frances d'ath dance for obsessive-compulsives


artists

dancers — anna smallwood, elanore jenkins, joanne collins, melanie smart director — paul williams
cinematographer — marcus dinenn
production — 2 feet films
costume — emily barrie
lighting — John Dutton

background

shadetreemechanic was shot on 16mm film in the abandoned underground carpark beneath the Collingwood Housing Commission Apartments in July, 2001.
The making of the film was supported by the Housing Commission through a project to utilise the space as an arts venue.
Part of the aim of using this space was to make my work more easily accessible to people who would not often have access to contemporary australian art.
The film was the grew out of a desire of paul and myself to make a dance film, that had its genesis in trike2. The film itself is derived from shadetreemechanic, a performance work made at the same time.

details

shadetreemechanic is a work that deals with a multiplicity of backgrounds and theory. there is no single idea, theory, or thing present, rather, it represents a point in time where multiple threads of a general commonality are drawn together in a single space.
Part of the background is my long-term interest in the works of philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and his writings on 'minor science', in particular the writings on 'smooth and striated space', and 'nomadology' in 1000 plateaus.
The work is a patchwork, entirely devoid of homogeneity, where each shred of space cannot locate its neighbour without establishing a new convention, and the linkage between one vicinity and the next is not defined, and can be effected in an infinite number of ways.
The practical starting point is a dual process of heavily scripted improvisation, and movement made using lifeforms animation software, structured using a binary alogrithm.
What is appealing is not a linear progression of cause and effect, but the ever-increasing detail present in a single system that can undergo a multitude of developments through a succession of foldings and unfoldings. These instances are unordered, and like a record can be played in any order.
What is observed is a transformation of shape and a dissolution of boundaries; lines of flight form in favor of turbulences and flows so that nothing starts or ends at a precise point. The work exists in a blank space beyond sense where the dancers become the possible.


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