Episode Five: Counter Encounters
þ thorns þ
In this episode, the trio reflect on their recent collaborative work called Ritual Unions, held at Netwerk Aalst in Belgium. They also explore themes of ethnography, movement, history, and ritual, and they discuss where they would like to take their collective practice in the future.
This episode is a conversation between the three members of the curatorial and research initiative Counter Encounters, Laura Huertas Millán, Onyeka Igwe, and Rachael Rakes. Together they engage forms of anti and alter ethnographies in cinema and contemporary art. Laura is a Colombian artist and filmmaker based in Brussels, Onyeka is a London born and based moving image artist and researcher, and Rachael is a curator and writer from the US, living in the Netherlands and Greece. In this episode, the trio reflect on their recent collaborative work called Ritual Unions, held at Netwerk Aalst in Belgium. They also explore themes of ethnography, movement, history, and ritual, and discuss where they would like to take their collective practice in the future.
Find out more about Laura, Onyeka and Rachael on our People page.
To the Glossary, Onyeka donates Enunciation 
This series is produced and edited by Hester Cant.
The series is co-curated by Emma McCormick-Goodhart and Martin Hargreaves, with concept and direction by Martin Hargreaves and Izzy Galbraith.
Transcript:
MARTIN
Hello, you're listening to þ thorns þ, a podcast where we bring you conversations between artists in relation to concepts of the choreographic 
Every time we invite people to collaborate with us, we also invite them to donate to the glossary, which is hosted on our website. There is a full transcript available for this episode on our website together with any relevant links to resources mentioned. This episode is a conversation between the three members of the curatorial and research initiative Counter Encounters, Laura Huertas Millán, Onyeka Igwe, and Rachael Rakes. Together they engage forms of anti and alter ethnographies in cinema and contemporary art.
Laura is a Colombian artist and filmmaker based in Brussels, Onyeka is a London born and based moving image artist and researcher, and Rachael is a curator and writer from the US, living in the Netherlands and Greece. This conversation was recorded in three countries simultaneously, Laura in Brussels, Onyeka in London, and Rachael in Amsterdam. You will hear the group reflect on their recent collaborative work called Ritual Unions, held at Netwerk Aalst in Belgium. The program was designed around filmmaker Maya Deren's work, titled Ritual and Transfigured Time. In the conversation, they also explore themes of ethnography, movement, history, and ritual, and they discuss where they would like to take their collective practice in the future.
The transition sounds you will hear in this episode are the Mediterranean Sea, bells and goats in Senegal, and other field recordings taken by Onyeka. You will also hear a clapping rhythm, and the sound of the crowd at a pro-Palestinian protest in Amsterdam, recorded by Rachel.
ONYEKA
I think we can just go.
RACHAEL
We can go. Okay. I can start.
ONYEKA
Cool.
RACHAEL
Our prompter idea to start this conversation off was to begin from the most recent program that we put together as Counter Encounters, and that's called Ritual Unions. And that took place at an institution called Netwerk Aalst in Belgium.
The prompt we were given, by the institution, was to make a film and discursive program around the work Ritual in Transfigured Time by Maya Deren and use our own kind of frameworks and approaches, in terms of investigating ethnography, movement, history, various knowledges and various approaches to ideas of ritual and dance in this case, toward complementing that work, challenging that work, thinking around it. And that program was also part of a larger exhibition under the name Ritual in Transfigured Time. So, our program was called Ritual Unions, and our member, Onyeka, was also in the exhibition.
So, we wanted to start off by reflecting a bit on that program. How it went, what kind of ideas were produced or that we were surprised by, and how we would think about intellectually or research wise, going forward what things, maybe what gaps there are, or what we got excited about continuing to explore that's a starting point and we'll take it from there.
ONYEKA
It was quite good because we were all together in the same place and watching the program. There's one thing thinking about the program and making this like big spreadsheet of all these different films that we felt fit the bill, and watching stuff together and commenting on it, and then seeing it actually as a program, in the space is like a different kind of experience.
So, I was really curious about what the experience of seeing the program, with those films next to each other or after each other, I should say, with other people was for you, like what were your takeaways from actually experiencing the program?
RACHAEL
For me, one of the more charged or critical moments, I think, for all of us, was this decision and necessity to show a work featuring, choreographed by Katherine Dunham, who is this often, silenced inspiration co-worker or accomplice to Maya Deren's work especially her work in Haiti. And so that felt very important, and at the same time, the work that we showed, because of the context it was in, in this sort of Hollywood production that was extremely Hollywood gazey towards black Caribbean dance, it's both a problematic and a necessity and I think that was one element that especially stood out as something that we had to think about how to deal, within and after the fact, how to translate that to an audience, how much to be able to have a conversation after and how to position it.
LAURA
Yeah, I feel like it was very informative to see the works within this projection space. And I was very compelled by the reactions of the audiences, because in how we work with curation, I have the impression that we have a pretty inclusive mode, where each one of us contributes with ideas and works. I'm not sure we necessarily foresee what the whole thing will be for people who are just entering a space and don't necessarily know our work.
So, every single program that we do feels like an experiment not only in curating but also an experiment in spectatorship because it's difficult to anticipate what people will think about the works that we show. Also, we sometimes show works that can be provocative. We don't necessarily choose the works because we feel they are good or bad, or that we like them or we don't like them. I have the impression that there's a reflection that goes further than that, and has also perhaps a political component. I don't know if you agree with that. And so, showing precisely that piece, I felt very nervous when it was screening at the event itself, because I was anticipating a certain reaction from the audience. But then, hearing the actual reactions of the audience and some people really appreciating that film to be screened, and even saying that it was important for them to see that film, and shifting the nervosity that I could feel. That was a very interesting experience for me.
RACHAEL
In terms of structuring, I guess, as a group we have a tendency to make programs that make sense to us, you know, individual programs that each have their kind of sub theme, but we hope that they connect either thematically or tonally, or they're up and down tonally, but there's something that comes out of them together that wouldn't otherwise come, but that can often be expressed or taken quite subtly, and certain things end up sticking out.
ONYEKA
Yeah, and I think that the rationale behind including that Katherine Dunham work wasn't necessarily that this is a film that we all think is really amazing. It was more like, a reflection on the absence sometimes, or often, absence of Katherine Dunham in conversations about Maya Deren, even though Deren was introduced to Haitian voodoo practices through Katherine Dunham and was like her secretary, but like how things have panned out is that linkage is not so clear, so we wanted to include one of her films. But I was just thinking, I'm not sure how much I've actually seen Katherine Dunham's dancing. I've known of her for a long time, I've known of her writing, I've known about the Dunham technique. I remember there's these, like, really amazing videos in the Library of Congress that are like, an encyclopaedia of the Dunham technique and these dancers in like full body leotards and some pastel colours performing them. But I haven't actually seen that much of her performing, and so, in trying to include something of her presence, it was like we went to find it, I would say. And It's hard to figure out how to necessarily signpost that in a program, that the inclusion of a film is an attempt to express an idea, or to make a point, rather than that this is about a film that we’re necessarily, I think, aesthetically or formally or conceptually is, like, very interesting.
And that program was loosely themed around, different depictions of dancing black bodies, or blackness in dance through time. And I think something that I noticed in experiencing it in person, was the relationship between Carnival of Rhythm, which was a Katherine Dunham film that was directed by, someone else, it wasn't directed by her. So, it's not coming from a place of her agency 
LAURA
Yeah, I have the impression that the film made by Victoria Santa Cruz also speak to that ownership of the gaze, and then afterwards having Anna Pi presenting her films and also talking about her choreographic
TRANSITION SOUND: Walking on gravel
RACHAEL
I was also thinking about the Dunham and Kay in terms of the Sara Gómez work. Because the Dunham is staged and the Gómez is more of a documentary style. But, the difference in agency
LAURA
Yes, we were also mentioning how this approach of programming and curating can also be perceived as an essay or having an essayistic impulse. And, I was wondering if there were connections for both of you between this program and the project that we did around writing and more, I would say, essayistic in a literal way forms. I had the impression that it resonated a lot with questions that we addressed in the publication that we did with World Records. But I was curious to hear your thoughts about it if you were in agreement with me.
ONYEKA
Do you mean like, the idea that with World Records we were like, trying to showcase diversity of perspectives around the theme? With the idea that a reader would come to their own conclusion rather than, I mean, yeah, I guess there's something about what's the difference between an essay and argument? Cause I don't know if I'd say there's like an argument in the programs necessarily, I think there's like a question being posed or like a direction. And Laura, do you mean that like the same thing is happening in World Records? That the compilation of papers don't present like a coherent argument, but instead they veer off in different ways, and a reader can come up with their own take on it?
LAURA
Yes, I guess, or Rachel, you wanted to respond first?
RACHAEL
Yeah, I guess I would say the similarity is that, yeah, within each of the individual programs and maybe altogether, also similarly to what we did at Tate Modern, on the encounters over several plants, and later did it in New York, that with these film programs there are several thematic inroads and comparisons, but also different styles of approach. And Laura's prompt about World Records, which also to contextualize, World Records is a journal that's invited us to edit an issue that we called technological ecologies-
ONYEKA
-of encounter?
RACHAEL
of Encounter. And yes, Technological Ecologies of Encounter. And one of the works that definitely sticks out for me, in terms of dealing specifically with the conversation around agency
LAURA
I mean, I was thinking about these connections because of the things that you just said, but also because there is something in each one of these projects that speaks to the name of our collective, Counter Encounters, and how we have been actively thinking about the relationships between filmmaking slash cinema and colonialism. And I noticed that in many of the works that we have been studying or that we have been addressing since the beginning, there are several bodies and people dancing, and I remember that in the editorial for this journal, World Records.
We had a conversation about early cinema, and the kind of gaze that was constructed and built at that particular moment. We also had a very strong connection with colonialism or was a direct consequence of it. And was also pushing the subjects being represented, to perform a folklorized version of movement. Onyeka, also in your films, this has been pretty present as well and, I guess, in my own work I have also been looking very actively to these early cinema and photography images that are also related with ethnography, so that is also why we came together.
Yeah, I had the impression that this program that we did for Netwerk Aalst, that was more literally linked to film and dance, was actually revealing some topics that we have been perhaps obsessed since the beginning, that have to do with how bodies in movement have been captured by the cinematic apparatus, but have also been sites of resistance towards that precise colonial gaze.
ONYEKA
Yeah, there's some kind of, I don't know what the word is it, like tension or bind or conflict, in there or…When I was really a lot more engaged in like colonial film and looking at it a lot, you know, there's so much dance in these films, and it's very much the way that a colonial gaze like understands and tries to represent a lack of civilization.
I was actually screening one of my works recently and someone said, did I notice that in these colonial films that no time do you see the people depicted in colonized countries at that time speaking, in their own language or any language, but you see them dancing, and dancing becomes the lingua franca[IG1] (#_msocom_1) of the other. And that's the only way in which they can speak according to the colonial thought technology of like representation.
But, I was really struck by this Katherine McKittrick quote where she says that dance is the enunciation
The stuff that Laura was writing about in our introductory text for World Records, around like cinema's specific capacity for capturing movement and the entwinement of a kind of history of dance on screen and the development of cinema, speak to that, but also the ways in which, in that round table, other ways of using the camera, of thinking about cinema as a technology are presented, that maybe allow for this enunciation
TRANSITION SOUND: Bells and singing in Senegal.
RACHAEL
I think it's maybe also important to bring up that, the early colonial works, and you know, even until now you can trace the way that documentary looks at others, these works were, when they were looking at dance and not conversation, they were looking at dance in this way that seemed to be a part of life, right? So, either it was classified as a ritual, so these white audiences in Europe were being led into these, you know, this kind of secret practices, or it's just thought of as a cultural assumption, that like dance is a part of daily life and there's something sort of, different and other about that. Because it's not dance that's like, everyone buys a ticket and goes to a stage and sees dance there, that's what dance is supposed to be, it's not supposed to be on the street, and so these like, these implicated values of like, why is there dance on the street? I don't know, I think it's worth picking out, because it also then relates to how all of these various things that can be called dance are recorded and remembered and understood and articulated differently, even today as are thought of within art, as are thought of within anthropology. And I was thinking about Diana Taylor, this idea of what ends up being considered a performance or performances, are what is being considered a ritual, or as she puts it, the difference between what gets archived and what gets considered part of a repertoire. Or a more informal kind of archive that's only passed on through body, and is quite similar to say traditional oral histories, which they're often, how colonized people before they were colonized, were passing on information. So, these imbricated imbalances or binaries or these imbricated assumptions about, what is knowledge passing and what is art versus community, are already there from the beginning in several different ways.
LAURA
Mm hmm. Also connecting the different dots here. I have a question that could be used by us, as a kind of provocation. Is dance, is it really possible to capture dance? Or is dance really filmable? If I wonder, the different things that we have been mentioning make me think that there's something about how dance cannot be essentially captured by the camera, that there's something that is always at odds with what the cinematic apparatus is from the beginning. That there's something, that even if we are recording through images and movement, in time, there is something that is intrinsically always resisting that sort of capture.
ONYEKA
Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I would put it in that way. I guess the question for me is more about. Is the technology of cinema always about producing distance? Is image capture, is like the kind of freezing of representation through an image, always gonna result in that kind of, colonial gaze? And with that question, the second question emerges is like, how, within a film program, can that idea be communicated to an audience?
RACHAEL
And it can also be, that it's not about a, a one-to-one communication or transmission of what's happening, right? The film becomes something else. And that can be, whatever the frameworks are, or the conditions are under, which it was made, the film is offering something else.
We're talking a little bit about this idea of can performance be anything but, but live? And I was thinking about Peggy Phelan's ontology of disappearance, that like, performance is only in the present. Which, okay sure, most things are, but it also reminds me of this pressure on ethnography, and say like, nonfiction at large, to present reality, and that in itself is so deeply problematic, and yet underexplored, in terms of the knowledge structures that are behind this concept of reality. Even if these practices or movements can't be, the feeling can't necessarily be transmitted, and of course, this is something that Deren and others tried to work on, by trying to make it, with say, The Divine Horseman, making the work disorienting, and making it based on sort of feeling and thinking at the same time, and not just a cognitive transmission, or not just a simple sort of representation, which is never of course exactly simple.
But, I think if we understand the actual looseness of what's happening between the eye of the lens and the people, or objects that are being studied, that within that dynamic, there are so many different ways of expressing something and it doesn't have to be the index to the thing. But it's like, we have all of these possibilities for more kinds of equality or more kinds of imaginary within that, in a super fundamental way. And I, but I think, rather than like, a sort of aggressive hatred towards ethnography, which we all maybe have tendencies towards occasionally, thinking about like working on it via this openness, or this sense of like, if we reconceptualize this openness.
LAURA
Hmm. Is it connected to what you were mentioning? The idea that Diana Taylor's ideas, like the tension between the archive and the repertoire, because it seems like, it's not enough to just record the dance event for this recording to actually become an archive of dancing. And most of the choreographers that I have had discussions about this question with, are not necessarily recording their performances, they have another set of memory objects, of transmission. And so, I wonder if this, what you just said, the fact that the film, it's its own thing, its own space, connects to that, that it is not a supposedly archive of an event that happened in reality, but it's a third space. It's really, really another different time space.
RACHAEL
Yeah. One of the propositions of Diana and many other performance scholars is that, performance is passed body to body, right? So it's this ongoing kind of chain of transmission that's not about documentation, but it's like, the one performer teaches another, and they teach another, and it goes on that way, and that's actually how it's archived. And there's been a lot of arguments, I know like, Ralph Lemon was able to convince MoMA, for instance, that his work is archived as that, re-teaching and passing on these bodily movements and where it came from. Which for me, it reminds me a lot of oral history, and like, of these so called, intangible archives, what would be archives, and so then, also the privilege we give to these other kinds of archives, and why, when all of these things are actual sources of transmission.
ONYEKA
I guess sometimes that can only happen from film, or not that it can only happen, but it does happen through film. There's something about what that Laura Marks book, The Skin of the Film, so what if a body in and of itself and that transmission can happen through a kind of viewership, which is something that I think, yeah, like Anna Pi's work is doing, or is like thinking through, or is a version of. And I actually, unfortunately, have never seen any of her live performances. And I think her films are doing very different work, there's like actually very little that you see of her moving, really. But I definitely have had the experience, like what you were saying, Rachel, of there being multiple possibilities within some of the kind of structures of certain genres of filmmaking. So yes, there can be this violence of the intention of the filmmaker, of the origin of the film. But within that, there are like, many different interpretations. Once it's an object that is social, then we can understand it in many different ways, like I think about looking at a lot of the different colonial films and, like, engaging with certain different kind of gazes within the people who are being filmed, that I think are going against the intentions of the filmmakers.
I do think that these works can also, like, channel something that can result in that body-to-body archiving. Because fundamentally if we are thinking about early cinema, the only kind of representations of certain people and places are gonna be through a colonial ethnographic gaze. And as we saw with the Katherine Dunham, like, many of the kind of residue of her performances are through like this kind of Hollywood male director taking the work that she was doing and packaging it in a particular way. So, if that's what you have as material…I don't really know what I meant. But, I'm just like saying that's all you have.
LAURA
There, there's also something exciting for me in what you're saying, in the fact that, this is what actually curating can do. The fact that, it is necessary to denaturalize the idea that something that is recorded, is by essence, an archive. It is not necessarily an archive, it is a recording, which brings another set of questions. And so, is that Katherine Dunham recording an archive of her work? Perhaps not necessarily, because it is too partial, too fragmented, too scarce as a memory. It can be part of something larger, and perhaps speaks to the context in which she was working and operating, but it doesn't constitute an absolute reference of what she was actually doing. For me, it's interesting to see that the provocation of, can dance be recorded, can also be perceived as, is dance possible to archive through film? And perhaps it is not, necessarily, which brings other sets of questions.
ONYEKA
And how do you communicate that in a program that doesn't involve, like, a long essay? Like, how can, yeah, how do you think we maybe did it for Ritual Unions and, like, how could it be iterated upon or, improved upon?
RACHAEL
Well, I think because we had an object to work around for this, which is Ritual in Transfigured Time and Maya Deren's legacy and aesthetics to some degree, not that we adhere to that entirely, but it gave us this anchor point to focus on this. And I think with all of our programming is also, you know, like research on the spot research through our own knowledges, that we bring to each other, through putting, finding out what happens when you put these works together. But, I think it's sort of all part of an ongoing research that is for us, but also for the creation of these ideas and I don't think you can ask one program to do that, but you can ask one program to do a very small fragment of that.
Yeah, and just hope to have discourse around it and an interaction around it. And, I was thinking about this moment where we had this discussion with Anna Pi. after we showed her works, and that was the longest discursive part of the day, and, towards the end she brings together the audience to do this very basic rhythm, this like very globally known rhythm, right? And-
LAURA
-Do you remember which rhythm was it?
[Onyeka laughs. Rachael attempts a clapping rhythm. Stops.]
RACHAEL
No.
[All laugh]
ONYEKA
I've forgotten actually. Do you remember Laura?
LAURA
No! That’s terrible.
ONYEKA
Yeah, we should try and remember it.
LAURA
Yes, yes.
TRANSITION SOUND: Clapping rhythm.
RACHAEL
But, I liked that I have a feeling that she knew the audience, which it was majority you know, white Belgian people who don't dance in the streets, or you know, who don't maybe, hardly dance at clubs and don't really have that much of a that kind of rhythm in their life.
LAURA
Oh, I would, I'm sorry, I live now in Belgium. I want to advocate for a Belgium sense of rhythm, which I have seen is very, very alive.
ONYEKA
What a way to put it, don't have that rhythm in their lives.
[All laugh].
RACHAEL
Yeah. Like, don’t think of that as a part of, like…like, don't expect to be, like, ready to do that, and often go off beat, and don't have like a sense of that, I'm not binarising it.
But, I think that there was a sense of like, knowing the audience and being like, we're going to do this and knowing that there might be some tension with people. I mean, of course, all audience interaction has this moment of like, oh no, I've got to do the thing, but then also being able to keep time suddenly?
And I, that for me, you know, just provided a little bit of a, also like an ethnographic gaze towards the audience, to be like, okay, let's do this together. We can do it. But then it was like, everyone was like, ahh, you know? Yeah, sorry! Not to be like, yeah, Belgians are without a sense of rhythm…
ONYEKA
No, but like, even on the stage, I was like, oh wow, okay, everyone's gonna be able to see me clapping now. I actually felt quite confident about the clapping, I thought I was okay with it. But, it did put us all on the spot, and it…What I felt was, that it broke something, like, it broke this, like, usual way. I mean, yeah, I think audience interaction does that quite a lot, but it was like quite an easy, it wasn't like an aggressive version of that. I mean, she was really leading us into this space where we could all clap together and just switch something in that talk.
And in general, in the program that came before, and the program that came after, I think there was something about that discursive space, that made everything that you saw before, seem different and everything that you saw after, it gave it a certain energy as well.
LAURA
Yeah! I was thinking about how brilliant that gesture from Anna was, because it was in a way, a gesture that transmitted what dance ultimately can be. An immediate prompt of enthusiasm and present and liveness and, that was worth 1000 or 1,000,000 words, actually, to just be doing that. It made me think about an artist based in Belgium, actually, called Audrey Cottin, who worked around clapping groups and the history of clapping groups in theatre. And, I don't know if you are aware of this story, but historically in theatre, there are these people that are part of the audience that can be paid, or not, to just bring the enthusiasm into the venue or the room. So, there's something very powerful in how staging that moment of clapping together somehow, perhaps by nature, cannot be aggressive. It's like it sparks immediately something joyful and enthusiastic.
RACHAEL
Yeah, I think that was the intention, but I just thought maybe there was a tinge of provocation too, but I don't know.
ONYEKA
No, I think that there was,
RACHAEL
Okay, yeah, just checking.
TRANSITION SOUND: Clapping Rhythm.
ONYEKA
What you were saying about Diana Taylor and this idea of bodies, reciprocating bodies. That's the kind of thing, in many ways, that's, I think what she was trying to say. That like, there is this thing that we pass on, or that gets passed on, that is not about cognition, but it is about, like, a bodily response that exists in us, in a way that we don't necessarily have a history of, or we can't say where we first heard it, or where we first learnt it, but it resides in us in some way.
LAURA
Mmm. If I can come back to your earlier question Onyeka, about, how do you communicate all of that without writing a very long essay? And us coming back to Anna Pi's proposal of asking the audience to do this clapping exercise, or ritual, together. I was thinking about a word that we have been working on since the beginning, which is opacity and what's the potential of opacity? But also, how we negotiate in almost every single project that we do, a question around radical pedagogy
RACHAEL
I think opacity is transmission, but only for some, you know? It's against this idea of legibility for this, like, putative all, which also, often infers the all being Western. So like, legibility is, like, stuck with this idea still of a Western eye or Western audience as I see it, in what I read, or in like, general, say global art history and culture. So, opacity is like, on one hand, it's about concealing to make the audience who knows who it's for, you know, who it's for, and then also, yeah, I think very literally concealing for protection. But those are, for me themselves, forms of art and forms of language that are quite important as articulations in themselves, like they are a way to transmit. And even that idea of, against legibility, it's not just the refusal, it's actually also a way to transmit without capitulating to an idea of transmitting, in precisely this way or explaining.
And I think that's a little bit of what we're doing with film programming. And you know, I still contend that they are essays, even if they're loose ones, and that as they come together, if you were to watch the entire day…So, after our talk with Anna, and that ended almost with the clapping, we had a film program around bodies in space. So, suddenly that imputes a different feeling about that program, one might hope, of what is it to be, what can you do with the body in space? How do simple gestures affect the space itself? Affect those around it? And there are all kinds of degrees of opacity there, of the confusions around putting oneself in this way.
Most of the works in that program, I would say, have quite a few degrees of opacity. If you're just watching them on the surface, you're just looking at a body doing one thing, quite structurally. And then, we ended the program with Derek Jarman's Will You Dance With Me? So, we go from that, to just people dancing wildly and having joy, and having fun in a way that seems counter pedagogical, but also in the long arc of the day, it could be seen as pedagogical as well.
ONYEKA
Yeah, I think that that third program was like, pretty much entirely without language, like spoken language, I would say. And it was interesting to me the ways in which, yeah, that there was this like, recurrence. Of space in the broadest sense of the word, not necessarily place, but also, well not necessarily like architecture, also bodies of water as well. And how movement changes in those kinds of spaces. But also, what you both were saying in terms of this clap and this kind of communication, like how our programs can also represent other knowledges in the programming itself. So, like, instead of writing a huge essay, not that I'm against huge essays, but instead of using the written word, like, how can the program also use a more sensorial approach to creating meaning making.
And it was making me recall the series that we did with Tate, Encounters Over Several Plants, with how expanded cinema came into our vocabulary, and I don't think it was necessarily intentional that we were like, let's make a program that is like expanded cinema, but it just emerged in thinking about plants, again as this other kind of knowledge system that sits outside of, a kind of, more like, Western empirical system, that then the program would involve cinema that was not images, for example, that was just sound. Or the lighting a screen as opposed to like showing an image or, we had these kind of music soundtracks that prepared a viewer for what they were going to watch. So, there's like all these ways in which we've experimented with, in the past, that confer some of the things that I think, that we're getting at in the essay of a program, but using other knowledges.
TRANSITION SOUND: Pro-Palestinian protest in Amsterdam.
RACHAEL
I've been thinking about the text in World Records also, Did the fire read the stories it burnt?* by Chrystel Oloukoï. And they write about these possibilities of archives in the context of a large-scale archival fire. They write about the possibility of it, archive as taste, right? Or, you know, these various forms of why is an archive only this thing, these ideas of ephemeral archives? And also, going back to what you both mentioned about the double distancing
LAURA
And when you say the double distancing
RACHAEL
No, I mean, I was just responding to you guys. I think something similar, but yeah, no, I've never coined it before. Yeah.
[All laugh]
LAURA
[Quoting Rachael] It's what I would call the double distancing
RACHAEL
I'm paraphrasing myself. I…
LAURA
No, but it's a very nice way to put it. The double distancing
RACHAEL
Yeah, the idea of being inside or being part of it, not just dancing, but as the filmmaker you're also participating.
LAURA
Yeah, and perhaps without wanting to sound arrogant, but I have the impression that being a filmmaker has so much to do with being a choreographer, even more than perhaps being a theatre director. Because in a way, cinema is such a microscope, every tiny event becomes a monumental happening. And, in that sense, whenever I get into a situation of filming something along with people, it becomes a situation where I have to understand how my body is vibrating with these people, or how we can connect in a way that goes beyond words. It has so much to do with our body language. And if you have the camera in your hands, it has a lot to do also with finding the tempo, the rhythm of a scene, there is a sort of vibration that you have to tune in your filmmaking during the recording moment.
ONYEKA
I think there’s like decisions, like, I'm just thinking about early cinema and certain kind of ethnographic cinema, that is about distance, that is about this kind of long-range camera, pretty much disconnected from the camera person's body. Kind of, viewing a large scene, versus, a kind of, filmmaking or camera operation that is about holding a camera and moving, balancing your weight in different ways to support the camera , and move around with the people that you're filming or not even just the people, the object of the gaze.
Those are quite distinct approaches. So, I think there's ways in which it can be choreography. Or maybe there are different types of choreography, but I just think there is a difference in the proximity to the body, that happens with certain kinds of filmmaking.
RACHAEL
And then, of course, approaches to sound. But, what I was thinking when you brought this up, Laura, is there's also this act of editing, right? So, then what is, then what role does that take on, and all that you can do with that? And so, you have what you mean to do and what you accomplish, in the act of photography and that presence, and then you have this whole other realm of, you've referred to it as weaving. There are many ways to refer to it outside of these kinds of technical, like, cut, cut, cut, here's what we do, kind of, ideas.
TRANSITION SOUND: Hammering in NYC.
ONYEKA
In all of these stages of filmmaking, there are many different approaches that could match on to certain types of knowledge. It also makes you think of, like, projection as well. Like, what does it mean to project onto material? As opposed of projecting onto, like a, kind of, traditional screen in a cinema, like what difference does that make?
I was thinking about the, kind of, experiments in expanded cinema when people like William Raban, were unfurling a reel of film in a cinema space, like precisely a bodily choreography of showing people what this actually was. And I think, that's been explored so much in film as material and analogue cinema and I do think there are potentials for it in digital, but there's not such an extensive, maybe like, history of that. But, I'm curious about how bodies can intervene in digital material in the same way that they have with analogue material.
LAURA
Yeah. I was also thinking about, how for this program at Netwerk Aalst, we were thinking about film and dance and choreography. And the first thing that came to my mind when Onyeka shared this invitation with Rachel and I was, oh, I would really like to show films that we don't necessarily associate with video dance. I felt already the fatigue of, oh I don't want to see video dance anymore, not because it shouldn't exist or something like this, but because the type of films that I had seen so far within institutional settings, linking dance and film were very much alike. And I even had this sort of stereotype in mind of HD films in slow motion, with bodies dancing and moving, which I have the impression I saw so much when I was in art school. So, I was already like, no I don't want to go there. And I really enjoyed the process of us going towards the program that we just mentioned, but also the program that we called Creek and other shorts, but I believe we had another name for that specific program.
ONYEKA
I think that was the bodies in space one.
LAURA
Yes, the bodies in space one with works by Ana Mendieta - Creek, Valie Export, Emilija Škarnulytė, Ana Maria Millan, Monica Restrepo and Steffani Jemison. And I really enjoyed the process of bringing these films within a program that was about choreography and film.
RACHAEL
I think you're also making me think about a broader framework that we, when we started out Counter Encounters, even before we were calling it maybe a collective or Counter Encounters, an initial, and maybe still ongoing, idea is to work on the encounter, work on repairing
So, the acts of refusal that come through film and art that have, like, seemingly nothing to do with ethnography or nothing to do with nonfiction, that there can be fiction films that can be playful, that yeah, there could be all kinds of things. And I think in our first programs such as the one that we did at Art of the Real, that was throughout, like setting a place for like, we're not trying to show like a better version of something, we're trying to show all of these other ways, all these other kinds of aesthetic approaches or political approaches or however you want to call it, that could also inform some kind of, other constellation, a more plural approach to encounter. Which is, you know, ultimately what I would say in the broadest sense, what we're trying to get at, right? Like not fixing it, not reversing it, but pluralizing it you know, truly.
LAURA
Yeah, and I would also like to add to that, if you agree with me, that it's not necessarily doing tabula rasa of other works, because I truly believe that we are by no means the only collective working on these questions. And I have the impression that, yes we have three voices coming together, and each one of these three voices is bringing a whole community with them, of things that they have seen before, or conversations that are still in process. You were talking about constellations, and we are like, part of a wider constellation and trying to pass on perhaps something. This is how I feel it.
ONYEKA
Something that Laura said reminded me…yeah, this impetus to not do the expected thing, or not to use the forms, the traditional forms that are, kind of, a given. I remember that coming up, when we were discussing the program, and it just reminded me of that piece, Time Clock Piece, and how there was an interest in reflecting or representing in some way the kind of gestural, but like, quotidian movement in film, and offering that as another way of thinking about dance, or ritual as well. Yeah, I just wanted to mention that film because I hadn't seen it before and I really enjoyed it, I think.
RACHAEL
Tehching Hsieh, the time, that time clock piece. This one-year performance punching into the clock of, yeah, in this series of one year performances that he did, he's amazing.
ONYEKA
I really like watching people dance. So, like, that was also this kind of desire that I also had, that I just wanted to have those type of films as well. And that's, I think, a little bit where the Jarman came in. In the end, I was just like, oh, let's end on this kind of, I think that we talked a lot about like these kinds of joyous expressions of movement. But I guess I was wanting to think about all those things, and ask the question of like, where do we see the possibilities for this program or this kind of interest to go next? And generally, also for this approach to programming to develop.
LAURA
Yeah, I really like when you asked, how do we transmit all of these things without writing a very long essay? Because there's another component to that question that is the fact that, every time that we engage in a project, it feels like, when we present the result, the project hasn't ended yet, and it gives me an opportunity or an argument to keep this conversation with you guys. And so, I think that's also why, something that I appreciate about working together. It feels like we don't have a linear time where we're saying, okay, we're going to work about this specific theme, and then we do the program, or we write the essay, and it's done, we just start all over again to do something else.
It feels like every project is a step within a larger flux of conversations and research, which is actually closer to the way I like to work. It feels, in a way, slow processing and slow producing things, and that everything we do is also a prompt to continue expanding, or thinking further specific questions.
RACHAEL
Yeah, we've had several meetings where we've thought, okay, what's the next topic or what's the topic we want to bring back, or what do we want to focus on thematically? And I wonder if even not now, but in a larger sense, it might be that we're really thinking towards like, a methodology, or some other kind of framework, that all of these things might fit into, or many of them might fit into as examples or case studies or, ways of expressing, that articulating that, because I think we often are talking in the same, or we have been talking in similar ways.
LAURA
Also, we've been working together for three years now.
RACHAEL
Yeah. As a trio, it's four years, yeah. As actual Counter Encounters. So, it's time to get real.
[All laugh]
MARTIN
Thank you, Laura, Onyeka, and Rachael for this rich and detailed conversation. For the transcript of this episode and links to resources mentioned, go to rosechoreographicschool.com. The link for this page will also be in the podcast episode description, wherever you're listening right now, if you'd like to give us any feedback, give us a rating wherever you're listening to this, or email us on info@rosechoreographicschool.com.
This podcast is a Rose Choreographic School production. It's produced and edited by Hester Kant, co-curated by Emma McCormick-Goodhart and Martin Hargreaves, with additional concept and direction by Izzy Galbraith. Thanks for listening. Goodbye.
Bibliography:
Counter Encounters Works:
Technological Ecologies of Encounter - World Records
All Bodies radiate light | Tate Modern
Creek and other shorts | Netwerk Aalst
Art of the Real 2021: Counter Encounters
Other Works:
Ritual in Transfigured Time - Maya Deren (Wikipedia)
Carnival of Rhythm - Katherine Dunham (YouTube)
"keep at it"- NIC Kay (Vimeo)
Me Gritaron Negra - Victoria Santa Cruz (YouTube)
Divine Horseman - Maya Deren (YouTube)
Will You Dance with Me? - Derek Jarman (YouTube)
One Year Performance 1980-1981 - Tehching Hsieh (Google Arts & Culture)
People:
Victoria Santa Cruz - Wikipedia
Katherine McKittrick - Wikipedia
Ana Pi – corpo & imagens ♡ NA MATA LAB
William Raban Profile | University of the Arts London
Tatjana Pieters - Gallery Viewer
Books and other texts:
Bhabha, H.K. (1994). The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.
Green, O., Hernández Palmar, D., Huertas Millán, L., Kuiru, N., Mora, P., Orozco Domicó, M. and Villafaña, A. (2022). Sovereignties, Activisms, and Audiovisual Spiritualities of the Indigenous Peoples of Colombia. Technological Ecologies, [online] 7(2). Available at: https://worldrecordsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/WR-Vol7-06.pdf.
Marks, L.U. (2000). The skin of the film intercultural cinema, embodiment, and the senses. Durham [U.A.] Duke Univ. Press [Ca.
McKittrick, K. (2023). A conversation on Black Dreamcatchers. Available at: https://dwellerforever.blog/2023/05/katherine-mckittrick-a-conversation-on-black-dreamcatchers.
Oloukoï, C. (2022). Did the fire read the stories it burnt?*. Technological Ecologies, [online] 7(5). Available at: https://worldrecordsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/WR-Vol7-05.pdf.
Phelan, P. (1996). Unmarked : the politics of performance. London: Routledge.