Marta Ziółek

BLACK

on

BLACK

A performance by

Marta Ziółek

Black on black

“Black on black” starts from a surface, from the per-formative act of overpain-ting, putting make up. Mar-ta Ziółek commences her experiment on black(ness) in choreography with the gesture of disguise. Inspi-red by a series of Alexan-der Rodchenko’s „Black pa-intings” and the radicalism of the painterly gesture from the beginning of the XX century, she proposes her own detournement into the blackness of motion and its textuality. Her punk inversion and distortion of statements, principles and rules become a tactics of negotiating visibility.

What voice, presence, body would emerge from this experiment? Would dance be always here, what is more or less then itself?

THE FIELD OF EXPERI-MENT

As dance has always been considered that “worse child of art”, perceived as too ephemeral, too char-ming to be treated serio-usly, the blackness too, has always been politically di-savowed.

This project, concerned with the blackness in cho-reography and dance, is an attempt to approach this paradox, as well as an attempt to give a side--glance to the specificity and limits of medium dan-ce.

MotionThe starting point of the project is an affirmation of materiality of black(-ness) and speculation on black motor skills of mo-vement. What could the blackness of dance be? What are possible trans-lations of black in physi-cality, movement, presen-ce of the body?

The first hypothesis assu-mes blackness of dance as a motional and per-formative emancipation of qualities of movement that are considered to be the “other” of lightness and ephemerality of dan-ce vocabulary.

An exploration of expan-sion and absorption of body’s mass, its weight, density, massiveness and cohesion, volume, as well solidity and den-sity are all the subject of the experiment. An affir-mation of gravity and of an excess of bodily mass through movement, ac-companies attempts to create other subjectivity of dance; to think dance as a „thing”.

BodyThe second hypothesis is connected with blac-k(ness) and the paradox of excess and disappe-arance. Black can be con-ceived of as the darkest colour, but also as a lack of colour, as a “non-co-lour”. It is not possible to define its “colour” as it does not reflect the li-ght. Thinking of black and experimenting with black(ness) in motion is intrinsically related to ne-gotiating visibility and a problem of exposure.

In his series of „Black pa-intings” Alexander Rod-chenko treated this phe-nomena as a starting point to focus on the ma-terial surface of the pain-ting and its three dimen-sionality enclosed within frames of one palette of colours (the reduction of colour). In this project this problem is being explo-red through focusing on layers, stratification and material exposure of haptic surfaces of the body, its layers and its va-riable, transformative pre-sences. The assumption is that during the process the subject of dance wo-uld gradually expand and spread its own borders, layers and surfaces.

Body, carnality, corpo-reality and movement bring in a „role-playing”, a changeable figure; a play in between layers, an illusion of the mask, bodily cover (make up) and reality; positions in between masquerade, disguise, covering and display, exposure and overexposure.

Blackness is not there to be understood, but to be activated through seeing.

Make-up is not necessa-rily anonymous but some-how it is simply contor-ted; something you can hide behind. It doesn’t re-ally give away anything, but doesn’t reveal any-thing either. This is often precisely what the tension in the work is about. One doesn’t get what one sim-ply doesn’t get.

Bruce Nauman

Black on Black in Choreo-graphy

The choreography here is „black on black”, a pro-cess of organizing, of imposing layers, a spa-ce of negotiating visibili-ty. Plurality of corporeal, motional and performati-ve experiments with blac-k(ness) is the departu-re point to problematize an issue of display, and a collision, permeation, of what is visual with that which is audible and ki-naesthetic. It is a pro-position of a perceptual exercise on the eye (so as to make the eye beco-ming a finger).

How to transform, mutate bodily structure, presen-ce, through exposures of layers of its surfaces, and multidimensionali-ty of body’s appearances and mutations of its mo-vement, voice and pre-sence? The search is for methods of erasing, ob-literating movement, as well as voice, into a tem-porarily display.

Where does the move-ment take place? What can become a „black hole” of the movement? Where could be the pla-ce in which the body exceeds its status, pre-

sence, where the light becomes a horizon, the body becomes the place of „loss of light” (disap-pearance of light) reflec-ting nothing?

TextileThe „cosmetic and textile work” is a part of the pro-cess of exploring black(-ness) and its gradation, which is here literally un-derstood as a gradation of make up, costume/clothing and their layers. In the focus are aspects of formal and performa-tive ways of working with the textiles, with their materiality and textures. How costume/clothing can become an actual part of bodily and phy-sical cover, and a part of movement score?

LightRegarding black(ness) the phenomenon of li-ght, its reduction, disap-pearance and gradation are being explored. Rela-ted to this, is the problem of functioning of visibi-lity and seeing/viewing in the exposition space: black box versus white cube. Obscurity, dark--room, lack of light, slot, exposure, overexposure.

DisplayOne of the focal points of the project is an explora-tion and experimentation with visibility of dance and manners of its pre-sentation/exposition. It is a need to problematize the issue of objecthood, object and diverse tem-poralities of dance, as well as a need to propose an alternative economy related to object through the medium dance.

The project assumes an interaction with theatri-cal spaces, as well as with gallery and museum spa-ces.

PRODUCTION:February/March 2015HetVeem Theatre, Amsterdam, hetveemtheater.nl

CONFIRMED PARTNERS:Burdąg Foundation, Burdąg, www.burdagstudio.com Frankfurt LAB Frakfurt, www.frankfurt-lab.deFLAM, Amsterdam, www.arti.nlMuseum of Modern Art, Warsaw, www.artmuseum.pl/en?langset=true

EXPECTED PARTNERS: Ministry of Culture in Poland – a scholarship programme “Young Poland”, www.en.nck.pl/sub/activities.htmlPolish Institute of Music and Dance, Warsaw, imit.org.pl/en Polish Cultural Institute in New York, New York, www.polishculture-nyc.orgSTUK kunstencentrum, Leuven, www.stuk.be/en

PEOPLE INVOLEVED IN THE PROJECT:Dancer and choreographer: Marta ZiółekDramaturgical advice: Eleonora ZdebiakCurator, art historian: Szymon ŻydekFashion Designer: Agata Mickiewicz

Other expected people joining the project: Katerina Andreou, Tom Engels

Design: SzyŻy