Dance: A Recent Translation

"The performers are like the live plastic material in motion, with their physical movements directly translating the concepts of nuclear physics..."

I recently had a chance to translate some Taiwanese arts criticism. After doing so much history, it was refreshing to be asking all these big questions, and to have such stylish, colorful language in play

The Terrible Message of Environmental Consciousness of Nuclear Energy:
“1/2 Life” by the BodyCartography Project. (.Artco, April 2010. )

Text and Photos by Li Chia-ling

Combining video, installation, sculpture, theater, dance, music and scientific research, the BodyCartography Project can be traced back to the first work presented by video artist Olive Bieringa in San Francisco, in 1997. Two years later, dancer Otto Ramstad joined to become co-director. Now 13 years old, the BodyCartography Project is not so much an artistic group as it is a series of creative designs. In the past 8 years, many different new works have launched under the umbrella of the BodyCartography Project, each a collaboration with a different artist. Presently the group is on an all-American tour presenting its new work for 2010, 1/2 Life, which seeks to display the body’s existence among scientific research, data, and a controlled world. Half Life begins on the fringes of the Pacific Ocean, and along a path directed through the nuclear superpower of America, Japanese survivors of the atomic bomb, and the nuclear-free zone of New Zealand to bring forward humanity’s use of nuclear energy as an environmental topic.

Of History Of Nuclear Energy: Environmental Consciousness
The specialized term “half life” from radioactive physics originally refers to the course of nuclear reactions within the atom. The artists of the BodyCartography Project have appropriated it as the title of their new work. Half Life creates the artistic relationship between nuclear physics and the physical movement of the body, thus advancing the persistent inquiry into nuclear themes. This environmental concern is the pride of Bieringa’s mother culture – New Zealand is a nuclear-free zone. The 1/2 Life of 2002 was still a concept only just thought up from out of the spirit of some earlier scenes from dance/video works by the BodyCartography Project. Until, that is, a 2007 trip to Japan’s Kyoto Arts Center to do a three-month residency, in collaboration with dancers on the ground in Japan. Then they lanched 1/2 Life in its concrete form. The show conveys the tight connection between the invention of nuclear energy and the world of humankind in a stage of early modern history. Besides this research, the work is also a collaboration with physicist Bryce Beverlin II to get through to the scientific content of nuclear physics. Bieringa and Ramstad take this real-world data and materials and evolve it into movements for the body of the performer. Whether ensemble or solo performances, all scenes of 1/2 Life feature a shadow of the body, twisted by slowness or intensity. With three full years of research and planning to it, slow or intense and twisted certainly was a slow process of creation. This also reflects the view of American artist Hal Foster that “artists are like ethnographers.” Artists since the 1980s have used the language of art to deal with topics in society, culture, politics, education, and economics. This is very different from the belief of modern artists that “art is for art’s sake.” This direction of artistic creation makes the things that art deals with not limited by issues of formal materials; the content and trends within topics of investigative and observational research also become important processes for molding artistic expression.

Of Bodily Movement: The Direct Translation of Science

The experimental theater PerformanceSpace 122 was the location for the premiere of the BodyCartography Project’s new work 1/2 Life. The theater’s dark hall is made to bear an important, contemporary experiment in the “totality of art” conveyed in the sixty minutes of 1/2 Life. This includes sculpture and installation by visual artist Emmett Ramstad, body-movement performances by dancers Olive Bieringa, Otto Ramstad and Kitamura Takemi, as well as musical accompaniment by composer and harpist Zeena Perkins. Out of a visual display of molded plastic materials emerges a contemporary artistic ceremony that symbolizes the links between nuclear energy and ecological systems in contemporary art. Artist Emmett Ramstad’s use of so much plastic material applies a random, organic construction to put a ceiling over the experimental drama. Bieringa calls this a sea of plastic, meant to convey the nature of lines of invisible radiation and the irresolvable reality of plastic. The performers slowly come onstage, faces expressionless, bodies costumed in plastic. By turns they slow and then intense, moving their bodies in dance they enter the dark, box-like space of the theater. The performing ensemble usually hides their bodies behind thin wooden panels, as if using them as protective quarters. They move them constantly, but then in an instant the curved wooden panels become still and motionless, forming a scene of abstract “live sculpture.” At times the assisting performers holding the thin wooden panels sway them to create a live, natural sound. These “shadow movers” resemble the assistants to Japanese “kuroko” performers, who stand behind them, dressed in black. But they also symbolize the “critical mass” for chain reactions in nuclear physics, as well as the “group mind.” The performers are like the live plastic material in motion, with their physical movements directly translating the concepts of nuclear physics, including matter, energy, radiation, and resonance effects; their bodies here symbolize matter. In the last scene of the performance, a space constructed of wood and canvas slowly slides onto the stage. It looks like living quarters meant to hold shadows. The essence of the architectural elements is derived from Japanese metropolitan temporary canvas housing erected by vagrants. The performers, in this four-sided room, moving back and forth among the pleasing natural shadows cast on them, finally strip off all their clothes to present the movements of washing their bodies clean, concluding the performance of 1/2 Life.
The term “cross-disciplinary” which has spurred a flood of discussion for some time would seem appropriate to talk about the work 1/2 Life, which combines such multiple layers and forms of art as theater installation, body movements by the performers, and natural sound accompaniment. But to the BodyCartography Project, using the term “cross-disciplinary” to describe the work is not as good as speaking of their efforts to engage in “transdisciplinary” concepts. This is because “cross-disciplinary” refers to a dialogue between disciplines, while the Latin root “trans” in “transdisciplinary” has the meaning of “penetrating into,” “through,” which reflects the BodyCartography Project’s effort to completely unify different fields in one work. Many contemporary artists are using a “multiplicity” of art forms. These at once answer and also reflect the circumstances of the age we are facing. American art historian Meyer Schapiro has said, “Every change in ideology brings in a new style or a new art — every change in the content of art is produced by a specific social change, which is material in origin.” Perhaps Schapiro’s comment explains 1/2 Life with the concept of “transdisciplinary:” a various and multiple contemporary artistic vocabulary.

Interview with Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad. Interview edits and photography by Li Chia-ling.

Q: Is "Body Cartography Project" the name of a group? Or a common collaborative artistic project?

Bieringa: "Body Cartography Project" began in 1997 and 1998. About eleven years ago, it really began to be a collective project, a collective process. Beginning from 2001 and 2002, Ramstad and I collaborated on this project, and we worked within the project model. We collaborated with different kinds of artists, but we rarely presented collective work. In that area, we adopted what was perhaps a more traditional model in which two artists collaborate. But sometimes we'd also see some projects move forward with the support of different artists.

Q: I certainly don't think this is a traditional model. Presently when artists form themselves into artistic groups, most of the time they work together with similar artists. What's of interest here is that you and Ramstad were always project guides collaborating with different artists. Which is to say, each work project presents different forms of art.

Bieringa: Yes, the possibility for different media; it depends on the needs of each project.

Ramstad: In selecting diferent people to work with us, we change the model of "observation."

Bieringa: The "1/2 Life" project, for example. We worked together with scientists, visual artists, composers, other performers, and lighting designers.

Q: Speaking of collaboration with scientists, for several years now there has been discussion of the relationship between art and science, but mostly coming at it from the angle of engineering and technology. Speak just a bit on your experience collaborating with scientists to put on "1/2 Life."

Bieringa: Collaborating with scientists on this project was particularly productive; you could say that it made this project clearer and more specific in certain dimensions. The material here, with its violent history, is both dark and heavy, touching intermittently on death, disease, and pain. Thus, if you don't wish to manifest certain points of this violent history, it's because you don't wish to feel uncomfortable, or you think it is too gloomy. We most certainly do not wish to create works that are pleasant to see and think about. Rather, the feeling of discomfort in the work can really be useful for some people. Therefore we take one step back from real historical fact and approach it with a method of work located in science.

Q: A neutral position.

Bieringa: Speaking from a certain angle, the stimulating and abstract nature of real physics – this poetic language – supplies us with a space in which to create something, to maximize our benefit. The physicist that we collaborated with brought us to a university laboratory to show us the materials. Following, he came back with us to the workshop to present a lecture.

Ramstad: For example, he answered our practical questions about physics. Afterwards, we were able to do an extemporaneous performance based on nuclear physics. We were trying to penetrate and bring together two forms of engagement -- understanding and movement -- to deal with this information. We made many works to translate nuclear physics.

Bieringa: or to shadow it.

Q: Since this work sees bodily movement as an important part, for you two with your background in dance, what concept do you have of the body as an artistic material? What revelations can we find from "1/2 Life?"
Ramstad: Many works of dance are meant to supply us with representations of the body. We use our bodies to perform, and the audience in turn uses their bodies to observe. In between the two emerges a certain sympathetic response -- this is the relationship between us and the audience. To deal with this terrifying knowledge and to find a way to describe and represent it is extremely challenging and extremely arduous. This is also to place into the dance what we've just discussed, the collaboration with scientists, and in some sense to take the body as the movement of atoms and particles. I believe the work is an echo to the knowledge, one that comes back with more poetry. Also it offers people a specific explanation that they can clearly understand. You could say, we use the body as a vessel for transmitting knowledge. We create and perform the results of research. We connect this knowledge with people in a rapid and concrete fashion.

Q: "1/2 Life" combines the languages of many forms of art. What are your views on crossing disciplines?

Ramstad: All along we have been thinking of "transdisciplinary," which is not to place one thing onto another, but rather to think if as happening and evolving between each of the sciences. This is also to consider an interesting method of creation: you use the media you need, and then put it into its relation in the sequence of ideas. Moreover you find reciprocal and adaptive forms -- we try to create a complete experience.