David Harradine: Live pinhole performance

from suna imra's website

from www.writtenwithlight.com

Haven't had a chance to blog about this performance as I have been madly immersed in dissertation world- alongside Paul Jeff in Polis, the most connected to my practice. Would love to interview David Harradine for the First hand study required for the MA, and also as i think we share a lot of common interests.

David Harradine’s Dancing Time: A Photographic Performance Marathon (2008) explores the act of pinhole photography as a live witnessed experience for the spectator. The collaboration between art and science is described as a “part performance, part installation, part experiment, and part process of making and taking photographs.” (Harradine: 2008.) In this performance, on 18th July at the Wellcome Trust, (Shifts in Perception) the London based centre for medical research, Harradine works in an interdisciplinary way bringing the theories of the science of X Ray Crystallography into representations of it through live sound, dance, lighting manipulation, with live pinhole photography recording the visual traces of the dancers’ movements. The pinhole element is as black rectangular boxes on stands round the edges of the stage, positioned as if they are the front row as spectators, the audience behind them: their prime viewing position records the unfolding action and becomes, as Barthes referred to cameras, “clocks for seeing.” (Barthes: 1980: 15.) The ‘visibility’ connection between X Ray Crystallography and photography is particularly noteworthy: the former concerned with a way of seeing things under the microscope aiding greater understanding of the molecular structure of living organisms, and the latter a visible record of part of the performance’s duration, through the science of photographic image-making “of persistence, of the temporal effort of becoming visible.” (Harradine: 2008) The performance painstakingly evolves over many hours: dancers appear to move slowly through space, creating elongated and curled forms with their bodies, using lifecycle themes of growth, decay and death, responding to gradually emerging and sometimes obscure sounds. Simultaneously Harradine allows the pinhole cameras, one at a time, to ‘perform’ by him reaching in and removing a taped shutter over the pinhole, exposing a latent image tracking the solid and gestural forms of the dancers bodies. This is clearly all orchestrated as a meticulous process for Harradine: he maps out the dancers and camera into a grid which has lights positioned over each one, and he uses a timer and notebook to record, it seems, the length of exposure time, with the completed exposures culminating in piling up the cameras. At several points I witnessed in this event, possibly to aid the sustainability for the durational nature of continuous body action, the white light that had been selectively controlled to expose the portraits, plunges to red light, the tradition of the darkroom, and the performers appear to sit and rest. Meanwhile, Harradine had disappeared to another room, to develop his pinhole images, emerging after a few minutes with the boxes refuelled with photographic paper, to exhibit through masking tape the resulting pinhole images, on the white walls around the room. The spectatorship is therefore two fold: the event of the act of photography of the images being recorded, and the viewing of the distorted, ghostly imagery as exhibited outcomes they have seen evolving, as well as to previously created ones. The spectator to this event is not party to the photographic processing, where there could have been a greater reality of the science theory behind the work. This results in the idea that the spectator is partially given a greater reality of the act of photography, alongside outcomes they both did and did not witness the creation of. The temporality of the performance and of photography remains quite separate as the photographs survive the event: the act of photography elongates the time the spectator witnesses the work, for Harradine, presents us with a combined process-driven, and outcome-based practice.

A collaboration between Suna Imra and David Harradine

Sources:
David Harradine, 2008, Dancing with time leaflet from the Wellcome Trust event, Shifts in Perception.
Roland Barthes, 1980, Camera Lucida.

camera obscura + model box potential?!

from this website showing principles of earliest image formation in a light tight box


for the shed as a pinhole camera/camera obscura- to demonstrate the process of image making ,taken from SCP website
need to think about use of pinhole/ or size of hole/ lens, which gives sharp focus on opposite wall of shed?

THOUGHT- do i want to make a pinhole camera and only devlop the image making it temporal, OR go with the camera obscura as the projection screen of the image formed is a temporal projected image? capturing the image on the windows of the shed OR removing part/whole of a wall of the shed. Usual camera obscure(eg Edinburgh) has a lens in the roof and image forms on a table inside it. Friend at university, Jack Griggs, that I have sadly lost contact with over the years, made a camera obscura for her BA show.

camera obscura- the band which i love (guess why i checked them out ages ago, and found music and name are both fab)- apparently recorded album at strongroom, 120 curtain road

back to stephen pippin- pioneering pinhole camera enthusiast

from tate website,

"Pippin's work between 1982 and 1991 involved the conversion of pieces of furniture, architectural spaces and diverse objects into elementary cameras. With these, Pippin developed a practice in which he created a strong relationship between the constructed camera and the subject of the image. He used a fridge as a camera to photograph food and a wardrobe as a camera to photograph clothes."

this works with my ideas about processes matching materials and site- garden spray bottle holding the photographic developer and begs the question- what would be appropriate for a garden shed to photograph?! temporality of the dying image with dying organic or redundant matter?

i also like this write up found on the spank the monkey site as it makes this point about Laundromat, his 1999 Turner prize entry (image above);

"Unfortunately, the problem with Pippin's work is that the process is infinitely more interesting than the results. "

not that i like the use of the word unfortunately- although in a product driven art world this statement may fit the writers' analogy?, but the process of a horse or man running up and down in a launderette, adapting a washing machine into a pinhole camera- marrying the process of washing clothing with the process of processing a photograph, showing the tech drawings and devices of adapting the machines into cameras- is this a possibility for my documentation??? the set up for the event experinces as I won't have filming of the experinences?

Paul Conneally's pinhole shed- on flickr

image from flickr- paul conneally

i have taught and used large pinhole cameras before (binhole) and wanted to see if others had used sheds- as a camera obscura or a pinhole camera. am keen to consider the idea of spraying developer on with a garden spray onto photographic paper. exposure times will need experimentation- a large school bin made into binhole was 7-10 minutes on a sunny day.

where to put a pinhole? door? wall?

Contextual Connections- Peter Richards- Pinhole performances

ok- so following a cross-course tutorial in which the link between my thoughts on linking photography and performance was questioned (which has meant that, rightly so in retrospect,now i have to really get on with considerations in a much more direct way what this connection means, what is this world in between? and how is there a purposeful link between the act of recording and/or process of image making/ engagement with photograph as a performative act in some way to start to make connected work and try to avoid mis-communication) i have started more looking back at the work of others', exploring one aspect of my proposed learning agreement for traditional photography. i must also get on with camera lucida:) i have been looking at whether anyone else had been exploring this with particular reference to pinhole photography and performance, and so peter richards popped up. i remembered having seen a copy of this work a few years ago. although lengthy the text describing his work on his website shows his whole playful process of staging long pinhole exposures in various locations and various engagements with participants.this work was written in a fantastic account linking with a photo booth art work in joshua sofaers essay, conflict of interest: performance as a spectator sport he writes; 'the camera is the performative sculptural mechanism which facilitates the performance. The giant cardboard obscura ........ [is] site (as the stage in theatre) and source (the text - the actors) of the work.' I need to come back to this text, examining its realtion to camera lucida. i should also consider how this work connects with the ideas explored in our frenchmottershead participaton project.

contextual connections- barbara ess taken from aperture

my fascination with pinhole began when teaching photography A level years ago, making cameras out of biscuit tins and pringles tubes, the latter being my favourite form for its incredible distorting capabilities. it creates vast depth of field, and also gives subjects a haunting vignetted allegorical quality, breathing an air of mystery and intrigue. the characteristics of pinhole lend them self to my theme of presence of absence.the lengthy exposures take photography back to its early origins, making you consider the implications for passage of time. this is in three ways- firstly replicated in image making qualities- ghostly trails if something moves, secondly the physical act of staying still exposing for anything from a few seconds to a minute depending on container as camera and lighting conditions- (camera shake can result or cameras get blown over if very light weight,) and thirdly the performative act of using a camera- how others perceive you (take for example a 7 minute binhole exposure of the car park at college i did with students, colleague comes out from reception having seen us on cctv, and wonders why we are standing there checking out his car with a dustbin placed next to it;) i have used pinhole in sedna stories, projected photo-illustrations for inuit folk tales phd performance by my music crazed-genius-composer-friend- dr kerry andrew, the first venture back into my own practice 2 years ago....(kerry and i were teaching together and she babbelled on about needing a visual artist for a visual-music-theatre phd project she was doing, and uh, did i know anyone that might be interested...to which i said, er, yes, me!!!)

the rest of this post is taken from a hugely inspirational book, i am not this body photographs by barabara ess, on the site www.aperture.org

"Book Synopsis
"Barbara Ess makes subtly-toned photographs that are not so much reality as visionary versions of it. Blurry and distorted, they seem to coax their subjects from mysterious spaces."
—Grace Glueck, The New York Times

"Ess's images often have a dreamy subterranean quality—part wonder and part menace—as if culled directly from the subconscious."
—Gregory Volk, ARTnews

I Am Not This Body investigates primary, personal experience and relies upon the viewer's imagination and memories. Barbara Ess is renowned for her accomplished use of the pinhole camera and her effort to "photograph what cannot be photographed." Ess's is a conscious quest to explore what she calls "ambiguous perceptual boundaries: between people, between the self and the not self, between in here and out there." In her view, "reality... includes a perceiver, who has memories, thoughts, desires, emotions—[which] a normal camera tends to omit." The strange and affecting images she coaxes from this primitive camera manage to evoke the sublime and the impossible, the textures of desire and loss.

Over the past two decades Barbara Ess has participated in numerous exhibitions, including a large retrospective of her work at the Queens Museum in 1993. She also works with video and installation."

more contextual- julia bardsley at spill festival,shunt vaults

in thinking for a while about the relationship between photography and performance i went to see julia bardsley for her trans-act performance in the shunt vaults. the performance was very interdisciplinary and used herself in many derivitive forms- through self-imitating puppets/props (ventriloquist), dolls (mini -me ), actress (in a tv set) and also delighted as i was to discover, like a kid in a sweet shop, used herself in pinhole photography. The many forms and representations of self was incredible. she was engaged in a live act of self as director, engaged in dialogue with contained self playing from a dvd in a tv set, self as actor. the mini-me doll bardsley used here was self in the same green tailored suit holding a video camera, and became real self videoing mini-self and vice versa. i liked the fact that we could view the real live footage of the doll being filmed but that it would have also been interesting to investigate a way of the doll actually filming back.....who is watching who? ...the doll inspired my in the film- sound art collaboration i did with Ash Sargant for Wormhole Saloon at Whitechaopel Art Gallery using a mini me customised dolls house doll of self as an artist making work.

the use of pinhole photography in this work used this form of photographys incredibly ghostly, haunting qualities of very long exposures, giving an air of menace/nostalgia/the presence of absence. i liked the fact that you viewed the work as you entered the first of the 3 phases of the performance like a gallery, that as you progressed through the space, you came to witness through spyholes the work again, but this time in the world locked beyond in the wall. in this trapped world was suffocating fractures of the organised , precise gallery world, this tiny space was disrupted, abandoned, ransacked. minature pinhole photos were lying on the floor of the worlds' beyond space. this reduction in scale was also fascinating and peering into the behind the scenes, it was like the junk room at my parents house where eveything was thrown if there was an impending visit from my granny, giving the illusion of we always live like this;).... from this i have considered use of the relationship between the real live act and then the toys/dolls/scale model derivitive and how ghostly pinhole can begin an experience tracing shifting identities.