What is What

ABOVE: an excerpt from Traffic: Chicago. "my left foot" means for the bus to speed up..

This text about Traffic I have cut and pasted from a grant proposal and modified slightly -after the jump-

THISISWHATIS "Traffic"

 

ABOVE: Working on some new stuff in a studio before taking it to the world..here is a still. The grey tubes are super light weight foam recycled from thrown out materials in Brooklyn. I like the antlike relativity of scale that the large bundle places my body in. Taking it out of the street context to share it in this studio theater backdrop isolates the design of the character. Variations after the jump.

Photos: Brian Cummings 2011

ABOVE: A video laying out the basics of Shannon Technique recorded around 5 years ago. I need to upres this on Vimeo but in the meantime its really all about the content.

Credits:

Concept: Bill Shannon, Production Bevis Evans-Teush, Camera Dave Burns, Production Assistant Clyde Jones
Special Thanks: Heather Lynch, Leah Lizarondo and Iffith

ABOVE: A video of The Sweeper-Spin (starts at :09) edited to show progression from Standard Sweeper. ( see Introduction to Shannon Technique for context )  The move reflects technical progression by way of physical limitation. For more writing about this lopsided progression of my dance Clik " read more" below.

ABOVE: I know I have posted several versions of this video work however I am preparing a new shoot and am editing it in different ways to try and figure out the best strategy for the live shoot. Some lighting issues and the slight jiggle of the rig are two problems that will be solved in the next version of this series ( as opposed to the next edit of the existing series) Hang on to the end for some extras and B-Roll stuff.

I recently Performed in Torino Italy. I was performing primarily for pedestrians, tourists and local people who happened to pass me by. My Italian language skills being next to nothing forced me to stick to entirely non-verbal means.

ABOVE: With the right angle and framing a George Romero horror narrative emerges from a lighthearted moment of creative improvisation with the environment and random people. Chance is my guide and light my primary subject. It always has been. Photo by Andrea Macchia

 

 

 

ABOVE: This is a still of me communing with a canine audience member in Pittsburgh a few years back. Posting this up because I am looking forward to my European street performances coming up this spring 2011.

ABOVE: BENCH Alternate Edit

I was sent these images by VIDF with no information about the photographer. photos by Chris Randle. ChrisRandle.com.  The stills are from my performance of Spatial Theory at the Vancouver International Dance Festival. I performed the evening length work two nights. I believe these stills are from the first night because the audience was so interactive and one of them threw me a bottle to have a drink during the section of the show where I keep crashing. Anyway I will update the site with the photographers name when I find out.

Images from my recent trip through Sweden.

ABOVE: Driving down the east coast of Sweden I came to this lovely bridge with a smooth underbelly.. being from the city of Steel and Bridges I had to jump off the E4 and capture the structural beauty of this amazing bridge

 

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ABOVE: My host in Stockholm Dansens Hus. photo by Arto just in case you missed how low the camera was to the ground.

spatiotemporality is a solo exhibit by Bill Shannon at DNA galleries featuring two video installation works, (clik thru for vids ) "Bench" a three channel six camera composited in the round street capture and "The Evolution of William Foster Shannon" a 20 Screen video wall documenting and mixing the diversity of performance and video projects over the past 20 years. The works are on display thru June 18th daily from 10am to 8pm 53 Chambers st.

The event is called AfterHours.  I will be showing a new video sculpture that is site specific to the HH plaza courtesy of Douz and Mille and performing live dance and performance with a select group of dancers, DJs and VJ.

here is the link to tickets and more info. http://hirshhorn.si.edu/afterhours

 

ABOVE: Classic "Wall Stall "  executed in a Falling Style   Shannon Technique 2010 photo : BC

The basic trick sequence involved in the "Wall Stall" from Shannon Technique is to plant the vertical 
oriented crutch ahead of your body and lift into it as you are also dropping the horizontal crutch down. 
Holding onto the horizontal crutch with your armpit tightly is essential because it will be bearing weight 
of the freeze which wants to push the crutch saddle out of its hold. Once your armpit is tight on the 
horizontal crutch you can drop your weight into it with a hip hold or a lobar toe thread.  While you are
placing the horizontal crutch you are also dropping weight out of the lift into your vertical crutch. Your 
arm over the vertical crutch should immeidately slide out of the saddle position and into an elbow saddle 
hold as the horizontal crutch is now in place to take the weight. Once your hip is rested on the 

ABOVE: Classic "Wall Stall "  executed in a Bboy Uprock Style   Shannon Technique 2010 photo : BC 


horizontal crutch and your elbow saddle hold is in position on the vertical crutch you can tweak the 
freeze variations while using your weight against the wall to stay secure. Here is where you grimace or
go no-handed no-footed etc. .. This holding of the freeze will be fun until your armpits bleed and the inside 
of your elbow is bruised real good. all dancing hurts a little doesnt it?  NEVER QUIT  To exit out of a "wall 
stall" you have what I call a" rewind"  in which you simply pull your weight back up into the vertical crutch to 

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.

ABOVE: Streets of Manhattan Winter

The crisp light and air of a dry northeastern winter's day beckons me to don all manner of warm clothing and partake of all manner of painkillers and break out into the streets for a deep session of the dancing and skating hybrid I have dubbed Steppin' Roll.  I truly appreciate the onset of winter because it frees the streets of laggard indecisive pedestrians, recreational skaters or bicyclist and gawkers. In the gift that is winter most pedestrians in the street are trudging in a straight line hurriedly often running to just get back to their warmth and cover. The bikers on the street at say, 15 degrees Fahrenheit, are almost all very experienced and there are veritably no street skaters out. The frigid days of winter also keeps people in their vehicles behind glass eliminating the habit of spewing some unintelligible crap from the open window that would, during summer, sneak into my flow just under my headphone volume level to inform me of their presence.

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.

A significant portion of my work is about phenomenological events i bear witness to and am also highly sensitive to. The use of performance art as a real-time anthropological sociological tool to investigate define and categorize phenomena is at the core of this healing practice.  My interactions with pedestrians and random individuals in public space is constantly evolving and changing over the course of time and my increased level of experience.  This reality of being in public is a balancing act between getting on with my life and exploring new territories of my art. They serve each other and are therefore one and the same in many instances.

ABOVE: Shannon Technique, Hi-Mid Lo-Mid Split   Photo: Dawn Blackman

 

 

ABOVE: Street performer permit as a hedge to my street performance art. Chicago 1994

I scrawled "THE WORLD WILL NEVER KNOW" on my skateboard with a paint marker while living in Chicago in 1994. I put down these letters on my board as I realized, after being in the middle of a wind storm downtown on my board and being pushed around like a piece of scrap paper, that the most hauntingly beautiful or perfectly balanced moments of my street performances were simply impossible to share or recreate. I wrote these words on a day where I had become a human tumbleweed witnessed by 100's of train passengers marching to their morning destinations. I was up late, two days late, and they were up early in the morning. These moments of...

 

cipher session  House Dance Conference 2004  New York City