WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.000 --> 00:01:10.840 0:00-1:10 [melodic singing, not in English] 00:01:12.340 --> 00:01:30.000 [percussive vocalization] 00:01:31.040 --> 00:01:34.479 I'm Gary Cook. I was invited to be a photographer 00:01:34.479 --> 00:01:37.840 and videographer during the Judaica project. 00:01:37.840 --> 00:01:44.079 This is my perspective on what I saw. I've tried to deconstruct the project to 00:01:44.079 --> 00:01:48.799 simplify it for my understanding as much as yours. I came up with some key 00:01:48.799 --> 00:01:53.360 phrases. Laboratory: this is the studio space 00:01:53.360 --> 00:01:56.799 where the work is done. It's seen as a lab, and the whole 00:01:56.799 --> 00:02:01.360 project is treated as an experiment. The discoveries they are looking for are 00:02:01.360 --> 00:02:05.840 within the area of research, theater, song, and performance, and how the 00:02:05.840 --> 00:02:08.479 bodies of those in the space connect and react 00:02:08.479 --> 00:02:13.599 to everything around them. This is the most difficult concept to understand, 00:02:13.599 --> 00:02:17.840 and the term they use for this is "embodied research." 00:02:17.840 --> 00:02:22.400 "Embodiment" means how the practitioners feel emotionally and physically, 00:02:22.400 --> 00:02:26.000 and relate their own experience of culture, life, and memory 00:02:26.000 --> 00:02:31.920 to the work they are doing. That's what I've tried to show in this documentary. 00:02:32.000 --> 00:02:36.239 [singing in background] To me, this film is like a pop video--a short explanation 00:02:36.239 --> 00:02:41.599 to an involved project where hours and hours of recording took place. 00:02:41.599 --> 00:02:44.720 Everything you see here--film and still images-- 00:02:44.720 --> 00:02:48.560 were taken by me, recorded at the universities of Huddersfield and 00:02:48.560 --> 00:02:53.120 Manchester in 2017. 00:02:54.000 --> 00:03:07.000 [background singing] 00:03:08.319 --> 00:03:15.680 I'm Ben Spatz. I am directing the project "Judaica: An Embodied Laboratory for Songwork." 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:27.000 [vocalization of a single syllable] 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:35.760 The project is, it's an attempt to create a kind of laboratory inside of 00:03:35.760 --> 00:03:41.599 the university, in a way modeled after scientific laboratories, 00:03:41.599 --> 00:03:46.560 but, um, working with human materials. So it comes out of 00:03:46.560 --> 00:03:49.680 theater, and the idea of a theater laboratory, 00:03:49.680 --> 00:03:53.760 looking at, uh, the idea of the laboratory and the model of the laboratory, 00:03:53.760 --> 00:03:58.840 and the advantages, also the difficulties the limitations of this idea of the 00:03:58.840 --> 00:04:02.640 laboratory and how it works in the university 00:04:02.640 --> 00:04:05.920 context as a place of the generation of knowledge. 00:04:05.920 --> 00:04:11.760 There's incredible amount of joy and freedom, 00:04:11.760 --> 00:04:18.639 freedom in exploration. The way that we use, the way that we 00:04:18.639 --> 00:04:27.680 work with our bodies and voice is incredibly liberating because it doesn't 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:32.320 aim to produce certain type of theater production 00:04:32.320 --> 00:04:42.000 or movie, so it is kind of really raw, in a way. And this type of work, 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:48.240 um, being able to do this type of work as a part of your job is a luxury, 00:04:48.240 --> 00:04:54.400 both for an artist and for a researcher. Usually you are immediately expected to 00:04:54.400 --> 00:04:57.199 produce some results. You know, you've done this today; 00:04:57.199 --> 00:05:00.880 tell us, like you asked me, what you have learned. Whereas we 00:05:00.880 --> 00:05:05.000 took our time and that time is so joyful. 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:10.000 There are different ambitions for the project. Probably the narrowest one is 00:05:10.000 --> 00:05:16.240 just to put forth this idea that the the laboratory of human practice could 00:05:16.240 --> 00:05:19.680 be a real kind of thing, a real place in 00:05:19.680 --> 00:05:25.520 academia. It could really be a laboratory. It could live alongside laboratories of 00:05:25.520 --> 00:05:29.919 engineering and laboratories of railway science and laboratories of chemicals. 00:05:29.919 --> 00:05:33.600 Could also live this laboratory of the human or laboratory of the humanities. 00:05:33.600 --> 00:05:38.880 That's kind of the basic attempt. There is then deeper and more 00:05:38.880 --> 00:05:42.560 complex stuff, because whatever we're doing we're 00:05:42.560 --> 00:05:45.600 always also working with personal material. 00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:50.160 So even though we don't speak about it immediately, or even though we don't 00:05:50.160 --> 00:05:53.600 speak it to ourselves necessarily, there are 00:05:53.600 --> 00:06:00.720 so many things which are coming up. Through a song, a little bit of a memory, 00:06:00.720 --> 00:06:07.680 or some association. So the roles would be practitioner: the person who is in 00:06:07.680 --> 00:06:13.840 custody of the songs and is in the space, and does things. 00:06:13.840 --> 00:06:18.720 Different kind of things. Performative things. 00:06:19.520 --> 00:06:24.560 But also has huge freedom, doesn't have to do anything. 00:06:24.560 --> 00:06:30.639 Can lie down and sleep. We haven't really tried that, but there 00:06:30.639 --> 00:06:34.479 is possibility of doing anything. The second 00:06:34.479 --> 00:06:37.440 role is director, 00:06:38.400 --> 00:06:41.600 who has many tools. 00:06:41.840 --> 00:06:48.319 He can give tips and tasks. He or she. 00:06:48.319 --> 00:06:55.120 But he or she can only be in charge of time. So to tell 00:06:55.120 --> 00:06:58.479 when the session is finished. 00:06:59.680 --> 00:07:08.000 He or she can change the flow of the rehearsal, the work, the experiment, or can 00:07:08.000 --> 00:07:14.840 support it and work on it, what is, whatever is happening. And the 00:07:14.840 --> 00:07:20.479 fourth role is the videographer, 00:07:21.280 --> 00:07:30.440 where you stand behind the glass eye of the beautiful friend of ours, Nikon D750, 00:07:30.440 --> 00:07:37.520 um, which we try to treat as a friend, 00:07:37.520 --> 00:07:45.840 because we realize this is fourth partner in this work. 00:07:46.000 --> 00:08:14.000 [singing, in unison and in counterpoint] 00:08:14.960 --> 00:08:18.800 The biggest thing that I've learned is that, 00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:26.960 is to re-, to return to the audio-visual recording. 00:08:26.960 --> 00:08:31.919 Yeah, a lot of emotions. Um 00:08:33.760 --> 00:08:42.479 There's always fear. Fear of not doing sufficient work, 00:08:42.479 --> 00:08:49.360 fear of not being able to articulate what you're trying to 00:08:49.360 --> 00:08:58.720 explore, fear of being misunderstood by the co-practitioner or 00:08:58.720 --> 00:09:01.920 eventually being misunderstood because we're working with camera 00:09:01.920 --> 00:09:05.839 all the time. We're recording what we're doing and then we're editing those 00:09:05.839 --> 00:09:11.760 things and creating some videos, and there are crossing dramaturgies 00:09:11.760 --> 00:09:16.560 of three of us. There is the dramaturgy of the practitioner, 00:09:16.560 --> 00:09:20.320 dramaturgy of the director, and also dramaturgy of the person who holds the camera. 00:09:20.500 --> 00:09:22.480 And i think the most important thing 00:09:22.480 --> 00:09:29.360 that i've learned so far is that this place of embodied research 00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:32.480 has something to say 00:09:33.519 --> 00:09:38.959 in this new era of the audio visual. And it is something ethical and something 00:09:38.959 --> 00:09:43.519 political that it has to say about what the circulation of this kind 00:09:43.519 --> 00:09:56.810 of media means, and what it does. 00:09:57.000 --> 00:09:58.810 [singing] 00:09:58.959 --> 00:10:06.600 Spatially difficult word, organic, and its history is in any case 00:10:06.600 --> 00:10:08.000 exceptionally complicated. 00:10:09.000 --> 00:11:11.000 [singing]