And That is What You See Us By (2018)
AND THAT IS WHAT YOU SEE US BY
A performance installation by Natalia Barua, Simon Ellis and Katrina McPherson.
A practice-research project initiated by Katrina McPherson to explore perceptions of memory, archival interaction, the relationship between what is remembered and what is documented and the presence of screens in dance and in life. Supported by The Work Room, Creative Scotland and C-Dare (Centre for Dance Research) at Coventry University.
Katrina McPherson, Natalia Barua and Simon Ellis completed two weeks of research and development in Edinburgh and Glasgow. As their practice and conversations evolved during this time, they started to focus on ideas, questions and reading to do with:
- privilege: who is seen by whom and how?
- the ways in which power is present and absent in front of and behind cameras
- the male and the female gaze
- the primacy and power of images in our visual culture and the currency of the live body “
Underpinning the work, which was presented at The Work Room, was the artists’ response to the ideas present for them as artists engaged with moving image technologies and the body. as part of he presentation, Natalie, Simon and Katrina issued the statement:
“Humans upload nearly 300,000 photos to the internet every minute. The scale of our immersion in visual culture – the ways in which images act on us, and shape our thinking and habits – is impossible to comprehend. With each image, the ways we see and are seen are changed. Gaze is a project that explores the work of images in shaping our lives, our thoughts, our politics and our autonomy.”
