This video shows two participatory actions (phase 6 of The Exercise Through Line). The trio below is doing one action independently and the duet above is doing another one. The video shows how the same set of instructions give two very different approaches to a participatory action in the context of the workshop of The Real Health Center.
The action of the trio you can see right from the beginning until the very end starting from the description of a sense perception until the end of the participatory action.
Unfortunately the beginning of the action of the duet wasn’t captured, but you can see the middle and the end and get a sense of the quality of the action, the feeling of it being shared and the way it’s finished. In the very end of the action of the duet I would interpret a meaning has been co-created.
This duet is also a good example of a combination of precision and openness in the action which invites the articipant along. Even though we didn’t manage to capture the description in the beginning, it’s possible to see in the clip how the performer keeps the action (relatively) precise and clear, but also simultaneously senses the articipant and the environment throughout the process of forming the action letting both the articipant and the environment affect the action to a meaningful extent.
The video also shows a development of the audiovisual methodology. The research started with one external video recording an outside view of the performer-researcher (me) working in the studio. In here it has developed into a split screen shot where you can see both an outside shot of one action and a point of view shot of another action recorded simultaneously with two GoPros. In this recording the split screen allows you to see the action from both performer’s and participant’s point of view and also enables you to see two different actions with very different qualities in progress at the same time. This allows the user of this exposition to compare two different approaches to the same set of instructions simultaneously and shows how very different material the exercise brings forth. It allows for a comparative analysis in an audiovisual form which affords a new view on both the action by the participants (performers) of the workshop and the resulting video material.
This new view on the material(s) links to a discussion by Sumartojo and Pink about how video in relation to research is not the thing itself, but a trace (Sumartojo and Pink in Cruz, Sumartojo & Pink 2017, 39). It’s an artistic and methodological choice which reveals aspects essential to this research. I address this question further in the ‘Audiovisual Methodology’ section of the reflection text.