What is What

ABOVE: Still from BENCH, intersection of GRAND and WOOSTER, MANHATTAN NYC JULY 2008. I chose this as a still because it shares in one frame the public gaze ( as embodied in the driver ) and a reflection on the surface of the car of my video capture and mobility apparatus.

While I was editing a new version of my 2008 video and performance work "Bench" today I realized I might want to share more what is happening in my creative work even if it is a small thing.  This BENCH piece I have featured here previously and have installed as an "in-the-round" work. Now I am recreating an HD single screen composite of the video. I want this edit to be seen especially as it includes a new landscape arrangement of the six channels that pulls all the screens in one continuous line. I enjoy this aspect of the video because it ties together front and rear more intuitively. This work may be included in a museum group show which I will not disclose yet until confirmed. Its deadline time.

This is Stepping Roll. I created the root of this form to simply walk long distances while living in Chicago. The skating depicted in this video is me pushing the boundaries of what I am capable of and not an everyday type of activity for me. I do want to get this style on tape and uploaded for the world to enjoy and hopefully adopt. So clik thru for the background info.

i am entering this MasterClash contest here in Pittsburgh because I really cannot justify spending 300 dollars on a chair for my daughter at this point in time.  I am looking into the Transition Movement as a guide to my future and my childrens' future here on what is left of our planet Earth. A significant mental aspect of the Transition Movement is to simplify life and reject lavish expenditures and conspicuous consumption. In my book 300$ on a chair for a two year old is lavish even if the chair is supposed to last till adulthood.

ABOVE: My go at the Juste Debout Prelims in "Experiemental" category. For Experimental they will play randomn music to challenge the interpretation instead of house, funk or breaks.

- a slipping crutch tip can undermine your every move-

ABOVE: a worn crutch tip. sourced from an automotive supply store its a greenline brand high pressure coolant hose

Bill Shannon ( he, him) is an interdisciplinary artist and maker who explores body-centric work through video installation, sculpture, linguistics, sociology, choreography, dance and politics. Bill has been awarded a United States Artist Award in Dance, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography, a Foundation For Contemporary Art Fellowship in Performance Art, and has worked as a choreographer and performer for Cirque Du Soleil. Bill’s contributions to dance include a very specific movement vocabulary evolved through his creative use of crutches as a child after the discovery of a physical disability that effected his ability to bear weight in his hips. Bill’s subsequent immersion in the emergent youth cultures of hip-hop and skateboarding further contributed to his autodidactic form on crutches. Shannon eventually moved to New York City and became a fixture at underground dance clubs, where he fused his history of childhood play on crutches with his contemporary kinetic expressions of hip-hop and skateboarding. The result of this fusion was a singular style of mobility, performance art and dance that required multiple new designs and fabrications of modified crutches to sustain technical advances in his movement practices.

“Through Shannon Public Works*, I plan on reconciling the gap between what I feel is possible in experiencing street performances and what audiences up until this moment have been able to experience. The three interrelated projects making up Shannon Public Works are connected by the conceptual belief that a naturally-occurring street environment is imposed upon by an audience to the extent that a virtual proscenium is manifested and the performance is thereby isolated from the very environment it is meant to exist within. The efforts made in Shannon Public Works address this conceptual belief and are designed to allow an audience to watch a performance in the street while preserving the integrity of the landscape. In short, I wish for audiences to see as I see and walk as I walk but at the same time allow me space to share without being in the context of their gaze.”

The first day I came in to choreograph aerial I had the twins doing tut style angular forms and trying to explain New Yorks house hip-hop and martial arts influenced Zoo-Fu style that I had learned from dancing with the Step-Fenz since 97.  I came in trying to get rhythms with freezes and glides.  I watched what they had too when we started out, which appeared to me to be the classical chest out flying “like in a dream” look combined with a drama-workshop-esque build of primal roars! at one another and thankfully some serious power and balance combo positions. i was envisioning a possessed techy Egyptian style. An aerial act of mechanisitc hieroglyphic flying form with 90 degree ankle and futuristic interlocking tic-toc skateboard referencing aerials.

ABOVE: The Atherton Twins perform an early version of the Aerial Straps Act in Cirque Du Soleils, Varekai.