Video: Melody Panosian

Download the blogs first 40 posts here released on Anne Laplantines net label Universal Music

Video, camera, music: Melody Panosian

Performers: Melody Panosian, Laurent Proux

We (Melody Panosian aka Swimsuit Tissue and Florentina Holzinger aka Miss Roboto) are not expressing ourselves on the blog, we are role playing, playing out an idea of an intimacy that is supposedly absent on Internet. Writing postcards was not less public and when we blog there is even a performative act in our awareness of the 3rd reader/spectator.

The blog is our refuge as people. Disconnected geographically and communicating independently. When independent of time and space, the form we use is open, even tough we like to think of the conversation as a dialogue, as you always write for someone else. We believe we are poets of the now, of the moment. Our poetry will never be neither accurate, nor concise, so there is no aim for the creation of meaning.
We don’t intend meaningfulness, morality or a hierarchical structure. We like to think of it as “automatic blogging”, based on a very intuitive approach to the creation of words, of the method of putting words together, in rows, underneath each other.
The image can be more important than the meaning of a particular word. The image can be there because of how it looks. Of course the words we use will then create a certain meaning because we like to be dramatic and lyrical of course. I like being a composer of possibilities and an interpreter of my own and of my opposite and recipient. The blog is free to be interpreted to the individual desire of the particular spectator.

The blog also serves the fictive creation of something “bigger than yourself”. The state of me, as a singular being, a private home-grown person is neither intellectual, wise or mystical, nor the fantasy figure of an artist. Even though we can be all of that, we like to dress up as smart fashion princesses. So we can be all of that on the blog, thus wisdom can be found on the blog.
Swimsuit Tissue offers Miss Roboto wisdom in exchange of understanding, vice versa. Understanding is crucial and immanent – it is the unspoken qualification. The blogger is herself the guru, we are gurus to each other.
Our blogging is non therapeutical because there is no emphasis on healing and it does not function as a medicine, a drug or placebo, even though that effect might occur. In fact, our work stabilises us and we can utilise our suffering for the sake of blogging. It is like we are playing dolls with each other and the dolls substitute for undigested items in our environment.
The blog is fictional, as well as any names mentioned.  Miss Roboto and Swimsuit Tissue are playing diary together. The blog serves the amplification of our constructed selves – it is channel and vehicle.

About badness:
In general we believe in the quality of the badness in our life and work. This is an essential theme that we have been interested in and working on for years. We want to investigate badness and its temptation. We accept that the blog’s badness is necessary for its existence and that it is forever the very source of inspiration and very much a filter for us to look at the world: its animals and aliens. The representation of our reflection  of it all – is the blog.
The blog’s relation and reference to badness is crucial for its existence. It is a source of inspiration that allows us to grow and take any form we or you want. The blog itself reveals our intentions and desires for the blog, the image we want it to communicate, if there is one.

About beauty:
Of course it is a blog about beauty and in the end that is what we always wanted to achieve. Every written word aims for beauty, every arrangement is aware of its form. We ourselves, strive for beauty and harmony. That is our aesthetical choice. Beautiful things are easier to look at. The badness is necessary so we don’t get overlooked, misunderstood or categorised. (Or understood even).
We like:
Haiku, rhymes, rap, songs, stories, biographies, documentaries, all artists, all assholes, money, men, bad performance. (Dykes). This contains all that we currently do.

Author: Jelena Miskovic
Video editing, music: Melody Panosian

Video, performer: Melody Panosian

Music: Bach – Toccata and Fugue in D minor

Camera, performer: Laurent Proux

Video: Melody Panosian

Music:
Melody Panosian
The-Dream, 1977 (Miss You Still)
Jon Sheffield, Old Long Song (For Melody),

Location: Île-de-France, France

” I think the irony of the tattoo is genius. When Melody, years later and as a woman, takes over Tupac Shakurs legendary “Thug Life” tattoo, creates an openness towards the flexibility and fluidity of identity. We have to create motives and paths for ourselves. To embody and claim reflects the time we are living in. By giving value to something by our own initiatives, lies the personal within the political and vice versa. “

- Karina Sarkissova , 6 May 2012

Performers: Melody Panosian, Florentina Holzinger and
Pedro, 27 from Barcelona, Spain

Camera: Florentina Holzinger

Location: No Pain No Brain in Berlin, Germany 2011

Video: Melody Panosian

Flyers: Richie Ball, Melody Panosian

Music: Lied der Deutschen

Video, performer, costume, camera: Melody Panosian

Camera: Karin Kajsa Gustafson

Location: Visby, Gotland and HEMA in Amsterdam, Holland

Video, camera: Melody Panosian

Location: Arthur Rimbaud Monument, Marseille 2011

Augustusplatz, Leipzig

Video, camera: Melody Panosian

Performers: Streetmusicians

Location: Augustusplatz, Leipzig 2011

Tempelhof, Berlin

Video, camera: Melody Panosian

Performer: August Zachrisson

Location: Flughafen Tempelhof, Berlin 2011

Video: Melody Panosian

Music: George Sympa, Soft

Video, music, performer, costume: Melody Panosian

Location: Leipzig, Germany 2011

Video: Melody Panosian

Music: George Sympa, In the sea

Video: Melody Panosian

Music: George Sympa, C’est l’été

Video: Melody Panosian

Music: George Sympa, IFEELBAD

Video: Melody Panosian

Music: George Sympa ft Melody Panosian

Cyborg Writings;
- DEALING WITH THE PAST, REACHING THE FUTURE
Ethiopia, Riefenstahl, Swimsuit Tissue, mythological woman, sci fi, common sense.

Direction, costume, performer: Melody Panosian

Camera: Florentina Holzinger

Location: The Amsterdam Music Theatre, Amsterdam 2011

Video: Melody Panosian

Music: Mads Langer , You’re Not Alone

Location: In car between Leipzig and Amsterdam

Video: Melody Panosian

Performers: Unknown

Location: Spinnerei, Leipzig

Video: Melody Panosian

Music: Anne Laplantine, Justinenight

Video, performer: Melody Panosian

Location: Johannapark, Leipzig

Video, performer: Melody Panosian

Music: Glenn Gold, Bach – Fugue in E Major from The Well Tempered Clavier

You People

Preparatory videos

Installation

Performances

Posthumous

” In the Spinnerei, Leipzig the bare bruised walls signal the end of the industrial era in Western Europe. This place formerly so loud, was left empty and silent. Here Melody Panosians performance What kingdom. Of all damn human. Animals. Nothing important takes place.

The artist, arranged a space with carefully selected objects that find a use during the performances but actually (above all when there is no performance but only the installation) invites the spectator to guess what they could mean.

When she is performing the artist changes clothes and in particular wears what could be an « African costume » (self-made from a colored printed cloth) and a « futuristic costume » (blue and skin-tight) which contrast with each other and are brought to life by the artist’s body.

These costumes bring back a lot of feelings. The « African » pattern evokes another continent and perhaps another time (is it the past?) It  appears to be loose-fitting, natural and noble. The colors stand out against the grey/white concrete walls of the Spinnerei. In Wassily Kandinsky’s theory of colors, red or yellow are associated with movement, and white with immobility . As for the « futuristic » costume, it is more reminiscent of 20th century science-fiction movies where humans would have left the earth…

The result (what we can see during the performance) could be summed up as follow:  a woman, alone in a free empty place, convokes distant worlds to coexist on stage for a few minutes. Her strength is memory, dream, imagination. With the help of costumes and of the whole performance choreography,  she creates with refreshing energy her own visual world. “

- Antoinette Belin, 30 May 2012

Posthumous

tape in camera standing on tripod, direction wallpaper, floor and red eggs in a fish bowl.
i come in talking about the space, ” i have some sort of objects in a room with 3 walls i cannot get it all together, i am pretending like no one will notice the evident ” then i make the audience repeat my name King together, until it sounds loud enough they keep on repeating my name my right hand is formed and heavy and i walk cross steps and my head circles around my torso, ” louder…louder! ok enough ” i get the plastic guitar put it between my legs as tail i go to the floor look at their standing feet. like a dog, right hand hurts on dog. i put on the speech (invitation text) which rejects them as audience ” i take every opportunity to take revenge upon you ” then i get into holy mary plastic vail swimsuit costume and out of house wife costume. in holy mary plastic vail swimsuit now i need someone from the audience ” i need a favor, concerns milk, it is fun “. I put on King video on my mac, it is a music video for Jazz Jam. pours milk on me while i am upside down. acrobatics with legs and feet. putting coal on my feet and hands like sport. wall is dirty now. then i put eggs with back to audience in my swimsuit red eggs in stomach pink water coming down between my legs looks like i am menstruating or peeing. becomes pink lake with the milk on floor. i go to the front again, remove the stop sign in front of the camera on my way…
lay down leg spread backwards…demonic and very flexible. crush the red eggs, while a song for me is being played a song about gifts. the eggs come out of my swimsuit close to vagina and neck crushed red eggs come out of my swimsuit close to vagina and chest too. i massage the crushed eggs into my skin. now when the song Les étoiles et les cochons is playing i undress…yes naked under i am wet. change into queen exotic dress while the dress is lying horizontal on the floor; legs spread and my flesh. fabric feels very nice against my skin, i spread my limbs on floor. i come up and dance in triangle shape; dance is only crossed steps that also make me twirl. after the song Les étoiles et les cochons is finished comes 30 min of filming that i clean up the space with a crown. ” i need a favour, concerns filming, it is fun ” some one from audience films every last 30 min of each performance. i want each time to be different. cleaning up takes time. with crown. different interactions happen every performance: on one occasion 2 other performers from another show came in and i asked them to join.
and i take them in. i want to be alone now. you may leave when you feel like. tape finishes.

Kindly supported by Swedish Arts Grants Committee

tape in camera standing on tripod, direction wallpaper, floor and red eggs in a fish bowl.
i come in talking about the space, ” i have some sort of objects in a room with 3 walls i cannot get it all together, i am pretending like no one will notice the evident ” then i make the audience repeat my name King together, until it sounds loud enough they keep on repeating my name my right hand is formed and heavy and i walk cross steps and my head circles around my torso, ” louder…louder! ok enough ” i get the plastic guitar put it between my legs as tail i go to the floor look at their standing feet. like a dog, right hand hurts on dog. i put on the speech (invitation text) which rejects them as audience ” i take every opportunity to take revenge upon you ” then i get into holy mary plastic vail swimsuit costume and out of house wife costume. in holy mary plastic vail swimsuit now i need someone from the audience ” i need a favor, concerns milk, it is fun “. I put on King video on my mac, it is a music video for Jazz Jam. pours milk on me while i am upside down. acrobatics with legs and feet. putting coal on my feet and hands like sport. wall is dirty now. then i put eggs with back to audience in my swimsuit red eggs in stomach pink water coming down between my legs looks like i am menstruating or peeing. becomes pink lake with the milk on floor. i go to the front again, remove the stop sign in front of the camera on my way…
lay down leg spread backwards…demonic and very flexible. crush the red eggs, while a song for me is being played a song about gifts. the eggs come out of my swimsuit close to vagina and neck crushed red eggs come out of my swimsuit close to vagina and chest too. i massage the crushed eggs into my skin. now when the song Les étoiles et les cochons is playing i undress…yes naked under i am wet. change into queen exotic dress while the dress is lying horizontal on the floor; legs spread and my flesh. fabric feels very nice against my skin, i spread my limbs on floor. i come up and dance in triangle shape; dance is only crossed steps that also make me twirl. after the song Les étoiles et les cochons is finished comes 30 min of filming that i clean up the space with a crown. ” i need a favour, concerns filming, it is fun ” some one from audience films every last 30 min of each performance. i want each time to be different. cleaning up takes time. with crown. different interactions happen every performance: on one occasion 2 other performers from another show came in and i asked them to join.
and i take them in. i want to be alone now. you may leave when you feel like. tape finishes.

USB stick with 11 videos for sale. I can send it by post. Simply send me an email melodypanosian@gmail.com. Enclose the desired postal adress and write “USB stick” in the subject field.

The stick includes the floorplan of the performances and 11 preporatory videos with music by David Hamer Atlas, PomponFrais, Sean Cannock, Jon Sheffield, DZR:P and other stars.
This collection of videos was played continously on my mac computer during the installation. Under the computer hung the many USB sticks as products, including price information. The music video King was shown in all performances .

Some of the other videos
Die Böse Farbe
Jackson 59
Gala, a music video for MelloG
Onionz from David, a music video for Fake Sleeper
Cleaning good- a music video for Dear Yma and a gift from Jon to Melody
Daybreak Edit
Exotic Bird, a music video for Let’s Go Sailing

from Bad to Worst
When attending my friends performance at a performance festival, I accidently saw this performance ‘from Bad to Worst’ by Stéphen Delattre. I learned alot from this performance. I learned about the know it all-clown, who fails, but is always serious.

Interview with Petra Cortright
In the very begining of this project I made an interview with Petra Cortright about her vlogging (video blogging). I find Petra Cortright and Anne Laplantines (1) (2) spontanious videos interesting beacuse they reveal things about our daily life and our relationship to technology.
Petra Cortright Interview by Melody Panosian

Sherry
When I discovered Ann Liv Young and her character Sherry some friends of mine where attending a workshop by her so I got the chance and privilige to follow this whole life/art entirety.
Read this text first

Watch this video after

Below, the video that inspired me most

Ann Liv Young interviews Sherry from Ann Liv Young on Vimeo.

Universal Book
Since the Facebook group Universal was created, consisting of people from Anne Laplantines net music label Universal Music, the various collaborations started.
Members of the Universal Facebook group can share their music there. The chat room developed not only a sort of Toilet Humor but we also started to get to know each other and in that process many of my friends there had direct access to the process and development of ‘What kingdom. Of all damn human. Animals. Nothing important’ in fact, they became very much a part of it. Also, the Preporatory videos consists music from these collaborations. Since the start of this group we have been jamming together online via online jamming sites NINjam and eJamming. The recordings where I myself participate are collected in Unicunt 2.0. There are also a other types of collaboration on Unicunt 2.0, like remixes and works on request.

Books etc
Copy Me by Marcus Kaarto och Rasmus Fleischer (Eds.)
Figures of Fantasy by Paasonen Susanna
Net Pioneers 1.0 Contextualizing Early Net-Based Art by Dieter Daniels, Gunther Reisinger (Eds.)
Under the Sign of Saturn: Essays by Susan Sontag
Seven Nights by Jorge Luis Borges
Proud to be Flesh: A Mute Magazine Anthology of Cultural Politics After the Net by Josephine Berry Slater (Editor), Pauline Van Mourik Broekman (Editor), Michael Corris (Editor)
The Thinking-Feeling of What Happens by Brian Massumi
An anagram of ideas on art, form and film by Maya Deren
Varat och varan: prostitution, surrogatmödraskap och den delade människan by Kajsa Ekis Ekman
Revolution and other writings by Gustav Landauer
The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain
Black skin White masks by Frantz Fanon
Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher
Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video by Catherine Russell.
Powers of Horror by Julia Kristeva

Films etc
Der Ister by David Barison and Daniel Ross
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
Devil by John Erick Dowdle
Disney
Dollhouse by Joss Whedon
Vogue Evolution gives Vogue lessons tutorial
Welcome to the Dollhouse by Todd Solondz
The Surprising History of Sex and Love by Terry Jones

Bateau Ivre Horses
I wrote an extensive amount of poetry during the whole project. The poetry makes clear for me, my focus during the process. I published most of it on my blog that I have together with Florentina Holzinger. Click

from Lindenau Museum to Le Louvre
Most of the poetry that I wrote during the process was in the beginning of my collaboration with Stéphane Querrec and our making of the video ‘Flection/Reflection’ for his installation ‘Empty Shells – Dead Time’ at the Kunstverein, Leipzig. We shot the video in Lindeau Museum, Altenburg where I met Ancient Greek sculptures and as always I realised I find it so much easier to relate to objects. The collaboration was not transparent at all, we would write somewhat fictional emails to each other, provocing the other persons most mad side to “come to life”. With this collaboration we wanted to go through our madness, or if you might – badness. Many where the themes and they would multiply, so I went to Le Louvre in Paris to go further in my interest in the Ancient Greek sculptures and its mythological women meeting christianity.
The rest of my Paris time I spent in the Bibliotheque Du Cinema where I read through the book, ‘Experimental Ethnography: The Work of Film in the Age of Video’ by Catherine Russell.

from You People to Me

As a European
I find it important to date things, to document my life and to remember.
Making friends on Internet, means making art on Internet, for me the internet is a platform for making art especially performance art. See You People. I found that Vlogging is the ultimute media for that and so I started to make Preporatory videos and I uploaded every single one on www.youtube.com/meghedi

Swimsuit Tissue has three marriage proposals after only one day in Africa and many boys stand outside her house to kiss her. They all want to go home with her because they too want the chance to find perfection. She kisses some of them because she hopes to find that true love. But the more boys she kisses, the uglier she becomes, but her dreamy blue dress always remains beautiful.
Swimsuit Tissue returns home very disappointed and sad. On her return she meets a tailor that loves her dreamy blue dress so much that he asks her to stay with him. She remains with the tailor because she thinks she finally found true love. She buys golden earrings that so much match her dreamy blue dress.
On a rainy day Swimsuit Tissue arrives home soaked to her bare skin. The tailor hates how she looks and immediately starts to clean her like a madman. She cannot hide her sadness and so she starts to tear her dreamy blue dress in the many pieces. With every piece Swimsuit Tissues anger grows and so she becomes Leni Riefenstahl…

Video, performer: Melody Panosian

Music: Powdered Hearts, Fake Sleeper

Location: Cemetery at Spinnerei, Leipzig

Video: Melody Panosian

Location: Spinnerei, Leipzig

Video, performer: Melody Panosian

Light installation:

Music: Boards Of Canada – Midas Touch (Hell Interface remix)

Location: Spinnerei, Leipzig

Video, performer: Melody Panosian

Music: David Hamer Atlas ft Melody Panosian, MelloG

Location: Spinnerei, Leipzig

Video, performer: Melody Panosian

Music: DZR:P, Let’s Go Sailing

Location: Spinnerei, Leipzig

Performer, video: Melody Panosian

Performer: Anna Mönnich

Music: Pomponfrais, Pom sing hammer and Marilyn Monroe, River of no return

Location: Kulkwitzer See, Leipzig

]]> http://melodypanosian.info/performance/2011/daybreak-edit/feed/ 0 http://melodypanosian.info/performance/2011/cleaning-good-a-music-video-for-dear-yma-and-a-gift-from-jon-to-melody/ http://melodypanosian.info/performance/2011/cleaning-good-a-music-video-for-dear-yma-and-a-gift-from-jon-to-melody/#comments Sat, 19 Mar 2011 16:27:51 +0000 melody http://melodypanosian.info/?p=2252

Performer, video: Melody Panosian

Music: Jon Sheffield

Location: Spinnerei, Leipzig

Unicunt 2.0 (first)
Unicunt 2.0 (second)

Since the Facebook group Universal was created, consisting of people from Anne Laplantines net music label Universal Music, the various collaborations started.
Members of the Universal Facebook group can share their music there on the wall. The chat room developed not only a sort of Toilet Humor but we also started to get to know each other and make music together. Since the start of this group we have been jamming together online via online jamming sites NINjam and eJamming. A small percentage of the recordings are collected in Unicunt 2.0. During the jams people come and go, so who joins is seldom correctly noted. Some jams are not recorded or they are a bit lost for the time being.

I made music videos for some of the songs. See Preparatory videos; What kingdom. Of all damn human. Animals. Nothing important.

and more about the Universal Facebook group You People; ‘What kingdom. Of all damn human. Animals. Nothing important’

]]> http://melodypanosian.info/music/2011/unicunt/feed/ 0 http://melodypanosian.info/music/2011/king-a-music-video-for-jazz-jam/ http://melodypanosian.info/music/2011/king-a-music-video-for-jazz-jam/#comments Wed, 16 Feb 2011 21:33:31 +0000 melody http://melodypanosian.info/?p=770 The song Jazz Jam is made on Internet via an online jamming site. I don’t know what can top this.

Music, video, camera: Melody Panosian

Music: Sean Cannock, Melody Panosian, Penis Mcgee – Jazz Jam

Location: Spinnerei, Leipzig

Video, performer, camera: Melody Panosian

Painter, performer, camera: Christian Weidner

Location: Spinnerei, Leipzig

The evident follow up of Weekling Ep. 2pac2-4 is a tribute album to my childhood friend. Someone told me he was dead, but that was not the case. Anyway, he made me dance, twirl, cycle and make these songs.

Weekling is 4 songs made during one week. I was dwelling on our neoliberal contempt for weakness in a society that definitely contains victims. Instead of reaching out and finding one another, each other – separate but precise.
The idea of alienation and neoliberal quest to win means that everyone is forced into seeking his or her own goals and not able to reach out to each other, rather encouraged to forge an individual life, when we are actually social creatures needing commune with each other.

2 – 10 december
Berlin 2010 I made daily songs. I called them Saily Songs. I was curious how the daily restriction would affect my songs.

Performed on November 27, 2010 at Offkonsten!/Teatergalleriet, Uppsala, SE

Trailer

Video editing: Melody Panosian

Album for sale.

Download Part A and Part B released on Anne Laplantines net label Universal Music

I started making music in the midst of Soulseek (http://www.slsknet.org) file sharing community birth. It consisted of me sending a voice through the web and of my friend Anders Hultqvist aka Blgnse/Dty/Same title picking it up, trying to add a body and then returning it. We subtly created the loss and loneliness generated through communication without bodies and the errors and degenerative aspects of broken copies and repetition through faulty hardware. We worked with artificial failings while trying to emulate and better the organic, trying to understand what is body. The longing created through adding and layering sound was also false or imperfect. We called our duo Blgody.

During that time we also had a band in which I played electric guitar, synthesizer and sang. The band/collective is called Frulax/FRLX. We formed numerous solo and collaborative projects; Blgnse, Same title, Karmir Katou, Magoog, Blgody, Sinclr, Fondt, Absoliit, Dty, Memo, Dojan and Greta are a few of them. Soulseek was a place for remixes. Imperfect and always in becoming, but not explicit, not descriptive but performative and pragmatic.

When I started to upload my solo music to the myspace page, it was under the name Greta. Skateboarder Use Log is an anagram of the name Greta and Soulseek.
My later myspace name, Swimsuit Tissue, is the slippery name of a cyber space traveller in constant reincarnation. However, now the same myspace page is merely a memorial of the original one  http://www.myspace.com/melodypanosian

There is also an interview with the founders of Soulseek in the blog section of the site.

Video, performer, camera, music: Melody Panosian

Location: Teatergalleriet, Uppsala 2010

Video, camera, music: Melody Panosian

Location: Video material is from the performance The Birds They Sing For You by Tomislav Feller Sophiensaele, Berlin 10.07.2010

After a trip to Ethiopia I knew I was not going to be dreaming for a while I did not strive for any sort of meaning or truth. I was on my way to the Abyss. During that time I made this video.

Video, performer, camera: Melody Panosian

Music: Enya, Caribbean blue

Location: Uppsala 2010

http://mutanten.org/blog/fnor/

Our collaboration initially started as a misunderstanding, which is often the case when communicating on Internet. By using the nickname “Netochka Nezvanova” I got an email from a fellow space-traveller, Kiritan Flux, who claimed to have met me.

memory 1: The audience is presented with two adjacent screens representing two separate, but interwoven worlds that attempt to communicate – between each other and the performer on stage. The installation wants to share the experience of the refiguring multiple travelling affinities in the real and the virtual world.
It’s a glimpse into the journey of hypertextual flesh through timespace, exposed to a constant stream of information and emotion from the future and the past – poetry that will prevail.

Performed on October 26, 2010 at På Besök, Malmö, SE

Did we meet? was my first reply and from that moment on we exchanged poetry during the whole summer of 2010. Our emails where Intertext poems about our separate love lives, which also initially started off being virtual contacts.

Did we meat?

In October 2010 we started making performances together with the poems (e-mails) as a starting point. The title of the performances are ‘Did we meat?’ We want to share the experience of the refiguring multiple traveling affinities in the real and the virtual world. ‘Did we meat?’ is a glimpse into the journey of hyper-textual flesh through time-space, exposed to a constant stream of information and emotion from the future and the past  – poetry that will prevail.
‘Did we meat?’ is a hypermedial performance in constant progress. It’s not a final piece, not a static product, but a permanently changing and evolving happening, inspired by the initial exchanged poetry and the ongoing mutual inspiration derived from present communication between the two of us and the various virtual, digital selfs we embody in the online world. Every performance is a singular experience, it happens once and is not repeated. Every performance is a different piece in itself, but at the same time embracing the priors, weaving the past into the present and future. Hyper-textual flesh has no history, no time, no space, no constants but steady change and progressive evolvement.

” …doing rather than being Your work looks interesting. Its a bit vague and cryptic for me. I like the story of fighting in the nightmare I had a similar dream but cannot remember in details “

memory 2:
Performed on November 6, 2010 at Die Frühperle, Berlin, DE

Performer, video-installation, music: Melody Panosian
Live visuals: Kiritan Flux
Location: Die Frühperle, Berlin

Tomorrow came, we are already downloaded. The meat is really physically changing since the Internet. What is happening is an abstraction or complexification, hybridisation of social bodies and qualities, themes, physicalities, dynamics, which, for us, are poetically inherent to those bodies in a real or imagined society. We are in a state of transition and what have become of our bodies? We am attracted to materialising the metaphysical. The new flesh. The idea being that the resulting movement can in turn nourish more sensation and imagination for the art work and for the audience. The structure of our brain changes just by using Internet every day. Checking email is becoming an automatic action. We’re used to non-linearity, copy-paste writing – which is more “natural” than linear full text writing.  We’re on the verge, something’s coming, something’s coming, something’s coming.

The word “creation” will no longer be restricted to works of art but will signify a self-conscious activity, self convincing, reproducing for its own terms. It has its own reality (body, desire, time, space), being its own creation. In cyberspace the imageries, have been translated as abandonment of the flesh, while venturing into cyberspace. The desire for an evolutionary transformation of the human has shifted focus from the preparation for the journey into ‘outer space’ from a dying planet to the virtual ‘inner space’ of the computer. Thus the flesh is changing into plurality and if the law is to execute itself it will have to inscribe itself on the body, also like a touch.

The above text is an example of typical intertext; three texts woven into each other by copy-pasting. An example of the very working method in which ‘Did we meet?’ started off.

- The Holy Fools, Richard Barbrook

- Cyberspace/cyberbodies/cyberpunk: cultures of technological embodiment, Mike Featherstone, Roger Burrows

- I, Cyborg: Reinventing the Human, Proud to Be Flesh: A Mute Magazine Anthology of Culture and Politics After the Net

Addis Ababa is a green city that looks like a roller coaster. Much because of the holes that spontaneously emerge in the asphalt. If you dont look up, you walk straight down. Most people are farmers. There is a traffic that no one is really used to. People walk in the middle of the road.
When I first arrived in Addis it was full Easter celebrations. Many women had solemn white
linen dresses and scarves and the streets where swarming with goats and chickens. As soon as the Easter weekend and the 55-day fasting was over there was no honking and bleating in the night and the only sound left was the dogs howling.

Private classes in Etiopian traditional dances

My first teacher in Ethiopian traditional dances, Shiferaw Tariku, said that I struggled in the beginning, that every time I would stop feeling pleasure when i dance, I must stop and start again. These private classe where relatively formal while these danses actually function as social dances. Feet are synchronized and the dance requires relation, interaction and thus improvisation. The music, which is the same as dance, communicates when it is the “transition movements” and when it is the “dance movements”.
To help me find meaning to dance this social dance alone, Shiferaw said ” Imagine that I am not here. You would dance for yourself. ” I realized the limitation of learning the dances with private teachers, because it was like I was only existing for myself. As some dance moves require a partner, he danced with me I realized early on that I needed more time to learn these dances because my sceleton and my joints needed time to adapt to the new movements. Shiferaws goal was to teach these four dances beacuse their distinguished rythms.
After the very first week with Shiferaw I had decided to come back and continue learn more about these dances.

My second teacher in Ethiopian traditional dances was Temesgen.
Temesgen is famous in Etioipien for be a very good traditional dancer. He teaches the traditional
Ethiopian dances to children in the age of 4 to 20. There are a total of 40 children that dance for him. They practice at the Ethiopian National Theatre where there is no dance floor, so they dance on the stone floor.

The first time I visited Temesgens students in Ethiopian National Theatre they asked me to give some classes in contemporary / modern dance two times a week. I thought them an old solo dance phrase, called Isis. We made a group composition of the solo. I thought them dance composition and in the end we did an improvisation from the same movement material.
Like most people in Ethiopia, Temesgen is very religious, and before the daily dance class begins they all join hands in a circle and pray together. To my great surprise, Temesgen never taught any other foreigner in traditional Ethiopian dances. Rarely have we seen a dancer like Temesgen. Everyone talks about that he has great “power”. To see Temesgen dance was like seeing embodied music. Pure emotion, pure rhythm. He sings constantly while dancing. Temesgen repeatedly asked me, “You feeling it?”. According to him, I was able dance whenever I felt the music.
I recognized movements from the experience I have from break dance and dance hall. I could also trace movements from popular R & B music videos similar to the experience I had from my private lessons with Shiferaw, a liberating dance for myself.

You should create your own dance style, and you should always follow the music, follow the rhythm within.
I discovered, that music and dance are not so separated in Ethiopia as in the West; where dance is dance and music is music.

Camera: Addisu Demissie Kifle.
Traditional dancer Temesgen and contemporary dancer Nuria Mohammed. Together with contemporary dancer, Shiferaw Tariku, my teachers in 4 traditional Ethiopian dances.

Adugna Dance and Theatre Company
Adugna is the only dance company that makes contemporary dance in Ethiopia. To a large extent, I got insight into the conditions under which they run a dance company in Ethiopia. The Adugna members work in diverse ways; as dancers with international choreographers and they make dance with people with AIDS and disabled people. They have had training in classical ballet, contemporary dance and African dance. Their dance studio has a functional dance floor but the audio equipment is very unpredictable. There is electricity on occasions but you never know when. There is no electricity when its is raining.
My schedule consisted of morning training in contemporary dance / improvisation with Adugna and in the afternoon I had my own traditional private Ethiopian traditional dances training. Early on we realized that we where in exchange so they asked me to give a workshop in choreography.

In One hour walk we walk in couples for one hour through the city to create a piece of choreography. The process and research time becomes identical with the rehearsal time. We walk around a shared public space, then we bring that experience back to the studio and show a choreography. Me and my working partner Addissu walked around the Markato Market, where half a million peoples houses had recently been totally removed. During that walk we through a mango between us, to make it softer. We discovered how different our realities are by how the others would look at us; what they would not say directly to me as a forengee and what they would think of him, being with me. When we later presented that in the studio it was the mango that was our connection the whole time while speaking in our mother tongues, it eventually broke on the floor as flesh and juice.
In One Hour Walk my partner Addisu asked me “What is The Color of Addis Ababa?”. I
replied, “White, blue, red, yellow ….”. He said that he does not see skin color. Yes, even a color-blind can see the nuances.

Returnee is an Ethiopian term. A Returnee is a person born in Ethiopia, growing up in the U.S.
or the like and then return to Ethiopia. A Returnee. They start businesses in Addis because they have a belief to improve Ethiopia’s economy. I wondered why Ethiopians abroad do not support the dance company to build a new dance studio. The reason is that unlike other nations, such as Jews or Armenians, Africans do not usually gather large collections, since most Africans in the first place not can get out from Africa. Standard in Africa is in a village receives a polio vaccination. Africa can not develop in the direction of what is called the standard in the West.

UtopiaS
Adugna asked me to give another workshop and I had been thinking of a group improvisation on the theme Utopias. I wanted to continue with the questions that come up under the One Hour Walk.
Everyone’s different utopias are possible when one is acts without agent, but creates. Utopias and improvisation can be compared to a game and how do people listen in a dream?
In a state of being singular plural, you wonder if the game has begun. It seems to be no real and not imaginary, atleast not, at a certain distance. This facilitates co-existence because of not being reduced to a dancing art object, but rather a conscious participant. Utopia is a framework for utopia in the plural, a place where people are free to join together voluntarily to pursue and try to realize their own vision of co-existincing manner of life in the ideal society, but where no one can impose their utopian vision. The utopian society is the many utopias society.

Leni Riefenstahl giving the sponsored message – practicing propaganda.

My main inspiration to go to Ethiopia was Leni Riefenstahl. Was she an apolitical artist or a conniving fellow traveller, if not dedicated believer, of the Nazi Regime? No one with potentially large viewing public can overlook the potential impact of their work on society, its culture, and its politics. Leni Riefenstahl, constantly teaches me that providence will triumph over ego. What do you have to do to live – you have to be there and make it happen.

Judith Butler has very clearly shown, once we become aware of the fact that we are (re)producing the dominant order through our daily activity, we become able to change our behaviour, and thereby the dominant order itself.
The flanuer observes and understand and changes in interaction. The flanuer is interested in intermediary arrangements that we are calling networks. By experiencing Ethiopian culture I would see more clearly where I came from but then the struggle became how to relate, becoming the others other.

Leni Riefenstahl; glorifies beauty – tones down the destructive. Seeks to postpone her death. Defer death through differentiating herself. Singularizes herself. Riefenstahl is concerned about her very being and not being: mortality.
I want to observe the work/leasure distinction. Observe the drudgery of man kind and how we treat the body as an operator of machines. I would rather be both human and machine. Machines, being emergent, do not have origins to which they must be faithful. There is not a happy person who is not in her body.

The body which is neither global or local – a traveler in transition.

My virtual (avatar) body(s) gives me access transform by travel. I started the project from an emailadress and ended up dancing Ethiopian traditional dances in Addis Ababa. After World War II Leni Riefenstahl traveled to Africa as Leni Riefenstahl – the photographer and filmmaker. She was a personality without character that fabricated an other story of herself.

Maya Deren gave dance for camera its name and gave lectures and wrote immensely on art and film. She organised the experimental film world. Maya Deren wanted to go into the society of the Haitians with making a film about the Vodoun in Haiti. She was always invited by the Haitians, to dance with them and participate in their rituals but most often she would stay as director behind the film camera.
During my stay in Addis Ababa I wanted my flesh to be totally absorbed by their dances. I also participated in a traditional coffee ceremony, preparing the ceremony myself and I also paid visit to an orthodox wedding ceremony of one brother from one of the people in the Adugna.

‘Moving makes me sad’ serves as the background for the installation/performance What Kingdom. Of all damn human. Animals. Nothing important.

Kindly supported by Swedish Arts Grants Committee

Video, performer: Melody Panosian

Music: Melody Panosian, Oj

Performers: Hanna Strandberg, Alma Söderberg, Melody Panosian

Music: Alma Söderberg

Video, camera: Melody Panosian

Location: Tanzfabrik, Berlin and Kule Theater, Berlin

Preparation Video for Proberaum performance by and with Melody Panosian and Hanna Strandberg

Performers: Hanna Strandberg, Melody Panosian

Music: Beyoncé, Halo

Video, camera: Melody Panosian

Location: Treptower Park, Berlin

Weaving the Webs is a video/installation that includes 8 performances. Each performance had its own title; Dry, Suitcase, Factory, Ones, Zeros, Unlooped, Looped and Woven. The 8 performances where metaphoric, action based and about 2-7 min of length. The installation was transformed after each performance; The web changed shape and quality, the net was interwoven and the boxes where moved around. During the 3 week exhibition period mine and my colligue, Sara Harro’s ideas where also interwoven and we wanted to keep that process similar to the hypertextual chaos that is characteristic to the internets condition. We dealt with health and community in the drudgery and mediocrity of neo-liberal culture. We where inspired by cyborg women, innocence in all its forms, computers as artists, people as machines and nature as technology.

Direction, choreography, performers, costume, installation,
camera, video: Sara Harro and Melody Panosian

Music, loop machine: Melody Panosian

Location: Kunsthaus Bethanien, Berlin 2009

Video, performer, camera: Melody Panosian

Music: Alma Söderberg, Sound and Emotion

Location: Berlin, 2009

Video: Melody Panosian

Performers: Florentina Holzinger, Melody Panosian

Location: Berlin

The Lonesome Cowboy for Melody Panosian is a video/installation in which I perform the surreal of self display. I wanted to ”step aside” and create a situational irony; what seems to be and what is. The working method was much like the Lonesome Cowboy for Florentina Holzinger, influenced by Deborah Hays method where the movements derived from constant questions asked in the body.  I wanted to research the matter of heritage – a form beyond the collected experience and performative. We might be entities with inherited memory, a heritage leaking through time, seemingly out of present context. These versatile shapes do not grab habits, confirmations and concepts but they confirm an unprocessed expression. The challenge of all the artificial lights to the violence of the sun rays.

Direction, choreograpy, performer, costume, video, camera: Melody Panosian

Music: Alma Söderberg, A High

Installation: Maria Norefors

Location: Ausland and BAT Studiotheater, Berlin 2009

]]> http://melodypanosian.info/performance/2009/the-lonesome-cowboy-for-melody-panosian/feed/ 0 http://melodypanosian.info/music/2008/coating-agent/ http://melodypanosian.info/music/2008/coating-agent/#comments Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:29:31 +0000 melody http://melodypanosian.info/?p=2082 Posted Soon

Prepared Piano and Trumpet: Anais Tuerlinckx

Circuit Bent Radio: Melody Panosian

Performances: Anais Tuerlinckx and Melody Panosian

Location: Fischladen, Berlin and Mainzerstr. 39, Berlin

Palt is a traditional heavy course that is mostly eaten in north of Sweden during the long dark winters.

‘Palten’ is an audio-object, with a 10 min audio track; two old woman from the north chanting about their bitter love lives and snow, while riding scooters.
The cd player is inside the wool plate of the
Palt and the audio track can be listened to
through the telephone handle.

Object, Music: Maria Norefors, Melody Panosian

Location: Mainzerstr. 39, Berlin

The Lonesome Cowboy for Florentina Holzinger is a solo performance where I pushed the performer Florentina Holzinger to a point where she was very sensitive to sounds created by herself in the space. I worked out a method in which Florentinas listening skills would be exercised. The movements derived from constant questions asked in the body, much like choreographer Deborah Hay works. In the dance studio we exercised moving the body with low pelvic guttural sounds and high throat sounds. We made sound research as a working method. We studied musique concrete and we recorded layers of everyday sounds. Sitting in a park, we interviewed the composer, Tian Rotterveel, about sound perception and phenomenology. We did all this, to practice listening and open up the possibility for accumulating new interests and choices in sound- and movement-making. Quadrophonic speakers where panned in the performance to bring the performer to yet another level of sound enviroment. This eventualy broke down her own sound and movement vocabulary to the point of being lost and full of adrenaline. A state of trance or hysteria. I wanted to engage the body in its own construction of identity, once the space is not imposing its ways on us, to engage the person in active choises. Creating hidden performativities in fluidity, not in rigidity and hierarchy but in decentralization.

Direction, choreography, costume, light design, sound engineering: Melody Panosian

Performer: Florentina Holzinger

Location: SNDO 1 Festival, Amsterdam 2008

The poster for the performance The Lonesome Cowboy is meant to give a certain expectation to the audience before seeing the performance. Later, the expectation is not to be fulfilled. The costume is a reference to the heroine in Kill Bill, but my main aim was to place a non descript person in a rural landscape.

Direction, costume, camera: Melody Panosian

Performer: Florentina Holzinger

Location: Nieuwe Meer, Amsterdam 2008

Flyer for The Lonesome Cowboy for Florentina Holzinger

Performer, Circuit Bent Radio: Melody Panosian

Camera, video: Unknown

Location: Witte de Withstraat, Amsterdam

I was invited to this dance and media culture lab DAMA – Performing Space, time and media and I had the opportunity to collaborate with Finish and Islandic visual artist and dancers. I gave a workshop in circuit bending.

Itchy and Scratchy is a split screen concert where one side of the screen shows a performer moving her hand. The other side of the screen shows a performer playing a circuit bent radio. We where working with basic listening tools for improvising music/dance and I wanted to demonstrate music/dance tactility in an almost pedagogic sense.

Direction: Melody Panosian

Performers: Ragnheiður Sigurðard Bjarnarson and Mari Ylipihan

Location: University of Lapland, Rovaniemi 2007

CLUB GAL is a stop motion animated music video in which I wanted to crossbreed my modernist dance training and club dance. The animations are made with fabric and clay. A purple striped figure, both in the form of a person and an insect, dances in a lively forest of fabric. There, it entangles itself and finds a way out. My aim was to create harmony from something old school into steadfast nostalgia.

Direction, choreography, performer, animation, video, camera: Melody Panosian

Background Painting: Rasmus Streith

Music: Booka Shade, Night Falls

Location: Visby, 2007

Kindly supported by Gotland Film Commission

DuoPanosian/Karlsson – New Masters is a live concert that became the noise album that I made with composer Daniel Karlsson. My main instrument was a Circuit Bent Radio – an opened radio that commits sounds when two points, usually wet fingers, are connected to the radios circuit card. As DuoPanosian/Karlsson we where embracing each sound fragments particular uniqueness; It..s viscosity. It..s rhythm. It..s pulsation. A breath. A voice so clear within the broken shards of melodies lost…

Photography and direction: José Figueroa

Producer, direction, card closed radio, samples, costume: Melody Panosian

Producer, Max programming and voice: Daniel Karlsson

Location: “O-tism” Effes, Visby 2006

I wanted to make a short film in which the real time would be stretched to a more meditative journey and the camera to record the time in between the takes. During dance studies I attended Butoh dance workshops in which we exercised Ma. The title, MA TURN, comes from this Japanese expression, Ma, which means “the space between”. (Wiki: the thing that takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements). I wanted to lead away the spectator with the pitfall of illusion and reality.

Video, direction, camera: Melody Panosian

Performers: Elisabeth Blomqvist, Olle Söderström, Maria Janson

Location: Visby, 2006

Kindly supported by Gotland Film Commission

During choreography studies in Visby on the Swedish island Gotland I hosted a radio show on Just Radio FM 89,2 every sunday afternoon. The weekly radio show, i called SHE DID, because I played music made by woman. What made me come to that point was that for years I was dj-ing at clubs and benefits – but mostly electronica, hip hop and experimental electronic music made by men. I wanted to actively broaden my own and other peoples knowledge on music made by woman. The music on SHE DID was very varied. I mostly played punk, hip hop, electronica, singer-songwriter, pop/rock and experimental/art music. I would also tell about the musicians backgrounds, how the bands were formed and the innovations they made and/or are still making.
On occasions I made special programs, like the interview I did with Lise Axelsson the founder of Ella – a pop/rock music school for woman on Gotland. We talked about the conditions and strategies of young woman musicians. On an other occasion I made a Kate Bush special in which I mostly played songs from the albums that she produced herself. I told about her development and the innovations she made.

Host, dj, editor: Melody Panosian

Location: Just Radio FM 89,2 Visby, Gotland

are a series of events/site specifics in the Botanical Gardens 2004-2006 during the annual Kultur I Natten, which is a cultural event taking place night time all over the city of Visby, Gotland.

During dance/choreography studies on Gotlands Dansutbildningar in Visby a met many artists from versatile artistic backgrounds. They studied animation, composition, sculpture and dance. I realised my work was about creating environments of exchange. During that time I was going to Butoh dance workshops during off school time. I was influenced by the Butoh dance workshops; Exploring physicality through poetry and imagery, transcending the bodily state into new physical conditions.
I started experimenting with material in a molecular and poetic level in my choreographies. I was observing different qualities of movement with the help of versatile materials. What makes the materials unique and how they are distinguished. These conditions come from imaginative powers and fabricates a new physicality. The research period was always transparent for all the collaborators as I handed out project descriptions consisting of images, scientific texts and my poetry. I was writing informative poems; Reading scientific texts that are merely explanatory, then using that language for making poetry about a materials metamorphosis, and using it as excuse and content of the dance/choreography.

Bat Dance (2004) is an event where I was exploring the bat; its movement ability and the sounds that make a radar, enabling it to orientate in blindness.

Direction, choreography, costume: Melody Panosian

Performer: Anna Hedström, Melody Panosian

Music: Marcus Wrangö, Edda Magnasson

Projections: Peter Larsson

Sculpture: Anna Olsson

Location: Botanical Gardens, Visby 2004

Pupa Dance (2005) is an event exploring the dramaturgy of the pupas development into imago and reversed back to pupa again.
I was exploring the pupas movement ability. The dramaturgical line , also functioned as the dramaturgical line in the musical composition.

Direction, choreography, performer, costume: Melody Panosian

Music: Jacob Svartengren

Installation: Anna Olsson

Location: Botanical Gardens, Visby 2005

Gelatinous (2006) is an event exploring the jelly material on a molecular level – from liquid form to jelly material. I developed a working method to be able to teach it to another performer.

Direction, choreography, costume, camera: Melody Panosian

Performer: Zayri Ramark

Music: Daniel Karlsson

Sculpture: Rasmus Streith

Location: Botanical Gardens, Visby 2006