Deadline for Proposals: 19 March 12 noon

The year is 2012.  Let’s party like it’s 1999.

There are many conspiracy theories which surround this date of 2012 which draw initially from an interpretation of the Mayan Long Count calendar, incorporate New Age beliefs and use pseudo scientific or actual science misconstrued and miscalculated for the purposes of predicting some grand event.

But that’s just an excuse.  There is nothing quite like the heightened drama of a conspiracy theory to give human life that idea that there is something to look forward to – a Revelation! The truth will be revealed! And after that? How about…The End of Days.

It’s a marketing event!

This is how the hysteria surrounding the possibility of doomsday has manifested not through complex signs and symbols - available only to those with arcane knowledge – but through mass media, popular culture and marketing endeavours.

Plotting our calendar, after Valentine’s Day and Easter there is quite a big gap before Eide or Yom Kippur.  December 21 is the date for catastrophe prophesised…mmm…but that is too close to Christmas…

So, tell you what, we’ll do it midyear - late June/early July.  Armageddon is not coming to Los Angeles or New York or London.  Japan’s had enough mass grief.  We can do it here in Grahamstown.  It’s backwoodsy enough to convince a couple of alien aircraft to do a fly-by.  Maybe we can even work in a few crop circles?

What are possible causes of mass disaster?

 

So we will take these ideas, package them nicely, and present our concept.  We’ll get everyone we can in town to be involved – we can sell plague masks from broken trolleys; some guys with donkeys can be the four horse men of the Apocalypse.

But so many here already live the Dystopia..... and it’s none so evident than when Festival rolls around.  Doomsday must have come and gone.  Damn, the devolution was not televised!

Okay change of tack, it’s not an apocalyptic narrative we’ll be packaging but a post -apocalyptic one.  We, the Grahamstonians, are the survivors of some grand catastrophe.  We have survived because we live away from the main centres.  We are forewarned and pre-armed.  The apocalypse has shaken us but we have not been destroyed.  In late June/early July 2012 the last shuttles of survivors from major metropoli will arrive….

Now we just need to work on what they will experience….

The facebook group

If you would like the complete document, outlining the call for proposals please email me and I will send you one.

Presentation, Call for Proposals

Gavin Krastin: A Retrospective, Altered Daily - Synthesising Meaning from ‘Dusty’ Dances

Alan Parker and Gavin Krastin Retrospective5 - Chandelier Photograph: John Hogg

Premiering at Dance Umbrella 2011, Retrospective – Altered Daily, choreographed and performed by Alan Parker and designed and performed by Gavin Krastin, is a kinaesthetic and visually framed durational performance art event that surfaces discourse encircling ideas of originality, meaning making and intertextuality:

What if...
 What if the movement really does mean nothing?
What if you add a little something to nothing?
Does the nothing become something?
Is the something something new or is it something else?

Repeated each day for eleven days, the ‘dance’ (dubbed Trio F) is an extension of ideas presented by Yvonne Rainer in her seminal work, Trio A. Much like the original, Trio F, is a relishing of all things ‘un-dancey’ – no phrasing, no virtuosity, little rhythm, no variation or repetition and, essentially, no intended meaning. Every day the extraneous theatricalities of another production are then ‘pasted’ on top of it. (Alan Parker in the programme of Retrospective – Altered Daily, 2011) 

Not only does Parker paste the theatricalities of various old (‘dusty’) dances onto his anti-metaphoric and anti-metonymic body, with the aid of Krastin, but alternatively Parker inserts himself into pre-existing works, imploring the questioning of the originality of the work. Furthermore, by placing meaningful signifiers (through music, costuming and design, which each have their own historical context, story and intertextual resonance from the original productions, from which they were taken) in a meaningless dance phrase and space, Parker engages with alternative methods of meaning making.

This paper serves as a critical appreciation of the poignant aim of Retrospective – Altered Daily; to flatly question, or undermine the hallowed principles of originality, intention and expression. It will excavate the system of meaning making involved in the work, and ultimately how the work synthesised meaning from a meaningless body due to the proximity and involvement of indexed objects, sounds or visuals in the performance space, or near to the anti-metonymic body.

The paper is the result of a qualitative process of collecting and engaging with critical texts (primarily in the form of academic texts, journal articles and reviews sourced from Library services and internet facilities), related to the topic, as well as interviews with the artist Alan Parker. In addition, there is an interpretative and embodied method of research involved, as I am the designer and performer of the work.