We performed the work on Saturday yet I feel like this is just the beginning of a longer process. I am beginning to reflect on the work but first want to record some of the comments written by someone in the audience:

Something soft
collding the ordinary of my day
with the delicateness of poppies and vulnerability of naked skin
Images cascading with myself in them
a stillness of gaze
a humour of gesture
a grace of contact
I sit with easy breath amongst it all
Curiosity awakened
a thought about space time skin women and
towns glide across my mind to the backdrop chatter
of voices bringing together tribes

This week may have been the fastest ever. I won't try and catch up the blog entirely but instead will leave it with a bit of a hole that can be only filled by seeing the work. Today I am wondering a lot about documentation. One of the elements of the work that I don't believe I have discussed much in the blog is how we are using nudity: the three of us are nude while performing. Lucinda and Eleonora maintain strong eye contact and relate to each other in space. I am part of the trio but also have a live feed video camera and am shooting them and also the space. In the sharing on Tuesday, most of the conversation afterwards was focused on this aspect. It stimulated a lot of questions about the gaze of the camera and issues around nudity. Yesterday when I saw Christian, my first reaction was to invite him to the rehearsal today so that he could document our run-through. This morning I woke up wondering how to handle this. As much as he has a respectful and calm presence, simply having one clothed male photographer alone in a room with three semi-nude performers (even one with a camera) radically disturbs the work. At first I was really worried about this but now am planning on inviting him for a long conversation before the rehearsal. In the end, we may decide to not have him take photographs, or perhaps we will find a way to integrate his performance as photographer in the work. I'm looking forward to this. At the same time, I want us to have a run-through that helps prepare us to perform continuously for an hour tomorrow and further develop the use of the gestures in the work.

As always, you can see some videos on vimeo.com under the name: meghan summerdancing.

A delightful week has gone already and although we are still in the midst of things, I am starting to look towards shaping the work. I suspect that some aspects of the research will be put aside for now and we will focus in on three parts: the original videos I took, the projections on the body we started today and some performance work we have worked on this week and will need to develop further next week.

I had thought of organizing the gallery space in two halves but today realized that the long space can also invite a journey from one end to the other. A sense of journey or passing through seems more appropriate to the work so I think I'll focus on this.

Today we worked on projecting videos onto the dancers bodies and then recording them. I quickly realized that the this was also interesting live and we developed a series of actions in relation to the projections. It is lovely to see the light on their bare skin and notice the details of skin and freckles in the projections. Lucinda talked yesterday and today about feeling like she is absorbing the images through her skin, embodying the technology. I like thinking about this and seems to be away to keep them from becoming mere objects or projection surfaces. The connection between them is very strong and aids in giving them a strong presence in the space that can compete with the video images.

Today was a day of returning to something i've been exploring for about a year now: taping video cameras to bodies and finding a way of moving that relates to the landscape and creates a rhythmical conversation between body and land. It is a challenging way of working that demands a huge shift in perspective to begin to be aware of the camera in a strange location and taking account of the physicality of the camera, the body and the land. We worked first in the studio and then took it out into the park. An added surprise was that two young men approached us to find out what we were doing and we stayed chatting for a while. One of them rapped for us and even invented a bit of rap in my honor.

There are more videos to see on vimeo: vimeo.com search for Meghan SummerDancing

I just wanted to start off by saying how great it is to have concentrated space and time to work. So much starts to come together and flows because of this environment.

Having said that, the work seems to be flying in different directions and I am busy following a number of paths. We started off today by creating a duet score that was partially inspired by a Marina Abromovic performance I saw recently and partially inspired by the story that a young Japanese man told me last night. The score begins by directly quoting the Abromovic performance: two people point their fingers toward each other and look in each others eyes. When I saw the performance I was mesmerized by the tiny gap of space between their pointer fingers and wanted to try expanding and reducing that space with a sort of contact duet. Last night, Taka told me about a sculpture titled 'reconciliation', a copy of which is both in Hiroshima and Coventry. The duet ends with in a similar way to the two hugging figures in the sculpture.

Later we worked on Lucinda and Eleonora absorbing the dynamics from some of the videos and translating them into movement. I then recorded those movements. I'm curious to try out the results of these and start installing both the video of the landscape and of the bodies with the absorbed landscapes, together.

I'll post some video of today once it is downloaded.

I can't get the links to work at all! But you can go to vimeo.com and search for 'meghan summerdancing' and everything should pop up. The one that I mentioned below is titled 'playing with installation ideas'.

">

Monday seemed to be all about shifting from working on my own gathering thoughts, ideas and video footage to preparing to work with the dancers. I uploaded video all morning and then spent the afternoon moving equipment around the studio, thinking about where to put the cameras and projectors.

When the beautiful dancers arrived today I still wasn't sure how to begin with them and so sent them on excursions that mirrored my own. They walked around the city shooting their own footage. Then when we came back into the space, we spent a long time improvising with movement, playing the video in different places in the space and interacting with the cameras and projectors. Looking back, I suspect this was as much about getting used to each other than generating a lot of useful material.

Towards the end of the day, I began to sense how the space could be organized: one end with a video installation (see video below) and the other as a performance space with the public in the middle.

This was the most concrete result of the day but I think just as importantly we began to understand each others energies and Lucinda and Eleanora joined the process.">

I am busy posting some of the fragments of videos that I've been shooting in the last week. You can access them on Vimeo under the name 'Meghan SummerDancing'.

Here's a link to the first one: http://www.vimeo.com/12550430 There will be others and I think they can be seen by clicking on 'See all'. Enjoy!

I've been walking around in circles in Coventry and Kenilworth, occasionally shooting video, wondering about the place and thinking about the Richard Long photographs that I saw recently.

I would like to post some of short videos I've taken on this blog but might have to post somewhere else and link to here.

While walking with the video camera I am trying to create a balance between absorbing the place with all of my body and senses, not just the lens. This leaves my camera work a bit messy and haphazard but I like this. The situation of filming while walking and enjoying the place dominates what is being recorded. For example, I was filming from underneath a tree up into the branches and had the desire to spin and watch the leaves revolve so I did. Other bits of video follow the rhythm of me walking or the rise and fall of my breath as I lie on a bench and stare up at the clouds.

In one place I wanted to move rather than shoot video. It was a sort of pedestrian underpass in Kenilworth that leads into a large park. The underpass is a beautiful structure with amazing high pitched echoes but the dark and wet keep people scurrying through. I sat on the edge for a while and watched people being unsure of my odd choice to remain. I wanted to create an even odder situation: lie down where the arch meets the ground and have only my feet stick out into the park.

I'm in the Lanchester now and am again noticing how much information even the most neutral space offers: a window view of the ring road, ebb and flow of traffic evident in sounds and light reflections flashing on the wall, vertical blinds that swing and sway, a key turning in the lock echoes loudly through the space, a pile of detritus sits in one corner.

I had thought I would start playing with the equipment today but I've left it in the cupboard for now. I am just sitting and letting my imagination wander.

I'm becoming and more and more interested in Coventry and will probably go for another long walk later. I'd like to bring a lot of Coventry into the space and am pleased that the traffic and ring road already leak in so much.

I have thought for a while that this project has a title: Between knowing and not knowing. I'll have to find out if the title fits. It could also be: Everybody loves a naked lady on a horse.

Hello! My residency has not truly begun yet - I have been a bit of a vagabond here in Coventry, getting to know the people and places before settling into the Lanchester gallery tomorrow and starting to work with Lucinda and Eleonora on Tuesday. I am looking forward to using this blog as a repository of fragments of writing and video that are accumulated in the next couple of weeks.

To get started, something I wrote in my journal yesterday . . .

Day 1
Today is the first day that I have been able to move in a dance studio and feel like I have arrived. My body is filled with tightness and creaks after a week of being on the road and away from my routine.

The studio has a confusing lighting system that seems to shut off periodically. I think it might be set up with a motion detector system and I quite like it. It is asking me to consider the relationship of vision, motion and presence. I like being unexpectedly plunged into darkness as if I do not exist if I do not move.

I hadn't realized until Tuesday that this is where Lady Godiva is supposed to have ridden through town nude to stop the oppression of the people by her husband. There is a statue of her in the center that is labeled 'self-sacrifice.' Interesting that that statue was put up in 1949, in the middle of Coventry, in the middle of Enlgland. What does self-sacrifice mean then and now?

The statue turns us all into peeping toms.

In her honor, I moved around, just warming up really, while nude.

I am also interested in Coventry's historic relationship to peace and reconciliation and will try to find out more. In a church there is a plaque commemorating the Falklands war that says "These nations shall learn war no more'.

It seems we are still learning war.