Landscaping, sound & movement
Becky Edmunds / Scott Smith
Becky Edmunds medverkade med filmen Sand Little Sand i SHOOT - Dance for Screen 2008.
Intervju med Becky Edmunds
I am a screen dance artist with a research-led practice. This means that I do not know what films I will make until after I have finished making them. I do not pre-plan what shape the work will be, how long it will be, what scenarkivetrios, or movement, or narrative it will contain. Instead, I begin to work with a series of clear compositional propositions, and physical explorations that I engage in as camera person. These starting points are informed by my past practice as a dancer and choreographer of live work, and the physical explorations are often concerned with the exploration of the perceptual and sensorial development of myself as a maker of video.
Location is a vital starting point in my creation process. I seek out environments that challenge my habitual patterns of making - locations that are unfamiliar to me in scale, climate, colour or culture. I cannot imagine what work I will create in such environments, and so my process explores not-knowing as the most creative space, where anything can happen.
Between the 16th March and the 4th April, we will be traveling to Northern Sweden, as guests of the SHOOT Dance for Camera festival in Stockholm. In this project, entitled Cold - vision/perception/production, we will journey to Lulea and Kiruna and explore placing the moving body within the ice and snow, in order to discover the dances that arise from such harsh conditions. Working from a starting point of how our senses are affected by being in an extreme environment, I will be exploring the making of a series of screendance works that investigates the frailty of the human body in relation to a cold, vast and unforgiving landscape.
Betty Edmunds blogg
http://beckyedmunds.com/#/sweden/4533025694
16th March.
Well, this will be a very short blog entry because we have to get to the airport. We are in a frenzy of thermals packing. We arrive in Lulea in Northern Sweden at midnight.
And so ends this blog entry. I'll be much more verbose once i arrive.
17th March.
I have never travelled across the sea in a car until today. It's a slightly unnerving experience. The sea water around Lulea is frozen solid and there are roads across the ice to get you to the islands. It's fine, until you see the big cracks in the ice. That's the unnerving bit.
The light here is so different to the light in the UK, and it affects everything. Even the most familiar of sights seems slightly alien in this cold northern light. And those stretches of frozen sea, that are so vast and so solid. Bright white, like the salt fields in Argentina, but cold. Ice for as far as you can see. It's beautiful.
We arrived last night and were met by Maria from Dans i Nord. She has set up a really fantastic situation for us here - we have an apartment, and she has been our guide today, and will be with us tomorrow, before we set off alone. It's good to have someone who knows where we are going.
The sensation of 'what shall I make here?' is familiar. I cannot imagine what I will make here. I need to let my eyes settle into the whiteness and the lightness and not try to second guess what might be the 'right' thing to do. I have no idea what will be the right thing to do. I just trust that something will become apparent and then I can act on it.
But today, I remade a film that was originally shot in the salt fields of Argentina - 'on the surface'. Simply because the space that I was in reminded me of that space, so it seemed appropriate to try and do the same thing. It's the same action - but I think it will look very different.
19th March.
Spent today on the frozen water between the islands of Lulea. There are pathways marked out through the snow and the ice is like a park - people use the paths to skate, ski, jog, walk their dogs. Earlier today there was bright sunshine and the light was bouncing off the white ice. This evening, the sky is grey, and the ice has lost it’s sheen. I wrapped the camera in bubblewrap plastic, set it down on the ice and slid it around. Camera skating. Spinning the camera around and seeing where the frame settles. As the path emptied this evening, Scott and I tried spinning the camera and then walking into frame once the camera had come to a halt. Just walking and standing.
Which is probably a tricky thing to understand, when we are here under the banner of ‘dance on screen’ or ‘video dance’ or whatever it is that people call it. I don’t know if I am making screen dance or not, and it doesn’t seem important to me to define what I do. I do know that I am interested in the composition of movement and that seems like choreography to me. Or editing. Or both.
So I have been asking Scott to stand still in frame in various locations - in the same place in the frame - and letting the locations change around his still body. Standing man. Cold makes everything so still.
Tomorrow we go further north and I am not sure what the internet access will be like in the places we are going to. So I will keep writing and when I get online, I will post it.
22nd March.
We have moved up to Abisko, close to the border of Norway. It is much colder here, and more still, as all movement and sound is muted by the cold. It is utterly spectacular. I have never seen anything like this Arctic landscape. The scale of it is immense.
Two days ago we travelled from Lulea to Kiruna - a mining town within the Arctic Circle. The whole town is going to be moved to another location over the next decade because of subsidence caused by the mining industry. Whilst there we drove out towards the mountains, and shot some material in scrub land there. The snow is deep and there is an aspect to being in it that is utterly exhausting. Sometimes I wish for much smaller equipment, as hauling camera and tripod through snowdrifts can be hard going. There is a whole rigmarole about going outside - get the equipment ready, climb into cold weather romper suits, get boots on - hats, gloves, by which time I realise that the keys are in my jeans which are under the romper suit and I have to take half of it off and start again.
Then I will be walking along what seems like fairly tightly-packed snow and suddenly I will sink down to my knees and I am left flailing around, with a large camera bag, trying to dig myself out. Which probably has a comedic value to onlookers.
Then, as in Argentina, there is the prospect of being faced with astounding landscape and feeling that anything additional that I might my place into it would be utterly superfluous. Why would you film dance out here? It would just get in the way of a perfectly good view. So, as in Argentina, I struggle with placing a dancer out here, and I look for the movement that already exists. Or if I do place a dancer there, he is standing still. Standing man.
Up here in Abisko, it is even more astounding. Looking at it all I am overwhelmed and the marks that I make on tape seem somehow completely inadequate. But I keep making them - that’s what I am here for. I am reminded of Jonathan Burrows who said that when he feels self-conscious whilst performing, he deals with it by letting himself feel more self-conscious. So if I am feeling inadequate, I will make this a study into inadequacy. I don’t know what else to do about it.
I am so hoping to see the Northern Lights.
23rd March
The Northern Lights danced for us last night. Brief but very satisfying.
What is it that i am trying to express by using a camera on this? I know that it has to be more than showing or composing scenery in frame. Am i trying to comment on it, or to convey how it feels for me to be here? Am I trying to oppose it is some way, in order to make the nature of it more visible? Or do something that would support it?
The questions arise around the screen as a site for choreography. What is it that I am choreographing? The body? The space around the body? The movement that already exists in the space? Or the frame around the space? I am trying to work my way through all of those options.
When does the choreography take place? Before I shoot? As I shoot? After I’ve shot?
Today we took the chair lift up to the top of the mountain - Nuolja. I’ve never been that keen on chair lifts - I’m not good with heights, and chair lifts always seem like a slightly rickety form of transportation. They make great tracking devices through, so I filmed on the way up and on the way down. It was so much colder up on top of the mountain. There was a cafe though, with very good cake. Incredible views. Just phenomenal. We did some filming up at the top, but the camera started to behave slightly oddly - it seemed very show to respond to anything, which was a bit alarming. Seemed to be working fine once I had got it down the mountain and let it warm up a bit.
Paid £11 for a pint of beer and a glass of wine in the bar. Wow!
24th March.
For the first time, I felt that the cold and the environment got the better of me today. Scott and I set out across the lake, with the aim of getting close to the centre of it, and of trying to spin the camera on the ice. The camera was all bundled up in its bubblewrap outfit, but the nature of the ice was so different to the man-made ice paths in Lulea, and no matter how we tried to smooth it over, we could not make the camera spin in a way that was satisfying. It was windy and absolutely freezing out in the middle of this huge lake of ice. Suddenly I felt utterly defeated. I had used so much energy getting out onto the lake, and I was a long way from the shore (and the warm and dry accommodation), my plan had fallen apart and I was at a loss. We set off towards a small island in the ice, in the hope of finding a rock that we could sit down on. It is hard to judge distances out on the ice. You set off towards something that looks to be 5 minutes away, and after 5 minutes it suddenly looks to be 10 minutes away. Finally we sat on the ice near the island and ate some sandwiches. Then headed back to the warmth of our room. The whole thing completely exhausted me, physically and mentally. I couldn’t make any choices at all, except for the choice to get warm.
26th March.
We left Abisko yesterday, after doing some final shots there and drove back to Kiruna. Being so far North was an extraordinary experience - the realisation of how it is to be in a cold place - really properly cold, so cold that it makes your eyes water and then your tears freeze on your eyelashes. It puts limits on things - how long you can be outside, how long you can be still for, how much you have to be aware of the temperature of the camera, constantly guarding against getting moisture on the lens that might freeze and scratch. This is very different to Argentina, where it was warm and staying outside for hours was the normal situation.
It is interesting that there are some technical decisions that working out in the landscape leads me to. I have been working with the zoom of the camera, which I never do in my normal working life - I avoid it normally, but out here it seems to be the only way I can find to express distance.
It is also interesting that I only work with wide shot out here. I have done no close ups at all - at least not of the body. I have close ups of twigs and icicles and snow, but the body seems to need to remain in the distance for me.
So many questions arise about working process - how does one make work? What is it that I need in order to make marks on tape. Because I have no predetermined narratives to follow through, because I need to make the decisions about what marks to make based on my experience of being in a place. Again and again I have found myself to be overwhelmed by the really obviously beautiful places and more drawn to the odder (more ugly?) places. Or if I am working within beauty I want to take it out of view. Hint at it and then remove it. I worked with setting the frame around a beautiful view and then having Scott come into frame in order to spoil the view, or block it, or get in the way of it. To disrupt it in some way.
Now back in Kiruna we have been out in the mountains again, working today in very deep snow. Framing a patch of virgin show and then working physically in it until it’s smoothness is completely destroyed. Trying to move in snow that comes up to your thighs, being able to fall into its softness and then becoming trapped by it and struggling to get yourself upright again. As a substance it is so dry and powdery, it gives way so easily, becoming really cold and wet when it gets between skin and clothing. We also were looking for snow scooters, which are really violently noisy in a place which is otherwise so silent. But it was not the weekend, so there were not so many around.
27th March.
We took a trip to the Ice Hotel today, having been given tickets to get in by one of the curators of the ice sculptures. It is very blue and very cold. Oddly beautiful, strangely odd. And full of Japanese people. It is rebuilt every year and in May it starts to melt and returns to the river that the ice is taken from.
31st March.
Our time here is coming to an end. We are back in Lulea (which I know I am spelling wrong every time I write it, because the ‘a’ should have a little circle over it which means it is pronounced ‘oa’ as it ‘boat’, but I don’t have that letter on my keyboard so I am having to make an approximation). Yesterday I gave a screen dance workshop to some dance students and now Scott is giving a dance workshop in Pitea (which should also have a little circle over the ‘a’). We have one more day before we fly to Stockholm.
We have reviewed some of the footage and made a couple of rough cuts from some of the material. Scott has made a couple of sound sketches.
Now there is time to look back and see what the process has been. The filming is a process of collection, rather than a production process. The work is in the looking and what emerges on video is a record of that results of that looking. A record of my decision making.
There is also a sense that I want to show you something (‘you’ being the audience), but what is it that I am showing you? Not the views - I can’t show you those. They don’t translate well to video. So I am showing my decision making, even if some of those decisions might be really dumb, or banal.
Representing nothing more than the desire to represent. Representing nothing more than the struggle to make something. And my tendency to make thing that make sense in some way. I can become frustrated by my own tendency towards rationalising my decision-making, and feeling that my rationalising can stop me from simply trying stuff. My head gets in the way. I have too great a desire for coherence.
There has also been a frustration that I have been looking for some sort of a breakthrough. Something that will change the way that I work, that I approach making. This sense of a breakthrough happened for me in Argentina, and so there is the desire for it to happen again. But that is not realistic for an artist - to be constantly looking to re-invent what they do. There has to be time to re-invest, to go further into what has been done before, rather than abandon what is known. So this has been a chance to remake, to retry. So in a way nothing has changed, but the questions that arose from the Argentina project have been re-considered and have become more acute. Not necessarily answered in any way. But restated.
Is it possible to avoid telling stories if you are placing a body into a location and filming it? I don’t want to tell stories, but it seems unavoidable. The question that interests me is when do those stories emerge? Can I see the narrative as I film, or do they emerge as I put two pieces of footage together in the edit?
Whilst I want to avoid narrative, there is nothing that I have ever made that did not suggest narrative. How abstract to be? Can I find ways towards abstraction by getting myself out of rationalisation.?
I find myself always making sure that I have beginnings and endings.
The true value of an opportunity like this is to be given the chance to find something difficult. To be thrown back onto my own practice and to reconsider the problems that it presents.
