This 4-channel video installation was created to accompany a performance by Heidi Duckler Dance Theatre NW at The White Box Gallery, University of Oregon. I shot footage on the day leading up to and including the group’s site-specific performance in a burned-out and graffitied building. The rain came and went, creating puddles that reflected the textures of concrete and spraypaint. Colors darkened into night against the architecture with dancers in yellow and silver raincoats. Within the gallery, four screens surrounded the viewers on all sides for a 10-minute screening.
Tag: dance
My sound design and camerawork for Kelly Rauer’s three-channel video installation concentrated on swooping, twirling motions. White noise, sine tones and pulsing drum machines were recorded with a swinging microphone – a pendulum to mimic the kinetics of the camera work and the dancer’s bodies. Paired and mirrored, larger than life, dancers swing the graphic marks of their limbs in the stark glare of a spotlight or fling themselves into a dark void, amid passing tones and the crackling of an ice storm.
Locate was commissioned by Disjecta Contemporary Art Center for the PORTLAND2014 Biennial of Contemporary Art, curated by Amanda Hunt.
12-minute loop, stereo sound
Portland2014 Biennial of Contemporary Art
Disjecta Contemporary Art Center, Portland, OR
March 8 – April 27, 2014
Concept & Choreography: Kelly Rauer
Dancers: Kelly Rauer and Leah Wilmouth
Camera and sound: Seth Nehil
Review by Sarah Sentilles at Oregon Arts Watch
This outdoor dance performance was the culmination of Linda K Johnson’s year-long artist residency amid the construction of the South Waterfront. Promenade responded to a rectangular park – a blank plot of grass surrounded by cranes and just-finished high-rise buildings. A PA system was mounted on the balcony of a nearby condo, where I mixed ambient tones at a volume just loud enough to integrate with the urban environment. Six performer-participants rode bicycles with portable amps attached. Circling the park, they played long drones to create a swirling doppler effect. The bicyclists then moved among the audience, playing clusters, streams and bursts of loosely synchronized sound. At various locations, dancers dressed entirely in white performed short interactions, illuminated by a crew holding battery-powered lights on long poles.
South Waterfront, Portland OR
July 2009
Seth Nehil 