Title: Current
Trt: 08:20 (10.05)
Genre: video essay, non verbal, documentary, screen dance, visual anthropology
Media: 16:9, 4K 3840x2160, color, sound
Format: Available in requested format for screening and festivals
Language: non verbal
Produced: 2024
On location: May 2023, Ciganitri, West Java, Indonesia
Music: Mats Skånberg
Dance/Choreography: Ami Skånberg (SE) and Alfiyanto Wajiwa (ID)
Camera/Editing: Anna Viola Hallberg
Concept & Producers: BERG
Preview video: contact BERG via Björkö Konstnod or Filmfreeway.
Keywords: ecopolitics, water protection, activism, ecoperformance, gentrification, biopolitics, ancestral, Ciganitri, West Java, Indonesia, video essay
SYNOPSIS:
Current is a screendance piece made in the village Ciganitri, West Java. It is an encounter between four spaces, two dancers and a camera during two afternoons. Current creates layers of time through dance improvisation - in between reality and fiction - performed as a ritual for resistance in a place where rice fields, fish ponds and gardens currently are replaced by fancy buildings and crowded highways. It is the first encounter between a Swedish and an Indonesian choreographer where the only shared language is dance. The movements are an immediate response to space, bursting of ideas, outpouring of dreams, while following currents of biopolitics and ancestral life through a visual journey.
BERG DUO:
Current is a project by BERG, Swedish artists Ami Skånberg & Anna Viola Hallberg Since 2022 they have done workshops, interventions, collective performances and turned them into video projects. Current is their second video based project together. They live and work between Stockholm, Gothenburg with a primary studio at BKN in the Northern Stockholm Archipelago, Sweden. >>>
DANCERS:
Dr Ami Skånberg (SE)
Ami Skånberg, born in Gothenburg, is a performer, choreographer and filmmaker. She has a PhD in Dance from University of Roehampton, and is the current Head of the Master’s programme M.A.D.E. at the Stockholm University of the Arts. She also works at University of Gothenburg. Skånberg often creates stage work (solo, and collaborative) based on embodied life stories in a particular theme. Her screendance films have been shown and awarded internationally since 1994. Her solo performance A particular act of survival received a performing arts award at Scenkonstgalan in Sweden in 2015. She walks slowly as a ceremonial, subversive act after extensive Nihon Buyo studies with Nishikawa Senrei in Kyoto since 2000. She is a board member of Nordic Forum for Dance Research. Her recent screendance pieces Ancestor and An Encounter with the Uncanny are currently shown in filmfestivals.
Dr Alfiyanto (ID)
Alfiyanto, born in West Sumatra is an artist and lecturer in Dance Creation/Choreography at ISBI Indonesian Arts and Culture Institute (Bandung)]. He is the initiator and curator for West Java Contemporary Dance and is the driving force behind the West Java
Contemporary Dance Festival and the Bandung Dance Film Festival. He studied at Indonesian Karawitan Arts Academy, Indonesian Arts Institute Padangpanjang and Indonesian Institute of Arts Surakarta majoring in dance. Alfiyanto joined the contemporary dance group Gumarang Sakti led by Gusmiati Suid in 1990-2004. Alfiyanto is also the founder and Art Director of WaJiWa Bandung Dance Theater and WaJiWa Creative House. Developing dance Activities and dreativity with eco-cultural concepts. He has a special interest in community dance. In his home village Ciganitri he runs a community dance center for Sundanese youth.
MUSIC:
Mats Skånberg
Bass player in Anticimex and now occasionally making electronic music. The tune Tried and Tired was originally self distributed in early 2023. Berg selected it for Current in December 2023.
