CFP: Performance Video Labs

Call for Expressions of Interest:

PERFORMANCE VIDEO LABS

with Dr Ben Spatz
University of Huddersfield

Period of Collaboration:
January 2019 – June 2020

The Drama Division at University of Huddersfield (UK) invites theatre companies and other practice groups to participate in a collaborative process exploring new ways to document performance process and knowledge with video. Participating companies will work with Dr Spatz to develop tailored strategies for video recording and editing. The schedule is flexible and will primarily be organized around your company’s existing work spaces and plans.

For the purposes of this project, a company is any group of three or more people that regularly practices together. This refers especially to theatre and dance companies, but also to music ensembles, performance art collectives, sport teams, and others. This opportunity is open to companies anywhere in the world, with the understanding that companies working outside Great Britain may have to rely on digital communication for most or all of the collaborative process.

Expected benefits to participating companies:

• Discover new ways to structure collaborative practice
• Explore group dynamics, including issues of ethics and power
• Understand how to integrate video recording into creative processes from the start
• Examine issues of co-authorship and intellectual property
• Generate video material that better documents what you do
• Learn video editing skills

Involvement in the project is free of charge, with no payment given or required. After the collaboration ends, companies will be asked to describe how the project has affected their creative work. There is no requirement to publish the videos that come out of this project, however full support — including editing and hosting — will be provided to companies that wish to do so.

Please send expressions of interest to b.spatz@hud.ac.uk by 31 December 2018. These should be about one page and should include your company’s mission statement; number of regularly participating members; and what kinds of video documentation you already do.

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The video methods explored in this project were developed by Ben Spatz with Nazlıhan Eda Erçin and Agnieszka Mendel during the AHRC Leadership Fellow project “Judaica: An Embodied Laboratory for Songwork” (2016-2018). Dr Spatz is author of What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research (Routledge 2015); editor of the videographic Journal of Embodied Research from Open Library of Humanities and the Advanced Methods book series from Punctum Books; and Senior Lecturer at University of Huddersfield. Their work has recently been presented at University of Manchester, University of Leeds, University of Kent, University of Bedfordshire, University of Aberdeen, Cardiff University, Ghent University, University of the Arts Helsinki, New York University, and City University of New York.

Photograph: Ilona Krawczyk in a Judaica project workshop at the Grotowski Institute, Wrocław (Piotr Spigiel, 2017).