Visual Studies
Rebecca Golembeski
As a trained dancer, I have always felt a sense of awkwardness in front of the camera. In school I was taught how to perform to a live audience, where to cast my gaze, or how high to hold my chin so that the audience in the top balcony can read my expression. The video camera is different. Unlike the live audience whose mere presence emits energy, the video camera is a mechanical device; it is unresponsive to moments of great emotion and unforgetting of missteps. From my experience I draw inspiration to transform the camera into something other than a machine used to document dance, to uncover the relationship between dance and video.
In my art pieces, I confront my unease about dancing in front of the lens by assuming the roles of directory of photography, editor, choreographer, and dancer. My work explores the notions of space and site-specifity, taking dance out of the traditional theater and bringing viewers into new dance environments. I am interested in the idea of space as it relates to dance and video because I believe it to be an even playing field where dance and video can equally intersect as one interdisciplinary medium. Concepts addressed in my written thesis and artworks include ephemerality, the captured space versus the physical camera frame, viewer proximity, and site. Spatiality and the visual utilization and exploration of space are inherent in the very foundations of both dance and film/video. It is from this foundation that I see great potential for discussion and art making.