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[00:10]

JER 4(2): 3 — “Three Illuminated Videos” (29:33)

Kyle Barrett (8:40)

“Illuminated: Antisyzygy”

Ilona Krawczyk (10:00)

“More than one voice”

Charlotta Grimfjord Cederblad (10:17)

“Preparation”

[00:20]

Illuminated: Antisyzygy

Dr. Kyle Barrett

Abstract

In the realms of Screen Production Research (SPR), an emerging field within the academy, filmmaking can be seen as “a parasitic creative practice, a hybrid medium that takes from and incorporates many other forms of expression” (Berkeley 2018: 31). It is within this “parasitic” notion that I wish to contextualise the video article.

Blending film and painting, the video postulates several questions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. This project explores the notion of “antisyzygy” or the in-between state that, globally, society has found itself. The intent here is to embody questions from a Scottish ex-pat (myself) living and working in Aotearoa (New Zealand).

The painting represents a response to Scotland’s current situation with another Independence Referendum being touted, which is once again developing out of frustrations from the lack of governing autonomy as, increasingly, the Break-Up of Britain appears to be on the horizon. Here, we locate a sense of an assemblage within Scotland, its identity being undermined and reshaped beyond its control, struggling to maintain its “Europeanness”.

Filmed in a continuous, uncut shot, I draw attention to elements of the body as the painting comes to fruition. This, effectively, demonstrates that the body is a “mode of perception, [that] can contribute to increasingly rich understandings of human perception” (Lala and Kinsella 2011: 79). Throughout the running time are quotations, reflections, and illuminations that stem from this mixed approach of SPR and embodied practice.

This is in an effort to understand if meaning is generated through the practice or disseminated upon completion. The mix of sources range from Deleuze and Guattari, and their discussions of multiplicities, to filmmaker, poet, and author Margaret Tait whose poem “Elasticity” has poignancy given the current social, cultural, and political climate. Can we move on from the pandemic? Or will we return back to an unequal, fractured society?

Keywords: Screen Production Research, embodied Practice, Scotland, Aotearoa, Deleuze

Antisyzygy

“the culture of a nation-state and the culture of a stateless nation,

within both of which the people of Scotland live”

(Gardiner 2006: 20)

Antisyzygy is the

“idea of duelling polarities within one entity”

(Martin 2009: 84)

Living in Aotearoa (New Zealand) –

a different kind of in-between state, several identities and opposites in one entity

The name Kyle has been deterritorialised to Kale

Aotearoa is an assemblage, a toi waihanga,

“a multiplicity which is made up of many heterogeneous terms and

which establishes liaisons, relations between them,

across ages, sexes and reigns – different natures”

(Deleuze and Parnet 1977: 69).

Deleuze and Guatarri discuss assemblages

“There are only multiplicities of multiplicities

forming a single assemblage”

(Deleuze and Guattari 1987: 39)

Scotland is an assemblage

Scottish

European

Pākehā

What is a British identity?

How was it assembled?

Steve Blandford writes:

British identity “was forged out of a sense

of isolation and an island fortress imagination” (2007: 9)

2020

Reshaped and reformed our understanding of isolation

And established new fortresses

Manuel DeLanda wrote that continental markets were assembling

With the “European Union being a prime example,

but this is still an unfinished historical task,

one that could fail if the interacting

“national markets cease to give rise

to an emergent whole.” (2016: 15).

This assemblage failed

Deleuze and Guattari wrote:

“A body without organs is what remains

when you take everything away” (1987: 176)

2021

Will more be taken away?

This canvas was a Body without Organs…

But what is it now?

In 1919, G. Gregory Smith understood assemblages

And antisyzygy

“Perhaps in the very combination of opposites […]

we have a reflection of the contrasts which the Scot shows at every turn,

in his political and ecclesiastical history

“in his polemical restlessness, in his adaptability,

which is another way of saying that he has made

allowance for new conditions, in his practical judgement,

which is the admission that two sides

of the matter have been considered” (4).

Aotearoa/Scottish poet Sydney Goodsir Smith once wrote:

“And never the clock runs back,

The free days are owre;

“The world shrinks, we luik

Mair t’our maisters ilka hour –

“What yon lane boat I see

Daith an rebellion blind ma ee!” (1944)

2021 the year of the rebellion?

Do we come together?

Face oor maisters?

Where do we start?

Art

It challenges, argues, rebels against every maister

“The essence of art is

nothing less than the conservation of human experience itself”

(Crowther 2001: 7)

This experience must be expressed

We must use the 2020 body without organs

Filmmaker, poet, author Margaret Tait once wrote:

“Think of the word, elastic.

The real elastic quality is the being able to spring back

to the original shape” (1959)

Should we spring back in 2021?

Or start a new assemblage?

ANTISYZYGY

Antisyzygy

The author declares that they have no competing interests.

References

Berkeley, L. (2018) “Lights, Camera, Research: The Specificity of Research in Screen Production,” in C. Batty and S. Kerrigan (eds.) Screen Production Research: Creative Practice as Mode of Enquiry, Gewerbestrasse: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 29–46

Blandford, S. (2007) Film, Drama, and the Break-Up of Britain, Bristol: Intellect.

Crowther, P. (2001) Art and Embodiment: From Aesthetics to Self-Consciousness, Oxford: Oxford University Press

DeLanda, M. (2016) Assemblage Theory, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Deleuze, G. and Parnet, C. (1977), Dialogues II, Paris: Flammarion

Guattari, G. and Guattari, F. (1987), A Thousand Plateaus, London: Bloomsbury Academic

Gardiner, M. (2006) From Trocchi to Trainspotting: Scottish Critical Theory Since 1960, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press

Park Lala, A. and Anne Kinsella, E. (2011) “Embodiment in Research Practices: The Body in Qualitative Research,” in J. Higgs, A. Titchen, D. Horsfall, and D. Bridges (eds.) Creative Spaces for Qualitative Researching: Living Research, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, pp. 77–86

Goodsir Smith, S. (1944) “Largo,” in M. Lindsay and L. Duncan (eds.) The Edinburgh Book of Twentieth-Century Scottish Poetry, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005, pp. 324

Martin, M. R. (2009) The Mighty Scot, New York: SUNY Press.

Smith, G. G. (1919) Scottish Literature: Character & Influence, London: Macmillan & Co. Limited.

Tait, M. (1959) “Elasticity,” in S. Neely (ed.) Margaret Tait: Poems, Stories, and Writings, Manchester: Carcanet Press Ltd, 2012, pp. 34

[09:13]

MORE THAN ONE VOICE

“illuminated” video article

based on

Dreamvoice

performance – sound installation

by

Ilona Krawczyk

with

Brice Catherin

Cristina Fuentes Antonazzi

David Velez

THE VOICE

“natural”

“authentic”

“open”

“free”

…

I try to express it

or…

I try to understand

what my voice expresses.

“The voice manifests the unique being of each human being, and his or her [their] spontaneous self-communication according to the rhythms of a sonorous relation”

(Cavarero, 2005, 173).

In this sense, Cavarero’s vocal ontology of uniqueness opposes the Cartesian “mute voice of consciousness” (Ibid. 173), categories of universalism, and philosophy of voice that considers one kind of normalised and defined culturally vocal expression as “right”, “authentic”, “natural”, …

I can say something without words.

My voice will sing

My voice will say

[vocalisation]

Except for open throat traditional Eastern European vocal technique

specific to the country of my origin,

in this spontaneous self-communication,

I use Tahreer – a traditional Iranian singing technique and

traditional Jewish singing.

I have no evidence that they are a part of my cultural heritage.

Who is speaking?

Who is singing?

Where does the voice come from?

Is it me singing?

Who is speaking,

who is singing?

Where does the voice

come from?

Is it me singing?

Why do I feel connected to something which is beyond me, which comes from the past, which I don’t understand? But there are those moments of unconsciousness that come out.

Why? What? Who?

Why do I feel

connected

to something

which is beyond me

which comes

from the past

which I don’t understand

But there are

those moments of

unconsciousness

that come out

Why?

What?

Who?

“You don’t know if it is you who is bringing about this voice or the voice that is bringing about you, and where the source of the sound is – in your mouth, [in] your chest, in your lungs, in your stomach, in your groin, or maybe in the room’s walls, ceiling, or maybe in distant celestial bodies, in the crystal spheres of the universe” (Flaszen, 2010, 149).

How many voices are we?

How many voices are we?

Which voices we are using?

Which voices we are using?

Do we want our voices?

Do we want our voices?

What is good technique, what is bad technique?

What is good technique,

what is bad technique?

“Think of these sounds

that are usually considered “wrong”,

such as pseudomultiphonics,

parasite sounds, accidental changes of pitches. …

… Learn to control them,

to stabilise these so called “mistakes”.

Love them, dig into them,

shape them, transform them

gently and constantly (…) …

… Trust your sound, let it live the life it wants to live, just accompany it the best you can. Trust your instruments, your strings, your pipes, your vocal chords, they want to go a certain way, follow them, they know”.

(Catherin, 2018, 19)

The voice – both as bodily event and as the exposition of that event – is the gesture which exhibits the relational uniqueness of being, which each time restages itself towards other (Di Matteo, 2015, 92).

MORE THAN ONE VOICE

“illuminated” video article

by Ilona Krawczyk with Brice Catherin,

Cristina Fuentes Antonazzi and David Velez.

Videography: Ben Spatz

CITED BOOKS

Catherin, B. (2018). Symphonie pour une femme seule. Score?

Cavarero, A. (2005). For more than one voice: Toward a philosophy of vocal expression. Stanford University Press.

Di Matteo, P. (2015). Performing the entre-deux: The capture of speech in (dis)embodied voices. In: K. Thomaidis, B. MacPherson (Eds.). Voice studies: Critical approaches to process, performance and experience (pp. 90–103). Routledge.

Flaszen, L. (2010). Grotowski & company. Icarus.

CITED SONG

Prituri se planinata. Bulgarian folk song performed by Stefka Sabotinova.

Sourced from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og4zO4fzsOU

DREAMVOICE

performance – sound installation

performed and recorded 14.03.2019

in Studio 3 Patrick Stewart Building, University of Huddersfield

devised for Practice-as-Research on embodying voice in training and performance practice

conducted by Ilona Krawczyk at University of Huddersfield thanks to North of England Consortium for Arts and Humanities (NECAH).

[19:12]

It is in and through the revelation of my

being-as-object for the Other that I

must be able to apprehend the

presence of his being-as-subject.

Jean-Paul Sartre

PREPARATION

BY CHARLOTTA GRIMFJORD CEDERBLAD

I am preparing

I haven’t really rehearsed

I have written texts to perform

I have given myself tasks

I have prepared four costume changes

I have set up props and equipment for sound and live video

I don’t realize

that I accidently

have put the camera on recording

I have chosen music to play

I don’t decide until now

when I will play which music

The name of the performance is

If you look closely you will see me

The audience will enter

and leave the room

as they please during three hours

I will sit

with my back against the audience

They will only see my face

as a big live projection on the wall

[Lyrics to song:]

Smile though your heart is aching

Smile even though it’s breaking

When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by

If you smile through the fear and sorrow

Smile and maybe tomorrow

You’ll see the sun come shining through

For you

Light up your face with gladness

Hide every trace of sadness

Although a tear may be ever so near

Smile though your heart is aching

Smile even though it’s breaking

When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by

If you smile through the fear and sorrow

Smile and maybe tomorrow

You’ll see the sun come shining through

For you

Light up your face with gladness

Hide every trace of sadness

Although a tear may be ever so near

…if I tremble at the slightest noise, if

each creak announces to me a look,

this is because I am already in the state

of being-looked-at.

Jean-Paul Sartre

[Lyrics to song:]

That’s the time you must keep on trying

Smile, what’s the use of crying

You’ll find that life is still worthwhile

If you just smile

That’s the time you must keep on trying

Smile, what’s the use of crying

You’ll find that life is still worthwhile

If you just smile

Perhaps it is impossible to understand

one’s own face. People who live in

society have learned how to see

themselves in mirrors as they appear to

their friends.

Jean-Paul Sartre

[Charlotta, soundchecking:]

Mother

Babababa

Bababa

Babababa baba bababa

What happens soon is that I stop the

recording, again by accident

I find the recording in my camera about

two months later

It’s not until then I understand that

these ten minutes of preparing have

been recorded

The whole preparation lasted for

several hours

In order to make myself recognized by

the Other, I must risk my own life.

Jean-Paul Sartre

PREPARATION

The recording took place at 13festivalen,

Konstepidemin in Göteborg, Sweden 2020-01-04

With and edited by:

Charlotta Grimfjord Cederblad

Recorded by Canon:

LEGRIA HF200

Music heard in the video:

September Sun by Kodomo

Aithos by Yair Etziony

Helix by Yair Etziony

Smile by Charlie Chaplin performed by Nat King Cole

Imperium Romanum by Yair Etziony

Pool by Pistol Disco

More by Nils Frahm

References:

Being and nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre

Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre

charlottagrimfjordcederblad.com

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.