Planks

A revelation of place and pathway of moment, connection and flow

Markers of phenomena
‘Planks’ is an opening to seeing and relating phenomenal spatial dimensions through dance–accomplished by setting a pathway in response to dynamic landscape process and change relationships. Planks are placed on surfaces as visible markers identifying moments and constructing pathway relationships. They are a mode in the journey of a dancer as a body independent and part of site phenomena. ‘Planks’ is a journey of participation. They are part of unseen ephemeral flows and act as rafts, conduits, forms, signifiers and affects in space.

In space
‘Planks’ is an endeavor to experience a place through movement and dance and to outline and mark a meander of paralleling motion and articulating thresholds in a sinuous space. ‘Planks’ goes further by purposefully creating a surface on a horizontal plane that offers entrances at various physical and phenomenal scales. The dancer as both participant and observer defines space in an open system.

As a map
The installation represents a series of layers mapping space through meaning, phenomena and interaction. ‘Planks’ performs as a marker on top of and between interstitial spaces. Layers are considered to be above and below the earth’s surface and inside and outside of the space. They are contextual. They are realized through experiential moments. When the dancer performs, she observes phenomena and becomes phenomena through affect, as in affecting and being affected within a place. This place may be what Spinoza refers to as a plane of immanence. The surface of the earth and the surface of our thinking in this installation space, is the plane. Viewing from further away explicitly reveals a perspective of curvature and flow. The closer view is more a moment and becomes the ephemeral experience.

In place and meaning
Each plank is a fragment, an intelligible mark based upon a language of ‘place making’ through a series of moments. The series is one and a sequence unified into a physical and phenomenal language tracing phenomena in nature and in architecture. ‘Planks’ is a way of ‘writing the landscape’ that deciphers flow, position and movement in spatial relationships that hold meaning and define place.

In scale and reality
‘Planks’ initiates meaning by mapping an interpretation of space and scale. We see the veins in the leaf, the paths through the forest, the tributaries of the watershed and each plank as a fragment of the whole. The installation is a platform positioned between the realities of two infrastructures interpreted through revelation and participation. ‘Planks’ builds a stage of perception by linking phenomena, dwelling and forest continuums.

Jeff Logsdon, August 2006

The cans can be seen as an index of objects, desires, characteristics, memories and observations. The labels are not full-out texts but rather phrases or words that trigger an unwritten text or image for me and for the viewer. I would like to continue in the same direction with the cans, yet discover new sources to draw from by meeting with people from Writtle and from seeing and walking about the countryside of Essex.

Lynn Schwartz