Artist and researcher Anna Macdonald talks about the idea of holding as a curatorial act within her current dance and moving image practice. How can works hold time – and what about the anxiety of capture? Anna relates these concepts to ideas from psychology, particularly maternal containment.
Learn More:
Anna Macdonald’s works: all at this link
Everything idea (2015: loop)
I will not Hope (2014: 5m 26)
Progression (Free style) (2017: 24m 38s)
Falling for Everything (2014: 5m 15s)
Walk (2016:1m 57s)
Other works shown
Scoop (2009) Ellie Rees
Café Muller (1985 recording) Pina Bausch
Singin’ in the Rain (1955) dir. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen
Accumulation with talking and Watermotor (1978) Trisha Brown
Texts (reference list provided by Anna MacDonald):
Doane, Mary Ann. The Emergence of Cinematic Time: Modernity, Contingency, the Archive. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.
Ettinger, B. (1996), ‘Matrixial trans-subjectivity’, Journal of Theory, Culture & Society, 23:2&3, pp. 218–22.
Ferguson, L. and Metcalfe, A. (2001), ‘Half opened being’, in J. May and N. Thrift (eds), Timespace: Geographies of Temporality, London: Routledge Press, pp. 240–61.
Fraleigh, Horton S. Dance and the Lived Body: A Descriptive Aesthetics. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Ogden, T. (2004) ‘On holding and containing being and Dreaming.’
International Journal Psychoanalysis, Vol 85, pp 1349-64.
Parry, R. (2010) A Critical Examination of Bion’s Concept of Containment and Winnicott’s Concept of Holding and Their Psychotherapeutic Implications. Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand Press.
Winnicott, D. W. (1990) The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment: Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development. London:Karnac Books.
Lingis, A (1994) The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Anna Macdonald‘s work spans site specific performance, installation, and screen-based practice. She brings a choreographic sense of spatial dynamic to visual media, focusing on the way movement patterns convey something of our lived experience. Anna has received International recognition for her experimental film works including being selected for VideodanzBA, Argentina, Dascamdanse in Belgium, Miden Video art Festival in Greece and being nominated for the International Video Dance awards in Barcelona. Her trilogy of video art works What I Rely on formed the basis of a solo exhibition at the AC institute, New York and was featured in the on-line videoart journal, VIDEOFOCUS Stigmart10 review. Alongside her freelance practice Anna is a Senior lecturer in Contemporary arts at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. Articles about her recent video work can be found in Body, Site Technology Journal, Vol 11:2 and Choreographic Practises Journal Vol 4:2.
As published in 2017.
