When I say that presence is a kind of a problem, I’m speaking also about the limitations of the body as object that is bound by physicality, by laws of physics, by time, etc. Rooted in performance, my photo works, which are basically events/encounters staged for the camera, will be limited by what an actual body in actual space can do. ‘What is possible’ to depict in an image will be limited/guided/affected by what is possible for a body to do or enact. Doubling as the image-maker and the protagonist, one of the obvious, concrete limitations is that I am unable to simultaneously occupy the space in front of the camera and behind it.
There is a very nice long interview with Vlatka at the great blog This is That, including a lot of visuals of her work. (update: seems like you have to sign in/be invited to read content on this blog now…)
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In that sense it’s not even *about* gaming.. it’s about worlds and how we make them, how we understand or creative narrative and narrative possibllity as readers. I mean – I’m really struck by the fact that if you say “In the next level of the game you will need a compass, a rope and a bottle of surgical alcohol” your mind is already starting to construct a narrative – already grasping for what might happen using those things, grasping for connections.
Two more blog reviews for The Broken World: one at Other Things, and one at Pop Dose.
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My friend David Williams started blogging at Skywritings which for the moment is a collection of his occasional writings on and around performance. The site includes programme-note pieces on recent Lone Twin performances and David’s contributions titled Light and Listening for the Marathon Lexicon project which I co-curated with Adrian Heathfield and produced with Forced Entertainment.
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Finally my opening address for last years Spill Symposium is included in a new publication/collection Live Art UK/LADA’s Live Art Almanac. The Almanac also includes essays by Lyn Gardner, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, Daniel Gosling, Leslie Hill and Rebecca Schneider amongst others. Copies from LADA’s bookshop Unbound.
The Broken World, 2008