experimental documentary / dance film. Video (2019) 26 min. / Language no problem.
A film by Isabelle Vigier and Valentina Campora, based on a dance piece 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.
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.
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.
SAFE PIECE public presentations
Safe Piece (installation)
Movement Exposed Gallery Space, Utrecht, NL, sept/oct 2020
Safe Piece (film)
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
(Work in progress and performance) Teatro Akropolis Dance Festival Genova, IT, November 2018
(Work in progress) Performing arts Festival, Theater Frascati, Amsterdam, NL, 2018
(Work in progress ) Why Not Festival, Amsterdam, NL, 2017
FILM CREDITS
a film by Isabelle Vigier and Valentina Campora
Réalisation: Isabelle Vigier
Based on the performance ‘Safe Piece’ by Valentina Campora
Performers: Valentina Campora and Andy Moor with Elio Campora Moor
Music: Andy Moor
Cameras: Isabelle Vigier, Hanneke Kuijpers
Editing: Isabelle Vigier
Color calibration: Sergio Gridelli
Sound mastering: Andy Moor
Additional music: Temusewo Mukasa Uganda Harp ‘Okwagala omulungi kwesengereza’
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
Connecting Tunes was born from a desire I shared with my friend musician Felicity Provan to take action at a time where the refugee crisis was growing overwhelmingly. We wanted to involve music makers and artists in a dialogue between our community and the people living in Amsterdam as refugees or asylum seekers. Our idea was to use the power of music making as a bridge for mutual appreciation, while delivering an artful concert series.
We were looking for meaningful ways to express solidarity and love to those people who’ve had to leave everything behind to seek security and a future. Through Connecting Tunes we hoped, somehow, to help.
As artists involved in the world of independent music the most meaningful thing we can offer is the music we love and create. We have seen in the asylum seekers center that music playing and sharing is present and meaningful. Therefore the idea of Connecting Tunes, a monthly concert for, and with refugees in Amsterdam.
We created a program with musicians from our network; jazz, improvisation, songs, electronics or experimental, small settings of 1 to 4 musicians, mostly acoustic. Musicians from the refugee’s community of the Flierbosdreef in Amsterdam Bijlmer were given the space too, and we found ways to start a dialogue in music. We played together.
Now we view the mutual contact that happened through music in the concert series as our first achievement. The series stopped with the closing of the center where the refugees were based.
“A mexican singer sings love songs from Vera Cruz, a young singer from Iran responds with love songs of his own hand, there’s a world between those songs, but it was blending in that time and place. We were happy to be there in such fantastic company and felt like ‘YES’ this is what we want. Volunteers, you’re lovable, refugees, you’re us, musicians you’re magic. Thank you Geerte, Nora, Fuensanta and Mahan!.”
“There was light pouring into the space all afternoon. Connecting Tunes 3 was vibrant and happy, with a colorful group of people from lands as far away as Yemen, Mexico, Syria, Iran, Irak, Eritrea, and also friends from Berlin (thanks Cooking for peace Berlin/Ciska Jansen) Amsterdam, the Bijlmer… Again moved and truly thankful for the generosity of our guests: artists, volunteers, neighbors, refugees, and the church community of Buuren in de Nieuwe Stad.”
PARTNERS/HOST
We found a partner in the eocumenical community of the Nieuwe Stad, in the Bijlmer. The various churches under the Nieuwe Stad roof are working together under the name ‘Buurten in de Nieuwe Stad’. They are eager to act positively for the neighborhood, church users of different faiths, residents and refugees included. They offered their beautiful space, an architect building from the 80’s, as well as many volunteers, and hosted the Connecting Tunes concert series. We are grateful for their support and generosity.
We organized 5 concerts from March to July 2016, free for all asylum seekers and neighbors, including Syrian and Iranian food for the community. Cooking for Peace from Berlin joined us on one event. Supermarket chain AH had the grace to sponsor 2 of the meals in natura.
The Flierbosdreef, in the Bijlmer area of Amsterdam, was a temporary facility for asylum seekers in the earliest stages of their process; those men and women had just arrived and were trying to find their marks, and stabilize. They were mostly under great stress. They formed a fluctuating community could be dispatched to new locations at very short notice. The location closed in August 2016, that is when the project stopped as well.
Connecting Tunes founders:
Isabelle Vigier: music label owner. designer. artist / Felicity Provan: independent music professional
Uttertells a story about the complexities of the mother/child relationship from the perspective of language acquisition in a performance with sound and images. The piece is based on a text and composition by Anne La Berge. She invited me to develop the visual part of the piece, and we involved Marcel Wierckx who in turn helped with the interactive set up that we had envisioned for the piece. The three of us worked artistically on developing Utter, aiming at a format that could be performed live by Anne as well as being an interactive installation. The set includes 6 iPads that run a newly developed app that interacts with a laptop that steers both audio and visual material. Unsounds has published Utter within a collection of digital stories. Utter has been performed in the US, Mexico, New Zealand, and Europe, and will continue to be performed live in the future.
The making of Utter and performance tours can be seen on Anne’s website: here.
Making of
Anne La Berge – working out our interactive tool – Splendor Amsterdam
“Many lullabies, sweet as they commonly seem, often reflect dark and sinister meaning. Vigier’s selection from various traditional poems develops throughout the work alongside increasingly more obscure imagery. She delves into the darkness of the night, paying homage to the legends, terrors and the eventual peace that often settles across the night’s span. These images are accompanied by haunting subtleties in the soundtrack, such as the glass bead mobile shimmering beneath the unrelenting violin arpeggios in Kate Moore’s Broken Rosary.” – Music Trust Australia, review by Tamara Kholer 02-2020
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A work based on the deconstruction of the lyrics in lullabies of various heritages. Re-contextualizing words and images, I composed an abstract berceuse, around the mysteries, the fears and the peace that come with the act of falling asleep. This project is companion to the program called ‘Close your eyes and I’ll close mine’ that toured around Australia in 2012, with Anna McMichael, violin, Tamara-Anna Cislowska, piano, Isabelle Vigier, video. It is published on Unsounds, 2014.
VIDEO intervention during DOEK Festival, may 2014Kao kids make an unexpected action during a concert session: they pop-up on stage and improvisers Eric Boeren and Benjamin Herman join in.
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KAO make & play is a process based creative platform combining visual and physical expression. For kids age 8/13. The participants invent characters, painting big faces on large brown paper bags; these will be the starting point for multiple explorations. Story-making, sound-making, movement and performance, are based on improvisation, observation, dialogue.
Isabelle Vigier (artistic direction/visual artist) Makiko Ito (performer/choregrapher) Anne LaBerge and Jochem van Tol (musician and performers)
Wear-on installation playing with movement (motion and wind) and impact on the street image. The Other Wind Cape is a garment that features a 3 dimensional body shape on its back, that inflates, moves and dances in the wind. The silhouette becomes a double body, two bodies back to back, as imaginary companions, or shadows maybe. Light weight waterproof nylon, limited edition.
The Other Wind Cape has integrated the Deste Fashion Collection in 2012, as part of a selection of 7 art and fashion projects made in 2011. The capsule 2012 was curated by Athina Rachel Tsangari for the Deste foundation.
Concept and design Isabelle Vigier. Photos: Rutger Storm. Models: photos, Makiko Itto, video, Valentina Campora. Tailoring: Carla Ijff, seamstress: Sena Al Hedad. Made with support by Cloudfactory, Amsterdam.
Exposure
Barney’s New York, Art Windows, June 2012
Capsule 2012, a film by Athina Rachel Tsangari
Deste Art and Fashion Collection, 2012
Soepboer & Stooker, Amsterdam, 2012
SALON/2, Amsterdam, July 2011
Cloudfactory pop-up boutique, July 2011
