Installation notes

To go a little deeper into my ideas concerning this phase of the project, here is the text I have written to accompany the installation:

This installation is a re-imagining of “An Arcade Project”, a place-based dance project developed between August and November 2011. The four-month process culminated in performances at the Westminster Arcade in downtown Providence on the 18^th and 19^th November 2011. However, although the project was oriented towards the development and presentation of the performances, they were only one aspect of a multi-faceted process that also produced a large number of photographs, voice recordings, video footage, and blog posts. This installation explores the nature of the work that was done, re-imagining and re-presenting what “An Arcade Project” was, and is, in its holistic, yet fragmented entirety. 

Mediation was a central theme in “An Arcade Project”. Multiple layers of mediation were involved in the various outcomes of the project, connecting disparate sources and transposing ideas between mediums; bodies mediating memories, memories mediating place, bodies mediating place, archives mediating place, video mediating bodies, photographs mediating bodies mediating place…the list circles back on itself endlessly. In a continuation of this theme, this installation re-mediates various outputs of the project, reassembling them to create new juxtapositions and new relationships between individual components.

Like the performances, the installation is about experience of place. At the performances, both the performers and the audience created the experience by making movement choices that defined their interactions with and perceptions of spaces. The installation also invites audience agency, using the design of the Granoff Center to encourage exploration—explorations of space, of ideas, of histories, and, of course, of the Arcade itself.

An Arcade Project, Installed

Plans for the installation are underway, and we have a much clearer idea of the different elements that will make up the installation since the last time I posted about it. I say we, because this undertaking is a collaborative one. Friends and colleagues of mine Adj Marshall and Seung Chan Lim (Slim) are artistic collaborators, and Emily MacCartan has generously taken on the responsibility of coordinating the installation and making it happen.

The fundamental idea driving the layout of the installation is to reference and re-create some of the same exploration of the space and agency that the audience had in the performances. To that end, the installation will be located in two of the "living room" spaces of the Granoff Center that are directly above one another. Adj and Slim were both photographers at the performances. Slim's photos are going to act as one prompt to move around and investigate, in much the same way that the dancers did in the performances. The other element designed to invite is a green line that runs through and between the spaces, referencing the Independence Trail in downtown Providence that runs by the Arcade. Adj has been working with the photos she took as well as with some of the archival photos of the Arcade to create multi-exposure photographs that offer a cross-temporal vision of the Arcade. The two other elements that make up the installation are the edited film of the performance and a soundtrack composed of excerpts from different interviews that I conducted in the course of my research.

The installation will be on display in the Granoff Center for Creative Arts from 12th-17th March, 2012.