dancing hands.
A finger in the air, twirling, the claw dangling down... they go up, down, back and forth, they all follow a tempo, a groove from the sound.
dancing hands is a research project initiated by artist Muriel Lisk-McIntyre in 2023. Intrigued by the way dance, and especially hands, follow the same type of movement on the dance floor (around electronic music scenes / with a focus on the digger scene), she questions the codification of these movements, their evolution through the decades, and asks: why has somatic expression through music become a pre-written choreography?
During this LCDO Septembre 2024 session, dancing hands takes flight on the hands of listeners and dancers, using gloves made by the artist.
The project took two turns: first, in the daytime during the set of Tonton & Tata, both DJs wore black mitten gloves. Throughout the crowd, 60 pairs of gloves were distributed and worn by the dancers.
This group effort raised the question of social behaviours, crowd behaviours, asking whether it is the actual vibrations of the music that make people dance a certain way, or is there mimicry coming into play?
Why has the free space of the dance floor become a space where gestures are repeated and hand symbols adopted ?
The second happening took place during Just1’s sensual set. A different setting all together allowed for a more intimate, cohesive engagement with the dancers and the DJ.
Through these two happenings, an homage to dancing hands was made in situ. Indeed, exploring a subject in its actual context has enabled an acute reflection and engagement with the people who make the scene live.
A warm thank you to all the people involved in the project, to Atipik, Tonton Tata, Just1, the photographers, glove wearers, and all the beautiful peeps that have helped this project take shape <3
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1011588875
A finger in the air, twirling, the claw dangling down... they go up, down, back and forth, they all follow a tempo, a groove from the sound.
dancing hands is a research project initiated by artist Muriel Lisk-McIntyre in 2023. Intrigued by the way dance, and especially hands, follow the same type of movement on the dance floor (around electronic music scenes / with a focus on the digger scene), she questions the codification of these movements, their evolution through the decades, and asks: why has somatic expression through music become a pre-written choreography?
During this LCDO Septembre 2024 session, dancing hands takes flight on the hands of listeners and dancers, using gloves made by the artist.
The project took two turns: first, in the daytime during the set of Tonton & Tata, both DJs wore black mitten gloves. Throughout the crowd, 60 pairs of gloves were distributed and worn by the dancers.
This group effort raised the question of social behaviours, crowd behaviours, asking whether it is the actual vibrations of the music that make people dance a certain way, or is there mimicry coming into play?
Why has the free space of the dance floor become a space where gestures are repeated and hand symbols adopted ?
The second happening took place during Just1’s sensual set. A different setting all together allowed for a more intimate, cohesive engagement with the dancers and the DJ.
Through these two happenings, an homage to dancing hands was made in situ. Indeed, exploring a subject in its actual context has enabled an acute reflection and engagement with the people who make the scene live.
A warm thank you to all the people involved in the project, to Atipik, Tonton Tata, Just1, the photographers, glove wearers, and all the beautiful peeps that have helped this project take shape <3
https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/1011588875
Take two. L’usine MF
> LINK TO THE NEW VIDEO
With sound design by Lawrence Lurati, May 2024.
In collaboration withDriver & installation : Gaspard Welerse
Post production : Joshua Never
Camera : Noe Beck
Sound design : Lawrence Lurati
Actors : Mina Petitdemange, Justine Reichenauer
+ A clip of "Snow" from Irving Berlin's WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954 Film)
> LINK TO THE NEW VIDEO
With sound design by Lawrence Lurati, May 2024.
In collaboration withDriver & installation : Gaspard Welerse
Post production : Joshua Never
Camera : Noe Beck
Sound design : Lawrence Lurati
Actors : Mina Petitdemange, Justine Reichenauer
+ A clip of "Snow" from Irving Berlin's WHITE CHRISTMAS (1954 Film)
Overarching theme is the corporate turn entertainment in the club and specifically techno industry has taken - underlying theme is that of the dance and a self expression personal to all - that happens in these spaces.
Having ventured through the club spaces, specifically techno clubs in Europe for the past 8 years, I have come to question why it has grown to become what it is today: a Mecca of controlled hedonism .
What makes a techno night, for ones who have experienced it, an unforgettable experience that makes you crawl for more? Is it the drugs you’ve perhaps indulged in, making you hit that serotonin and love high level, the (perhaps) deep conversations you’ve had with complete strangers, this ephemeral exchange with the other, or the pounding rhythm of the music and you, alone, dancing to its beating heart? Perhaps it is all of these above, perhaps none of them and you despise these spaces, have had terrible traumatic experiences of something else.
It is in its capital Berlin that I have explored this once called underground or counterculture scene, trying to find its wild/animal/fauve essence and wondered, how can this raving soul become a high paying entertainment industry? OR an adult playground?
__
What happens when techno becomes corporate?
This exclusive, branded, normalized, monetised, hyped culture has taken on to standardize what it means to party in style, in the right way. Rules, regulations have been put into place in order for (controlled) decadence to happen, yet there are unspoken norms and rituals that live within its audience.
Why has Techno become a format of partying?
This work reflects an interpretation of this techno Mecca. It reveals an inner sensation of globalized dance. It is not a generalization on what it means to party, rather it is a reflection on the electronic dance party. It considers the observed reality of exclusivity, consumer entertainment, and conversations paying in loop. The sonic 4 channel speaker installation brings you think critically about your engagement within an exclusive space of entertainment. Are you an audience, an active participant, a voyeur, an indulger, a maker, a tourist?
Yes, this piece is a reflective process of my artistic research, questioning this industry, while acknowledging that perhaps, through repetition, differences occur.
Having ventured through the club spaces, specifically techno clubs in Europe for the past 8 years, I have come to question why it has grown to become what it is today: a Mecca of controlled hedonism .
What makes a techno night, for ones who have experienced it, an unforgettable experience that makes you crawl for more? Is it the drugs you’ve perhaps indulged in, making you hit that serotonin and love high level, the (perhaps) deep conversations you’ve had with complete strangers, this ephemeral exchange with the other, or the pounding rhythm of the music and you, alone, dancing to its beating heart? Perhaps it is all of these above, perhaps none of them and you despise these spaces, have had terrible traumatic experiences of something else.
It is in its capital Berlin that I have explored this once called underground or counterculture scene, trying to find its wild/animal/fauve essence and wondered, how can this raving soul become a high paying entertainment industry? OR an adult playground?
__
What happens when techno becomes corporate?
This exclusive, branded, normalized, monetised, hyped culture has taken on to standardize what it means to party in style, in the right way. Rules, regulations have been put into place in order for (controlled) decadence to happen, yet there are unspoken norms and rituals that live within its audience.
Why has Techno become a format of partying?
This work reflects an interpretation of this techno Mecca. It reveals an inner sensation of globalized dance. It is not a generalization on what it means to party, rather it is a reflection on the electronic dance party. It considers the observed reality of exclusivity, consumer entertainment, and conversations paying in loop. The sonic 4 channel speaker installation brings you think critically about your engagement within an exclusive space of entertainment. Are you an audience, an active participant, a voyeur, an indulger, a maker, a tourist?
Yes, this piece is a reflective process of my artistic research, questioning this industry, while acknowledging that perhaps, through repetition, differences occur.
U-Bahn Sophie Charlotte Platz
red shirt, yellow line
blue
sage green
washed yellow
Green/blue - sun glasses
Floral - running white shoes
red shirt, yellow line
blue
sage green
washed yellow
Green/blue - sun glasses
Floral - running white shoes
big plastic bag
cane
cape - white
black tote bag TXL
surprised
dragging feet
sandals
It smells dusty
passive
stare
checkered
brown dress
A durational performance in the
U-Bahn Sophie Charlotte Platz, Berlin August to December 2023.
red shirt, yellow line
blue
sage green
washed yellow
Green/blue - sun glasses
Floral - running white shoes
red shirt, yellow line
blue
sage green
washed yellow
Green/blue - sun glasses
Floral - running white shoes
big plastic bag
cane
cape - white
black tote bag TXL
surprised
dragging feet
sandals
It smells dusty
passive
stare
checkered
brown dress
A durational performance in the
U-Bahn Sophie Charlotte Platz, Berlin August to December 2023.
Bodies of Love
An exhibition with Kat Cutler-MacKenzie and Ben Caro, gr_und Berlin February 2023
In our current world of crisis and conflicts, with increased individualism and intense consumption, love in the 21st century is seriously threatened and regularly challenged…seismic sociological changes concerning sexuality, marriage and intimacy, alongside developments in gender issues, [have] affected the way we conceive of love.
Rachael Gilbourne, ‘What We Call Love’, 2016
The body is and has been a highly coded and contested site of political debate. When intersected with contemporary notions of love – which range from the romantic to the patriotic, and intertwine with the associated issues of marriage, family, sexuality, gender, desire… – the site of the body is further complicated. In Bodies of Love the artists seek to develop a visual vocabulary with which to open up contemporary, intersectional conceptions of love that take into account the politicized nature of this phenomenon. The artists explore how, in the current Euro-American context, sociological changes have impacted the ways in which love is understood, and ask whether (and if so, how) artistic interventions can help to build a vocabulary around this shifting, ‘intangible’ act or emotion beyond its traditional stance. As bell hooks writes in all about love, “as a society we are embarrassed by love…without a supple vocabulary, we can’t even talk or think about it directly”. In this exhibition the artists pose an exploratory and fragmentary insight into contemporary notions of love through Muriel Lisk-McIntyre’s sound based installation Its tradition, we Love it! and Ben Caro and Kat Cutler-MacKenzie’s 35mm slide installation feeling looking.
Following a traditional methodology of love, Lisk-McIntyre explores personal relationships of love that are transmitted in the domestic setting. Its tradition, we Love it! is a dining room set, where a conversation on and about love is staged. It is the centerpiece and conversation piece between four women. The aim and questions brought to the table: to attempt to deconstruct and question the ways in which these women show and share love. While considering that the dining table – understood in this work as the center of the home – is an environment in which tradition, behaviors and education about love are passed on from generation to generation. The artist is asking why, on another level, are there still traditional methods of love that ‘we love’, maintain and reproduce to this day? Even though these methods are written in tradition from a patriarchal stance, Lisk McIntyre uses the premise of a matriarchal space to rethink these traditions. Through a series of objects chosen by the artist for their proximity to traditional objects of love, conversations will pour out onto the dining table. and reconsiders the home as the primary school of Love (to be nuanced). As our mothers and grandmothers see new rights passed, then rescind back, Lisk-McIntyre seeks to explore whether love challenges notions of ‘social progress’ or disrupts notions of linear time.
An exhibition with Kat Cutler-MacKenzie and Ben Caro, gr_und Berlin February 2023
In our current world of crisis and conflicts, with increased individualism and intense consumption, love in the 21st century is seriously threatened and regularly challenged…seismic sociological changes concerning sexuality, marriage and intimacy, alongside developments in gender issues, [have] affected the way we conceive of love.
Rachael Gilbourne, ‘What We Call Love’, 2016
The body is and has been a highly coded and contested site of political debate. When intersected with contemporary notions of love – which range from the romantic to the patriotic, and intertwine with the associated issues of marriage, family, sexuality, gender, desire… – the site of the body is further complicated. In Bodies of Love the artists seek to develop a visual vocabulary with which to open up contemporary, intersectional conceptions of love that take into account the politicized nature of this phenomenon. The artists explore how, in the current Euro-American context, sociological changes have impacted the ways in which love is understood, and ask whether (and if so, how) artistic interventions can help to build a vocabulary around this shifting, ‘intangible’ act or emotion beyond its traditional stance. As bell hooks writes in all about love, “as a society we are embarrassed by love…without a supple vocabulary, we can’t even talk or think about it directly”. In this exhibition the artists pose an exploratory and fragmentary insight into contemporary notions of love through Muriel Lisk-McIntyre’s sound based installation Its tradition, we Love it! and Ben Caro and Kat Cutler-MacKenzie’s 35mm slide installation feeling looking.
Following a traditional methodology of love, Lisk-McIntyre explores personal relationships of love that are transmitted in the domestic setting. Its tradition, we Love it! is a dining room set, where a conversation on and about love is staged. It is the centerpiece and conversation piece between four women. The aim and questions brought to the table: to attempt to deconstruct and question the ways in which these women show and share love. While considering that the dining table – understood in this work as the center of the home – is an environment in which tradition, behaviors and education about love are passed on from generation to generation. The artist is asking why, on another level, are there still traditional methods of love that ‘we love’, maintain and reproduce to this day? Even though these methods are written in tradition from a patriarchal stance, Lisk McIntyre uses the premise of a matriarchal space to rethink these traditions. Through a series of objects chosen by the artist for their proximity to traditional objects of love, conversations will pour out onto the dining table. and reconsiders the home as the primary school of Love (to be nuanced). As our mothers and grandmothers see new rights passed, then rescind back, Lisk-McIntyre seeks to explore whether love challenges notions of ‘social progress’ or disrupts notions of linear time.
