The Collective Body
One outcome of the pandemic has been all of the creative ways in which artists have reimagined their respective modalities. At a time when concert halls and art galleries have (sadly) been shuttered, public art has taken on an even greater significance than ever before. What’s more, the heightened sense of uncertainty and confinement has naturally been at the forefront of artist’ imaginations, and as such, has found its way into new projects. One example of this is The Collective Body, a “transdisciplinary audio/video project that proposes to capture the circumstances of life in isolation during COVID-19.” Dancers and musicians participated in a sort of 21st century game of telephone, in which dancers made videos of specific body parts, which the musicians then responded to with recordings, which then is sent back to the dancers for a response, and so on and so forth.
TCB was presented at the Rotary Centre for the Arts as part of the 2021 Living Things International Festival in Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada in January 2021, and Maria was honored to be a participating artist on the project, which included musicians and dancers from across Canada and the USA. TCB was helmed by theatre artist and dancer, Neil Cadger and percussionist and sound artist, Andrew Stauffer. According to Cadger, TCB was born out of a response to the effects of health regulations during the COVID pandemic restricting international travel and public gatherings. He and the creative team, “wondered how much we could rescue of our core values: improvisation, liveness, diversity, audience engagement and beauty.” Using the idea of improvisation between dancers and musicians as inspiration, the creative team sought to figure out a way in which the musicians and dancers could respond to each other after determining that they could figure out a way to present some sort of outdoor, socially-distanced installation with large-scale video and sound that would both engage audience members, while still adhering to proper public health protocols.
Participating dancers and musicians were given certain parameters for their recordings. The dancers started with three 1-minute videos of specific areas of the body. Musicians who received these videos were then instructed to respond to the visuals with 5-minutes of sound recordings, as well as three sustained notes. Maria received videos of a neck, clenched fists, and a navel, and you can hear the recordings she made for each visual throughout this post!
The collected recordings were compiled into a collage of imagery and sound projected onto the exterior of a public building. According to their website, “The TCB project explores the constraints and unique possibilities of digital connection, while serving as a reminder of the deep importance and irreplaceability of shared physical space.”
The creative team plans to continue to build on TCB with different artists in different locations. TCB will be presented in Edmonton, Alberta in October of this year. Stauffer says, “Our goal is to continue adding material to our archive in order to fuel further installations. We would like to initiate a creative process with local artists based on the seminal edition…”
