Interview of Andrea Keiz by Anouk Llaurens
Anouk Llaurens: Hi Andrea, thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. When I started these interview series, I first asked people to introduce themselves. Now I'm changing the wording to, “situate yourself.” So, can you please start by situating yourself?
Andrea Keiz: I think I would always situate myself. Formerly, I did not mention my education as a biologist. This changed, I think, around 2004. Suddenly, I started to mention my studies again, because I think it's important that I was trained in a certain mindset. Since I'm working now in the field of artistic research – focusing on documentation as artistic research – I'm very aware that I have a research education in natural science. I was educated in the laboratory, with a clear methodology, research question, and results. I did my studies in the 80s and in those days, natural science was about “producing the truth”. Fortunately, this changed. But actually, this notion of creating the truth made me leave natural science and brought me to my dance education as a teacher for dance improvisation. Since then, dance has been a very important part of my life. I also used to be a very political person, and I always had to combine movement, art and politics. Since 2000, I've been working with video in the field of contemporary dance. For a few years now, I have called myself a videographer. Funnily, when I was browsing through a few web pages, I realised that Lisa also calls herself a videographer. I wasn't aware of that. Videographer seems to be the most appropriate term to me at the moment. Sometimes I am still busy with the fact that I'm not an educated cameraperson. I'm trained by practice. This makes how I work and what I do a bit unusual I think. But at the same time, it's also positioning myself in a certain way in the field of dance. Since I've been based in Berlin since ‘94, I know a lot of the dancers and choreographers from that period, and they know my work too. I've been employed all these years (since 2000) in the field of video production – and not hired as a biologist.
Anouk Llaurens: What do you mean by video production?
Andrea Keiz: I'm filming, I'm editing. I'm also taking photos. If I am documenting work, I'm including writing or scribbling, which I got introduced to by you actually.I still deeply believe in the idea of a container of knowledge to describe dance as an art form in its complexity. And I'm still researching to find an easy and appropriate app to offer footage that has been created in a research process to a bigger audience engaged in artistic research. I know of a few possibilities. In the project Schrittweise, guided by Katja Münker I could combine MoSys by Motion Bank and the Research Catalogue, both freeware platforms with the possibility to display different kinds of media. There is a lot of research going on, also to serve the needs of academia. But to find a surface which is easy to handle and not too expensive for an artist who needs to display their results is not easy. How is it possible to use the web space, to make the material that carries the knowledge accessible for everybody? So – I am filming, editing, and sitting a lot in front of the computer.
Anouk Llaurens: And you're teaching also, right?
Andrea Keiz: What I do currently is teach an approach to documenting artistic research. I know from my own experience, especially in research with the body, that you might have a vague research question at the beginning. Then you start to work and find yourself in this process of understanding and re-negotiating what you do. I deeply believe that documentation is helpful as a tool to feedback on how you work and it can help reformulate your research question. That's what I try to transmit in the workshops at the moment. And since technology like the video camera is such a powerful tool in this kind of work, I returned to starting with the body and sensorial experience when I teach. And then I'm with Lisa. What I learned from her work is the source of how I introduce the agency of the physical body in order to perceive. I call it a translation process: What kind of documents are you creating if you have bodily preparation beforehand? What interests me most is the question of how we decide. To observe the decision-making process, I use a lot of simple elements of the Tuning Score, like pausing, reversing, playing back your perception. I use the technique as a tool to sharpen my perception and to translate it into a medium that I can share, first with myself–– to have a look at it–– then also with others to exchange and develop work.
Anouk Llaurens: When did you meet Lisa?
Andrea Keiz: I studied a lot with Dieter Heitkamp and Dieter worked with Lisa before I met her. He was introduced to her work already in the 80s. When I met Dieter, he was using exercises from Lisa’s work. They also did very early video dance workshops together at Tanzfabrik Berlin. I think this happened in the late 80s, or maybe the beginning of the 90s. I met her personally for the first time in 1997 during the Potsdamer Tanztage, and then again at On the Edge in Paris (an improvisation meeting hosted by Mark Tompkins in 1998). I don't remember if the workshop in Bratislava was before or after that. The reason to go and work with her in those days was to work on improvisation. I'm an improviser, I'm interested in improvisation, and she was teaching in the realm of improvisation. I don't know if she already called her work Tuning Score in those days, but she had already started to use those games. Then I met her several times over the years, in different places. We also invited her to Berlin once for alab with a few people from all over Europe. If you've been introduced to the work, you try to make her come and work in a lab situation with her.
Anouk Llaurens: And when you met her, were you already involved with video?
Andrea Keiz: I started to use video to follow rehearsals of productions at Tanzfabrik Berlin in 1994. In the late 90s I used the video camera as a tool to document improvisation-based rehearsals of a collective I was part of, all female dancers living in Berlin. From ‘98 on, I had my own camera that I just took along, to meet people. In autumn 2022, I had a grant to digitalize a lot of my old mini DV tapes from those days (Revisiting the Archive). It's hilarious sometimes to watch, but very interesting because it tells a lot about how our lives were in those days and how much spending time together was part of the creative process. It was not so much based on efficiency, because I think the monetary situation was not that pressing. You could do a job and still have a lot of time to spend with others. Life was not as precarious as it is today for a lot of us. I don't hang out that much anymore with friends and colleagues without purpose. That might also be a matter of age, but I think it's a combination of both. So, I'm very grateful for this time. Watching the footage is so funny, memories of funny things.
To answer your question: I might have been busy with video already, but it was not the reason why I went to do the workshops with Lisa. The first time that I really went because of the video was a workshop she gave in Brighton that was announced as a video workshop.
Anouk Llaurens: Do you remember how Lisa proposed to work with the camera?
Andrea Keiz: I remember using the video camera as an extension of the body and having a dialogue between one person dancing and the one that was filming, being in an active dialogue with each other and talking about perspective, rhythm and so on. I do not remember if we looked at the footage or if we talked about it. I know from the video/dance workshops that I offer myself that looking at the footage is an important part in order to reflect. But on the other hand, it's incredibly time consuming. It can take an hour to look closely at a few minutes to understand what happened. I think we watched each other filming because this is something I still do. I rather make people watch others in the activity of filming than watch the result, because it tells a lot about perspective, about points of views, about dynamics. Watching somebody producing images is of course triggering your imagination of the image that is being created. So you go with your own imagination of the representation of this production of images. We are well educated in seeing in frames, we are used to seeing a lot of framed pictures, so very often we think we know, or we have an idea of what the other is seeing. But if you really want to see what the other sees, you have to put yourself in their position; you have to become the other. You can use your knowledge and experience to guess, but finally you have to go there and really experience the light and all the obstacles that are in the frame. Somehow this is what I use a lot in my teaching, and I believe that originated in what I did with Lisa.
Anouk Llaurens: You've already mentioned some aspects of Lisa’ work that you are taking into your own work. You have talked about feedbacking; you've mentioned the notion of perspective and how watching someone filming triggers your imagination. Are there other aspects you would like to share or would like to come back to?
Andrea Keiz: Yes, I want to talk about watching somebody filming. Two days ago, I gave a little input for the residency program in Hamburg. A very simple exercise that I always do, is to develop a camera choreography. It has a clear starting point, a clear ending point and a pathway for the camera movement in space. Then you teach it to somebody really precisely. This is not something I learned with Lisa but with Lutz Gregor in a workshop. He's a filmmaker who also used to teach video and dance in the 90s. The question is, how do you develop a camera choreography? The point of view, the dynamics, the rhythm are all very important. I'm not interested in the resulting video from this exercise that much, but in how people shape their body to film and how they learn and teach choreography in order to do the filming. In the teaching phase, I insist on the fact that you have to put cameraperson you are teaching in your position, you have to make sure that they are physically in the same situation as you, so that they can proceed as you did before. You have to teach what you saw, from where you were looking, what is in the frame, what is not in the frame. In the beginning, everybody thinks it's something like, "begin here, go there, go there," but it's much more complex. I love this complexity because I know it's always about failing, and I also love to bring this into discussion. What does it mean? What is a frame? What is in, what is out? What is taste, what is technique? So that's a very complex thing. Success or failure is another question. I mention this now because I love to watch people doing that; doing the exercise, doing the teaching. Two bodies busy with a task, which is a visual task. And since they are mostly dancers and movers, they soon realise that they have to connect the camera, or whatever tool they have in their hand, to their own centre. The result is choreography by people not thinking about movement but about framing. They can use their body skills without having the idea of performing that ability. They are at work, and I love to watch people at work.
Anouk Llaurens: I love to watch people at work too. Your exercise reminds me of the Blind Learning – How to transmit your perspective and also how to empathise with another perspective than mine.
Andrea Keiz: Yes, and it reminds me of the Blind Unison Trio as well. The statement, “this is what we do,” is creating a performativity that I love.
Anouk Llaurens: As you mention the Blind Unison Trio, have you received a link for working on Lisa’s game? Did you see our trio Lisa, you and me?
Andrea Keiz: Yeah, it's really beautiful. I remember it felt very together, very, very relaxed but very strong. In the Blind Unison Trio we are agreeing on an image, or agreeing on the fact that you might have a completely different image than me but that we can still work on it together and make it one.
Anouk Llaurens: This practice is really a riddle. You have to listen, imagine and trust so hard. It’s very much about sensation but also about imagination, which is crucial to Lisa’s work.
Andrea Keiz: I'm also working a lot with imagination and with images in Movement Improvisation. Images come very fast to me. I was very surprised when I talked one day to a friend and realised that not everyone works with images while improvising.
Anouk Llaurens: It depends on what kind of imagination we are talking about. There are many types of imaginations.
Andrea Keiz: She said that she always stays with the bodily conditions, which I think is anyhow the most important thing to do if you improvise, that you always link your imagination back to your bodily perception. If I'm working like that, I can have an image, which gives me information that leads to the next movement. But I'm not performing the image. And of course, nobody has to understand this from the outside, but it's my pleasure, it's an endless source of information.
This brings me back to the work with Lisa: in the very little things––if you dare to do really little and to dive in a bit deeper––there's always another world opening up to help to understand what is making you move. What is your preference? We are fast in making decisions, which is very helpful. We live in a society, in which we have to adjust to all the things happening and in our daily life we don't have the need or the capacity to always reflect on our movement choices. But as part of awareness work, I love to insist on reflecting or just recalling these processes and I very much embrace this kind of banality. For example, I might want to avoid sunny places, because it is too hot, or I might want to lean on a wall to support myself, I might want to be close to somebody… it's very simple, but to understand that our system is able to make all these decisions in a very brief moment is just great. I find it important to recognize this when it's about tracing your movement patterns, your situation, your preference and that is for sure again triggered by the Tuning Scores because I love to see this decision making and the effect that it has on the surrounding. I did the reversing movement with Lisa quite a few times in the workshops and it's so interesting to see how people are doing it. What did I reverse? The pathway, the movement, other layers? How do I know, how do I trace back? What is informing me about a bodily situation? The proprioceptors are constantly firing information on where we are and what we do. When I teach camera work, at a certain point, I tell people that they do not need to look constantly through the viewfinder or at the display, they can trust that the body knows where their hand that holds the camera is. You train a little bit where the lens is facing and then you can work with that and can get rid of the too close connection of the eye and the frame. You can separate it.
Anouk Llaurens: This is also seeing with the whole body, in 3D.
Andrea Keiz: And especially when tracing your pathway backwards in a workshop situation with a lot of people in the space. It's so much fun because you see what happens if people are really tuned in and really meet each other at the same spots, or if somebody has a different timing and then loses the meeting points and connections. This is what I'm still very interested in. I try to do less and less. I find it a bit difficult to dare because I have the feeling that sometimes people want to be amused in a different way. But my own amusement is to deepen that. And I know that it's a matter of experience. Experienced dancers embrace this but if people are rather new, they are a bit confused.
Anouk Llaurens: Yes. Simplicity is advanced.
Andrea Keiz: Yeah, you cannot be too simple at the start. Very simple things ask more of you, more attention, more commitment.
It's very interesting to talk about all that. I'm aware of this mixture of sources and knowledge and quotes that we have in our work. I'm very thankful and I learned to mention people I worked with just to give references. In our work we mix and match them with our own and then it creates our style, our own focus.
One big difference between a part of my work and what I take from Lisa is that very often I was asked to deliver a proper documentation of a situation, something that you can send to a theatre to sell dance work or that can be a source for a recreating a piece. In that case, I really have to find a way to represent the thing. Last year I was working on a production where I did not have to document for official reasons, but they invited me to be in the project as a video artist. I worked with the same questions as the dancers did but with the video camera. At a certain point they asked me if there was some footage that they could use to advertise the show. And I responded, “No, no, no, I'm researching.” I didn't do the proper images to put it up on Vimeo or whatever. A lot of choreographers are still not aware of the difference between documenting and documenting as part of the research. One is really representing, offering material that somebody can learn from a certain perspective. It is a tool to give feedback to the production. And the other one might be very abstract, it might be a very different way of producing images.
In that case I finally did do both and it can be inspiring for the production. I trust that following my artistic interest or desire is feeding into the creation process, as the dancers are feeding in with their movements. The video is doing the same. At the moment I'm definitely more often hired for being part of the productions and work as an artist, which is great because the pure documentation work that involved going four times a week to the theatre to film different performances at night is very exhausting and limited. The artistic work puts me in a more insecure place of course but it's interesting. The combination of both is great.
Anouk Llaurens: And is what you are filming part of the show, for example screened, or something else?
Andrea Keiz: Since 2022, I have been more involved in shows where I do video for the stage and I'm following projects in urban space, where the video becomes part of the documentation. It's always a mixture between an outside view and an inside view. We combine both, being part of the research and looking at it from the outside. In these outside performances the audience is part of the performance.
Few people look at the more experimental films I did in the last few years. All my friends look at them; they like them. But festivals don't take them. And of course, if I do artwork, I want people to see it. It should not stay only on the hard drive. At the same time, I think it's also a matter of insisting that this is what I want to do. So, I do it, which is also how I perceive Lisa, as a person who has decided, “This is what I do, so if you don't like it, that's not my problem.” That's great because that is how you can develop your work.
[1] - https://andreakeiz.de/Zeitexperimente_final/#/