In Cargo of Clouds Isabelle Vigier and Anne La Berge observe how human use of data impacts landscapes in our contemporary world.
“Although data seems free flowing and innocuous it actually exists in the world physically. In Cargo of Clouds, we express the ways data is embedded in our physical world, and how the global networks supporting data circulation affects our experience of space. Central to the story is the question of how we are involved as individuals in systems that we do not control, but that have a profound impact on the world.”
Cargo of Clouds, Installation for 3 screens and quadrophonic sound (2021)
Cargo of Clouds By Isabelle Vigier and Anne La Berge was filmed on location at the industrial port of Venlo, NL. It was produced by the artists with the Volsap Foundation. The project was made with the assistance of a powerful team of the artists’ choice: sound designer Alex Booy, drone camera operator and technician Paul Beumer, dancer Valentina Campora and code developer Timo Hoogland.
Cargo of Clouds was made with generous support from Stimulerings Fonds, Prins Bernhard Fonds, Fonds Podium Kunsten, Norma Fonds. We also benefited from a residence with Intro InSitu, in Maastricht, and practical assistance from Splendor, Amsterdam. We are grateful for their support.
Safe Piece (installation)was a special phase of the project of the same name, which started with a series of performances and was captured in a film (2019). Safe Piece was presented as an installation for the first time in Utrecht together with a selection of video stills composed by Isabelle Vigier, the film and a soundscape composed by Andy Moor.
When her first child was seven months old choreographer Valentina Campora started a series of performances where she, the father of the child, and the baby are performing together in front of a small audience. Isabelle Vigier documented the sessions on video over four years. The film Safe Piece shows the process of evolving a semi improvised dance piece through time. The family develops a non verbal language that allows them to be all at once within a multitude of polarized dimensions : private and public, playing and performing, caring and taking risks, improvising and creating choreography.
For Safe Piece (installation) prints and sounds from the film are assembled in the gallery space, laying out the resonances of bodies through motion, play, rest, and shifting moods.
Interview conducted by Marcelle Schots (excerpt) copyright Movement Exposed Gallery Space. Prints are for sale at the gallery and online.
September 21st, 2020 § Comments Off on Safe Piece (a film) § permalink
Experimental documentary / dance film. Video (2019) 26 min.
A film by Isabelle Vigier and Valentina Campora, based on a series of improvised performances by Valentina Campora, with music by Andy Moor and the participation of Elio Campora Moor.
Safe Piece originated in choreographer Valentina Campora’s personal experience of trying to combine her artistic work with being a mother. Having to care for a baby and at the same time trying to continue creating new work posed a personal challenge. As an experiment, she began exploring the possibilities of dancing with her baby. In the course of four years Campora has created eight performances, all of them including herself, her young son and his father, Campora’s partner Andy Moor, a musician himself, playing for a small audience. Each performance was filmed by visual artist Isabelle Vigier. Vigier used the video material to create the fim ‘Safe Piece’, and later the installation of the same name.
In the film we see how displacing a family from the home onto the stage allows for the emergence of new alleys of communication and play. Multi-faceted, evolving relationships occur between parents and child within the realm of music and dance. The film proposes an image of the passing of time as a positive, profoundly generative force: seeing a little boy growing up provides both a pace and an emotional frame to the film. The concepts of potential, loss, and realization are embedded in it.
Safe Piece publicly addresses private questions which are deeply relevant because they deal with fundamentals: the right to work, and the right to raise the future members of our society – in a social space where having children is often experienced as a limitation in terms of professional development. Safe Piece is an investigation into passion for making art and making a family.
THE MAKERS
Valentina Campora, an Italian performer and choreographer based in Amsterdam, NL, initiated the project and formed the team around it. She formulated the original concept and produced the live performances. She has developed the concept in close collaboration with Isabelle Vigier — culminating in the film and the installation of the same name.
Isabelle Vigier a french visual artist and designer uses video in her installations and also works for the stage, in her collaborations with choreographers and composers. Vigier and Moor have worked together on many projects in the past, including the live performance ‘Le Journaliste’, but also through the music label Unsounds, of which they are co-founders. Vigier and Campora started their collaboration with Safe Piece and have gone on to work on more projects together.
Andy Moor (The Ex) is a well known musician improviser and composer of film music. He has worked in various projects with Campora as a live musician, composer, and often an advisor (for example ‘Clessidra, One to One’, ‘Identicality’ and in ‘A Divine Threesome’ by Gabriella Maiorino). Moor is Campora’s partner, and the father of their son. He is also responsible for the soundtrack of the installation version of ‘Safe Piece’.
Elio Chaly Campora Moor is Valentina Campora and Andy Moor’s child. He was seven month old at the beginning of the project.
SAFE PIECE public presentations
Suture Festival, Soven, Germany, August 2021 / Rogue Dancer Festival, Vancouver, Canada, January 2021/ Official Selection InShadow Festival, Lisbon December 20 Nov/13 Dec 2020 / Premiére, Music dance Performance Festival, OT301, Amsterdam, june 2019 / (as Work in progress and performance) Teatro Akropolis Dance Festival Genova, IT, November 2018 / Performing arts Festival, Theater Frascati, Amsterdam, NL, 2018 / Why Not Festival, Amsterdam, NL, 2017
FILM CREDITS
A film by Isabelle Vigier and Valentina Campora. Based on the performance ‘Safe Piece’ by Valentina Campora. Réalisation: Isabelle Vigier. Performers: Valentina Campora and Andy Moor with Elio and Milo Campora Moor and . Music: Andy Moor. Cameras: Isabelle Vigier, Hanneke Kuijpers. Editing: Isabelle Vigier. Sound mastering: Andy Moor. Filmed on location in Amsterdam (NL): OT301, Leine&Roebana Studio, Zaal 100, De Balie, Plantage Dok, De Roode Biooscop and at Le Theatre de St. Nazaire (FR). Production: Valentina Campora. Made with support by AFK Amsterdam Funds for the Arts, Theatre De Roode Biooscop and cultural center OT301, Amsterdam
DNK-Days / The John Cage Project: 20 artists (composers/musicians/poets/movement artists and myself with video) perform 2 minutes parts during a collective random composition based on John Cage’s score. This is the part I made for the event. We performed the piece twice in different constellations. Steim/De appel july 2018.
Yannis Kyriakides performs ‘Varosha’ with the images of the series of postcards In the Golden Seaside / Souvenir of Famagusta. I obliterated all human presence from a collection of postcard views of Famagusta. The deserted images capture the moment where, in July 1974 the resort was evacuated, and the place stood still. The collection was published with ‘Resort & Ruins’, Yannis Kyriakides, Unsounds 2013. The series was also part of the exhibition ‘Suspended Spaces’ Bagnolet, 2014.
