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Spraygraphic Interview with Dancer Biba Bell of the Dance Company URISOV
By Spraygraphic | April 20, 2009
biba bell & nancy garcia live at glasslands (brooklyn) september 11th, 2008 from Acid Marshmallow II on Vimeo.
Spraygraphic Interview with Biba Bell of URISOV
SG: Please tell us about yourself?
BB: My name is Biba Bell, from Sebastopol, CA. I’m a dancer. I make work under the moniker URISOV, which is a word devised out of the sounding of your-eyes-of (also pertains to a Ginsberg reference). I’ve spent most of my life in the studio, or the mountains, or the city… who’s checking the inventory? For the last three years I’ve been working on my chops in the academy, and will begin my area exams tomorrow (I’m working on a PhD in performance studies at NYU); this is exhilarating, anxiety producing, and exhausting. I live on the river and walk the riverfront for preparations and reprieves. Dance has brought me into the vein of many a medium, though it is interesting because through and through, all in all, it is still dance, for me. everywhere, all singular places, they invite dancing. In a week I’ll perform with JANDEK, I’m looking forward to this.
SG: Where do you currently live and work?
BB: New York City. though I enjoy alternate homelike scenarios in Detroit and San Francisco.
SG: What mediums do you work with?
BB: Body, sound, voice, harmonium, hardwood floor, obstacles, and of course the grandparents: space & time.
SG: Describe your working process when creating a new work.
BB: Largely, I’m influenced by spaces. particular architectures and environments. This clues me in as to where to go and what to do. I like to bring people into situations, audience and performers co-mingle. I have (day)dreams. I am influenced by the people whom I work with, and often wonder about traditions of solipsism in the art-making process. I don’t’ feel comfortable to necessarily claim the work I do in the context of ritual, though it is definitely considered in terms of viewer/beholder, site/architecture, and performer undergoing a duration-based experience. I am fascinated by the choices people make in the midst of an event, and how extreme aesthetic situations invite unexpected reaction and contribution. In performance these components collide and transpire it ways that I certainly speculate upon, though rarely work to concretize.
SG: What kind of things do you do when you get blocked or find it hard to create something?
BB: Get lucid, drink coconuts & sex.
SG: Where are you currently finding your inspiration?
BB: Mustard yellow (sometimes a little lavender), light/luminescence, corners, the sensations of the rhythms of the organs as they are amplified through movement.
SG: Can you please tell us a little about Urisov. How did the group come about? How many members? Where do you see Urisov in a few years?
BB: URISOV morphes with each project. I began the project in 2003 in San Francisco, though I’ve been back and forth between NYC and SF for over 10 yrs at this point and the group shifts with the context. Collaboration is key, though sometimes difficult to envision. The working process always provides an increased awareness as to the grain of the work, which indefinitely entails many hands, materials, bodies and scents. At this point the people of URISOV are all over the place. When we happen to meet up, well, we just take it from there.
SG: Can you please tell us a little about how your work has evolved over the years.
BB: I used to produce everything, cover all the bases on the production level. now people ask me to do stuff, or present the work sometimes. I stared out with projects that where more happenings oriented. scores in unexpected spaces, not performance venues really at all, but storefronts, houses, sidewalks. somehow there would always be this tension between public space and privacy, like the intimate daily rhythms of activity and rest that we engage in. I worked a lot with exploiting these really mundane moments in sort of voyeuristic tendency. The pieces have become progressively more visually oriented, working in galleries has something to do with this, and it gives a lot of freedom to play with the distinctions between performance space and the audience. I like to do duration-oriented work, so it isn’t mandatory for people to sit there and watch, they can make choices and get distracted. Though sometimes they just sit there anyways. I like to think of all the work as experiments, with micro-scores built inside of it.
SG: Where has your work been seen?
BB: Bookstores, basements, galleries, warehouses, Judson Church, NYU, on the street, the event center, Glasslands, museums, dance venues. music venues, California, Detroit, New York, Brussels. photos, essays, video, live.
SG: Where will it be seen next?
BB: Superfront gallery in Brooklyn.
SG: What is your dance concert?
BB: Archeography IV, a collaboration with architect James coleman (Live Architecture Network). (http://movementresearch.org/rollcall/?cat=6)
SG: What is your favorite color?
BB: Turquoise & Fuschia
SG: Who is your favorite artist? And Why?
BB: As of late I’ve been into Vito Acconci and Felicia Ballos. Though I wish I’d just been in Los Angeles last week for Neil Greenberg’s Really Queer Dance with Harps, the piece is incredible.
SG: What book/magazine are you reading this week?
BB: Paul Virilio, A Landscape of Events. Robert Smithson, The Collected Writings. & re-reading elaine scarry, The Body in Pain.
SG: Where is your favorite place to hang out?
BB: On the beach, with my lover.
SG: Any final words of advice?
BB: Merde.
Additonal Links:
bibayoga.org
moderngaragemovement.com
Topics: Artist Interviews, Dance Performance, New York Art Scene, San Francisco Art Scene |
