Baines, J., 2023.

Unrehearsed Moves for Camera

Presentation at Performing Scores, Scoring Performance Conference, HOME Manchester.
NB: I am in the process of working this presentation towards peer-reviewed publication (Performance Research, guest-edited by the Performance Research Group)
The conference interrogates the concepts and uses of scores in performance and performance studies, as both starting points and modes of documentation, and to bring this area of thinking and practice into productive dialogue. The concept of the score has become a key organising principle in the work of many performance makers in both the postdramatic and live art traditions. It gestures towards the script, and links performance practices to those of less narrative media such as music, visual art, and choreography.
https://www.art.mmu.ac.uk/events/2023/performing-scores-scoring-performance/#:~:text=The%20concept%20of%20the%20score,%2C%20visual%20art%2C%20and%20choreography.

Abstract:
For Performing Scores, Scoring Performance I propose a conversational presentation/screening featuring 16mm films that use score as provocation for action. The film's performed actions are unrehearsed and repeated (the duration of each action determined by the camera's mechanism and the film material length) and through filmic transcription it becomes an embodied durational score.

This work-in-progress draws together multiple considerations of score and its performativity including: Yvonne Rainer's diagrammatic scores such as Diagonal from Terrain (1963) and the consideration of framing on-stage/off-stage with on-screen/off-screen in Trio A (1966), further to this, Hollis Frampton's proposition that that film 'reads, so to speak, from a score that is both the notation and the substance of the piece' (A Lecture, 1968) is a key conceptual notion.

This practice-led research through its creative processes and presentation, addresses the translation of scores, their re-enactment, embodiment and durational qualities, and considers how these methods impact the creation and presentation of the work.