C.O. JOURNEYS
(c.o. = camera obscura)
The means in this case is a camera obscura, built to a size that will hold thirty people and designed to be portable – creating its own small screening space. The camera obscura functions as the area in which the audience sits, the mechanism by which the image is transmitted and to a large extent, as the subject of the performance itself.
It is a kind of proto-cinema – lying somewhat uneasily between direct live performance and film but possessing some strange properties all of its own.
The uncanniness of the camera obsucra phenomenon – the inversion, the fact that the projected subject is both physically adjacent to and yet separated from the resulting projection, the unexplainable painterly quality of the image – is mirrored in a set of interlinking narratives between fiction, falsified documentary and actual biography. These stories attempt to capture the sense of ambiguity inherent to the camera obscura whilst in the process contextualizing it in the vast history of image-producing techniques.
C.O. Journeys is a continuation of the collaboration between Joanna Bailie (composer) and Christoph Ragg (scenographer) — a symbiotic partnership that has as one of its central goals the exploration of the relationship between sound/time and image/space. This relationship is in part examined through an approach to form (or even “micro-structure”) that may be defined as “compositional” rather than strictly dramaturgical in nature. The various sonic and visual elements are prised apart, processed and then put back together again in a manner that aims to reveal some of the possibilities and limitations of the multi-disciplinary work.
preview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNCRGjm2cEg
(c.o. = camera obscura)
The question of how to connect the content of a work to its means of presentation is a central concern of C.O. Journeys.
The means in this case is a camera obscura, built to a size that will hold thirty people and designed to be portable – creating its own small screening space. The camera obscura functions as the area in which the audience sits, the mechanism by which the image is transmitted and to a large extent, as the subject of the performance itself.
It is a kind of proto-cinema – lying somewhat uneasily between direct live performance and film but possessing some strange properties all of its own.
The uncanniness of the camera obsucra phenomenon – the inversion, the fact that the projected subject is both physically adjacent to and yet separated from the resulting projection, the unexplainable painterly quality of the image – is mirrored in a set of interlinking narratives between fiction, falsified documentary and actual biography. These stories attempt to capture the sense of ambiguity inherent to the camera obscura whilst in the process contextualizing it in the vast history of image-producing techniques.
C.O. Journeys is a continuation of the collaboration between Joanna Bailie (composer) and Christoph Ragg (scenographer) — a symbiotic partnership that has as one of its central goals the exploration of the relationship between sound/time and image/space. This relationship is in part examined through an approach to form (or even “micro-structure”) that may be defined as “compositional” rather than strictly dramaturgical in nature. The various sonic and visual elements are prised apart, processed and then put back together again in a manner that aims to reveal some of the possibilities and limitations of the multi-disciplinary work.
preview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNCRGjm2cEg
Concept & Realization Joanna Bailie & Christoph Ragg
Outside Eye Charlotte Vandevyver
Production Mokum vzw
Co-production Buda (Kortrijk), Vooruit (Gent), Workspace (Brussels)
Realization camera obscura Lucas Coeman, Jan Vandenbussche
Realization costumes Gilberte Voorspoels
In collaboration with Netwerk (Aalst)
With the support of De Pianofabriek Werkplaats (Brussels)
Thanks to Rosas, Bains::Connective, Nadine
Supported by the Flemish Community
