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Repetition and loops
Repetition and seriality in artworks
In order to connect some uses of repetition and seriality in art, I will mention some artworks where artists have used repetition. “The element of repetition in art many authors used on purpose to comment on the state of the world around us and to challenge the public to slow down the race for the achievement of consumerism gods and idols.”30 For example, in Andy Warhol’s works, an American artist working mainly with paintings, he repeats the same portrait of a celebrity while changing some settings of the pictures. Warhol’s art embraced consumerism and a culture of mass production. Among many other things, repetition and seriality have been used actively in 1960’s conceptual art and paintings. The surrounding of 1960’s has been affected by several wars, e.g., World War II, which have affected societies and the arts. Warhol’s interest towards consumerism and mass production can be seen in relation to the production trends around 1960’s specifically in Western societies, where the production moved towards consumer gods and mass production. Alongside Warhol’s, Yayoi Kusama’s works have employed repetition, patterns and seriality on a large scale. Kusama is a Japanese artist who works with mediums of painting, sculpture, film, and performance. Repetitive rhythms, patterns, and transformation can reveal something deeper and add depth to the work of art for me. The point of change can inform the observer on many ways and it may establish relations and affects into the experience of art.
Repetition and loops in dance
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s, a Belgian dance choreographer, work Fase uses repetition of dance materials and works closely with the repetitive theme of the music piece from Steve Reich, an American composer. Fase creates strong associations and visual images through its repetition and patterns. In comparison to Keersmaeker’s work, where movements are executed and composed through repetition on a very specific way, Mette Ingvartsen’s, a Danish choreographer and dancer, work Giant City approaches repetition and looping from a different perspective. In the work Giant City, Ingvartsen uses looping in the actions and relations of the dancers in space while combining the idea of loops with duration of light designing. I think that here the actions of looping have overlapping layers and ways of emerging in the actions of the dancers. Ingvartsen describes the doing in Giant City as follow: “They are bodies in a constant state of transformation, adapting to the imaginary spaces that surround them.”31 For me, the choreographic choices in the work are generating sensations, images and meanings for the spectator to experience. I imagine some of them can elaborate more consensus between different spectators, but I could argue that the experience and associations of the work vary considerably between spectators. This phenomenon is related to meaning making and storytelling. I am interested in the phenomenon, since it brings into appearance how our bodies include variety of information, which can be sensed, read, felt, and understood. The same kind of effect can be experienced from pavleheidler’s, Yugoslavian/Croatian dance artist and performer, work The Sun Practice, where they are using looping to investigate the phenomenon of performativity as it engenders language and movement in-real-time.
Here I am interested in how a subject, through its historicity and several affects, is sensing, reading, feeling, understanding, perceiving, or knowing something and connecting that something to their understanding of the world? How can different body postures, gestures, levels in a space, relations or proximities to other bodies and many other factors be perceived and related to subject’s understanding of the present moment? Here looping works as a method to challenge, change and transform the experiential side of a doer and an observer. As I mentioned already, repetition and looping may reveal what lies behind deeper layers. In the Degree Project I am interested in examining the experiential phenomenon in the work of dancers and from the side of an observer. This leads to the question of – What do we perceive as something and why?
Loops – an opportunity of change and transformation
Parallel to writing this text, I have worked the practical part of the Degree Project with four dancers and four sound designers mentioned in the beginning. The interest towards looping in dancing started from an observation I have made in relation to experiences from doing, dancing itself. While dancing, I have from time to time found myself in places of repetition or looping. Looping is an activity I often return to and from which something often arises, something that either reveals, transforms or creates an opportunity in the experience of dancing. These moments do not end up only developing into practical transitions. They end up affecting the psychophysical integrity.
First, we started to observe the question of a loop together with the working group in the studio. What is a loop in dancing? Is it a pattern, which recognizes it’s beginning in hindsight, or does it have more specifying ingredients? Are loops then curvier or like an ellipse? Or could these be monotonic actions, which are repeated? Or can a loop be something, which loops spatially in space? Soon, we encountered sounds and relation to rhythm in loops. We observed and had discussions on, how the relation to rhythms is related to a process of understanding loops in dancing? Through the relationality with rhythms and active consciousness towards the articulation of doing, we started to wonder – How long could a loop be? Maybe it is as long as the cycle of breathing in and out, or perhaps it takes as long as the Earth spins around itself. Maybe it has also other loops within itself? With these examples we encountered different ranges of loops. Accordingly, we started to notate different loops on a paper from micro towards macro layers as experiences, actions or phenomena. As we took time for this in the studio, we started to engage the idea of loops towards everyday experiences. What matters from the everyday life could be seen as loops, from micro to macro layers?
In the beginning of the process, I introduced and referred for example to Björn Sjäfsten’s, a Swedish choreographer, work on loops in dancing. His practice on loops has been one of the starting points for the process of practical observations. We also encountered Salva Sanchis’, a Spanish dancer and choreographer, principles of “every body part counts”32 into the active focus and consciousness in dancing, in order to enhance the awareness in every cell in the doing. As following the process, we started to focus more on the points of change and transformation, when looping an action. Here we tried to let go of decision making in doing, so that through following and doing the loop the doing will change and transform gradually. pavleheidler brought up a comment in the supervision that has stayed as a one grounding principle in the work: “What if you are not making the different decisions yourself, but the loops decide it for you?”33 As we continued the work on the floor, we went back to the relation of sounds and rhythms in the process of looping. Through this relation, we played with three subtitles of: being the music, companioning, and experiencing the music. The music invited us to involve repetition, repetitive loops and looping in dancing, since it had repetitive elements and layers itself. Here we encountered layers of music into the work and observed how these affect the experience of dancing. In addition, we worked with the notated materials and embodied micro and macro loops into materials.
Since I am intrigued by the dance itself, we focused a lot on the articulation of doing. While keeping this dimension in the work, I wanted to pay attention to the idea of relationality in the work in connection to storytelling and Barad’s thoughts about intra-actions. In order to underline this, we encountered a conversation score that looked at where you are always in a relation to another dancer, other dancers. I have tried to practice active consciousness and responsibility towards subject’s positionality and interactions in dancing. We used loops here as a tool to communicate through dancing. Since the task was executed in pairs, in the conversation you could agree, disagree, listen, tune into or for example add on something to the ongoing and changing conversation. The conversation score is based on the idea that your dancing is constantly communicating something through for instance the intensity and quality of doing, proximity or postures – here your dancing is the language, your speaking. We also involved such aspects as duration and evolution into the doing.
Finally, the presentation will consist of the materials practiced throughout the process and play with the thoughts presented in this text. I am willing to examine the effect of choreographic choices and see how these can affect the experience of the doer and spectator. There could be still many things to be presented and wondered in the Degree Project, but I will continue the work of wondering around various particles of this text in the future. The Degree project wants to experience and observe – how dancing together and dancing alone are entangled and overlapped? “Not in order to know in advance or project, on the contrary to labor for a future that remains to be shaped, to change how things change.”34
Table of contents :
An Introduction
1. Theories of Performative
− 1.1 Subject in relation to performative
− 1.2 Storytelling and intra-actions
− 1.3 Branding
2. Repetition and loops
− 2.1 Repetition and seriality in artworks
− 2.2 Repetition and loops in dance
− 2.3 Loops – an opportunity of change and transformation
Bibliography
