Interview with Amanda Dawn Christie
by Christopher Scissons
printed in Answer Print, March 2008, Volume 17, no. 1
view the original pdf here
Amanda Dawn Christie is a practicing interdisciplinary artist, currently living in the Netherlands, working in film, contemporary dance,
photography, textiles, and electroacoustic sound
design. Her current film practice revolves around
hand-processing, experimental-contact printing,
and optical printing. Her films explore issues of
memory and sensuous geographies as they r
late to the identity politics of region and religion.
CS: In 3 Part Harmony: Composition in RGB #1 I noticed a use of sound and separation of images with silence: there is a sense of layering.
ADC: Layering is a very large component of this film. First of all, the images were recorded using a bastardized version of the 1930s Technicolor 3-strip process. The original images were all shot on black and white film through red, green, and blue colour separation filters. I did not use a 3-strip camera with a color separation prism like they did in the 1930s, but instead I recorded each shot of the film three separate times. Instead of creating the final image through a dye-transfer process, like they did in the 1930s, I used an optical printer to recombine the black and white registrations into full colour.
The idea behind working with colour separation in three separate passes, is that when the
camera is fixed and static for all three takes, the
set appears to be in normal colour. But when the
dancer is in motion and/or in different positions,
she becomes transparent, and only the trace of
one color registration is seen for each layer. That
is to say that she appears as either transparent
cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green, or blue, depending on how many layers of the set are allowed to pass through the trace of her body onto
the unexposed film. One of my favourite aspects
of this approach, is that even when the dancer is
in exactly the same place and position, because
she is human, the repetition is never quite perfect,
so while most of her body and skin are normal
full colour, there are traces of registration lines
around the edges of her skirt and hair of primary
colours.
This process of layering is highly technical,
and it involved several rounds of tests both at the
shooting and at the optical printing stages in order
to obtain the perfect colour balance and density
to recreate true colour skin tone from black and
white film stock.
While the process was very technical, there is also conceptual theory behind my choices to work with colour separation. The layered images present fractured views of the body and of the psyche, which drift in and out of unification; sometimes in harmony, sometimes in dissonance.
The first step in preparing for this film, was the dance choreography itself. I worked in the dance studio for three months to create three separate dance solos: a red solo, a blue solo, and a green solo (they appear as cyan, yellow, and magenta in the final print). The solos were created with the intention of being layered on top of one another in film, and with the knowledge that I would be manipulating their speed and direction later in the optical printer. I choreographed and rehearsed the solos with only the sound of a metronome in order to track my movements precisely. During the choreography stage in the dance studio, I provided each coloured solo with a distinct theme for the development of movement vocabulary: Red/Cyan = sexuality/isolation; Blue/ Yellow = Mourning/Celebration; Green/Magenta = Discoveries/Disorientations.
This layering also occurred in the sound. Almost all of the sounds in this film came from sync sound recordings from the filmed performances. The dancing was performed in a silent room, and we recorded the sounds of footsteps, breathing, and skin slapping on skin in each take. These sounds were then synced up properly with the final layered images of the film (green sound recordings synced up with final magenta dancer, and so on). Then these location sync sound recordings were processed digitally to create a more electronic feeling sound track that is in dissonance with the older film techniques (colour separation and optical printing) used on the image.
CS: Was there a conscious use of undercranking/over-cranking of the three part compositions?
ADC: There was no under-cranking or overcranking during the shooting of the original black
and white film. The speed of the dancer’s movements was manipulated in the optical printing stage
of the work. This was indeed very conscious and
planned from the very beginning of the dance chor-
eography stage, before even a single foot of film
was shot. While working on the choreography, I
was aware that just as much of the choreography
would be happening in the optical
printer, as was
happening in the dance studio. These three dance
solos cannot be performed live, because some of
the movements created are not humanly possible. I
created live movements that would then be optically
printed in reverse, in slow motion, in fast motion,
and in freeze frame.
These manipulations of speed were often quite
precise and I had many charts (two walls filled from
floor to ceiling with spreadsheets) detailing the projector frame numbers, the camera frame numbers,
the skip or stretch ratios, and the density filtration
for each of the three colours of each of the eighteen
shots in the film. It involved about 45 days of intense
optical printing, 10 to 15 hours a day. The whole film
was optically printed in one take and edited frame
by frame in the camera body of the optical printer,
so there wasn’t any room for mistakes.
CS: What’s the role of identity in the piece?
ADC: The concept of identity, fractured identities, layered identities, and conflicting identities is at
the heart of 3 Part Harmony. The fact that within the
same identity there can be conflicting beliefs and
practices, but also unity and overlap.
CS: Are you aware of the effect that your work has on your audience? Is there an intentionality to your work that you could define?
ADC: I am aware that each audience member
will bring something different to her interpretation of
the work. As such, I place a very strong value on
ambiguity.
The more information that you give a viewer,
the less room there is for her to develop a personal
interpretation: this creates very didactic work, which
I don’t consider to be very interesting, because it
leaves the viewer in a passive position. However,
the less information that you give the viewer (the
more ambiguous the work), the more room there is
for potential interpretations. I try to make sure that
there is an entry point for the viewer: an image or
a sound that is recognizably symbolic, representational, or significant enough that the viewer can use
as a starting point in engaging with the work.
3 Part Harmony: Composition in RGB #1
screens on Sat. March 15 at the $100 Film Festival.
film and video
installation
performance
photography
writing
audio