Oxford: Routledge.
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Morfill, S. (2020). Romance and Contagion: Notes on a Conversation Between Drawing and Dance. In: Blain, M., Minors, H. (eds) Artistic Research in Performance through Collaboration. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38599-6_10
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