MODE05

“One day I saw a mountain bike in a magazine and knew that the future didn’t just exist in sci-fi sequels on television” (Hal Foster)

“The moment when Nike launched their first Air model it was clear that we had left the dark ages we normally call modernism” (Hans Ulrich Obrist)

“In fact Photoshop is as big a revolution as central perspective, not what you can do with it, but what it does to you” (Lew Manowitch)

It seems that what we often recall as, the time of the yuppie, the era of the cell phone and global village version 1.0 coincide with a few years when the future changed. The quotes above all refer and stem from this period when the thickness of our agendas was evidence of success.

This letter is an attempt to formulate some basic ideas and motivations concerning the initiative, upcoming process and aims of mode05. It has been written by the organizers and is thought of as the starting point and initial material for a rewriting process involving everybody connected to the project.

Ulrike Melzwig, Martin Nachbar (January, 2005)

Dr. Ric Allsopp (b.1950) is a co-founder and joint editor of Performance Research, a quarterly international journal of contemporary performance (pub. London & New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis) http://performance-research.net and is Reader in Performance Research at Dartington College of Arts, Devon, UK.

He was Lecturer in Theatre at Dartington from 1982- 90 and Research Associate at the Centre for Performance Research, Cardiff, Wales between 1985 and 1994 producing the first catalogue of the Centre (1987) and helping to organising a number of international symposia and workshops including Performance Ritual and Shamanism (1992). He taught at the School for New Dance Development (SNDO) in Amsterdam from 1990-1994 and has since led numerous workshops on performance and writing at the SNDO, the European Dance Development Centre (EDDC) in Arnhem, Dansenshus, Copenhagen, the Centre L’Animal l’Esquena, Girona, as well as in Gemany, Norway, Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Venezuela and the USA. He is a co-founder (with Scott deLahunta) of Writing Research Associates, an international partnership organizing, promoting and publishing contemporary performance projects including Conversations on Choregraphy (1998-2002), Migrations (Centre for Contemporary Culture, Barcelona, 2000); In the Event of Text (HKU, Utrecht, 1999) and Performance Writing: A Symposium (Dartington,1996) and The Connected Body? (Amsterdam, 1994).

Hi, here I send you a text I have written on creative processes. These thoughts are connected with the creation of three dance production the Trilogy X,Y and Z. There was so many thoughts coming out of this work that I decided to make a book this text is the starting point. If this book will ever be published I do not really know but the thoughts are somehow there to be shared.

There is no ideal dance. There are rather movements and actions, some of them habitual or everyday, others carefully chosen-for or acrobatic.
There is no ideal choreography. There are rather individual processes of choice making.
There is no ideal school. There are rather varying desires, needs and instigations for learning.

I just want to throw in a reference that I came across not too long ago. It’s a publication titled Artistic Research (Annette W. Balkema & Henk Slager (Eds.), Amsterdam & New York 2004, Lier en Boog Series of Philosophy of Art and Art Theory Vol. 18). Somehow it was hard to get it in Germany.