FOLD {Live} Rehearsals in Australia
// December 31st, 2011 // Comments Off // Blog
FOLDers Wanted: Call for Participation
// March 16th, 2011 // No Comments » // Blog
Fold is single channel audio visual installation composed of a grid of 96 small videos. It creates a multifaceted view of a single day’s solitary act of folding laundry. The elementariness of simple gestures of a seemingly mundane activity (such as those of pulling out a t-shirt from the laundry bag or putting hair behind the ear), gets morphed into a complex choreography when multiplied. Fold is an attempt to create layers of structures and overlaying patterns, patterns that are always evolving.
Still from Video Installation Fold, 2010
Excerpt from Video:
Fold has been exhibited internationally at various galleries and video festivals in Spain, South Korea, Netherlands, New York and San Francisco. A short version of Fold will also screen at The Disposable Film Festival, @ Castro Theatre, San Francisco on 24th March 2011.
Concept note for Fold [Live]:
My next project Fold [Live] humanizes Fold, through a diverse group of participants. It involves 16-25 performers folding laundry live, per a choreographed routine. This work continues my attempt to articulate the repetition embedded in everyday life and explores the relationship between group behavior and the collective unconscious. Rhythmic patterns from Indian classical music inform the choreography for the performance. Through this project I hope to bring a sense of togetherness among the community and draw our attention to the subtleties that we tend to overlook in our busy lives.
Who is eligible:
Anyone and everyone interested in the project is welcome. The participants don’t need any performance or dancing skills. I am particularly interested in having a diverse group of volunteers.
About me:
I am a media artist working in video, sound and live performance. I have a background in choreography, Indian classical music, and experimental sound, which brings a strong sense of composition to my works. I graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009, with a MFA in Art and Technology and moved to SF the same year. I will be working on this project as a part of my Studio Residency Program at Root Division.
Donate used clothes:
I need 160 used and random items of clothing. If you’d like to donate clothes to be a part of this project, just drop me a line and I’ll figure out way to collect them. Everything that is not used in the project will be donated to Goodwill or Salvation Army.
If you are interested in participating, donating clothes or finding out more about the performance please email me at me@surabhisaraf.net
The Disposable Film Festival, 2011
// March 14th, 2011 // No Comments » // Blog, News
24th March, Video Screening @ Castro Theatre
I am absolutely thrilled to be a part of the Competitive Shorts Program in DISPOSABLE FILM FESTIVAL’s Opening Night event at San Francisco’s historic Castro Threatre on 24th March. They have an exciting lineup of 25 best short films from all over the world. Their Groupon deal just got sold out. The theatre has a capacity of 1400 seats and I think they still have some tickets left, so you can get them from http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/156165
The Disposable Film Festival announced its 2011 premier will be from March 24-March 27, following a dizzying year of Bike-Ins, panel discussions, and new partnerships.This unique festival was created in 2007 to celebrate the artistic potential of disposable video: short films made on non-professional devices such as one-time use video cameras, cell phones, point and shoot cameras, webcams, computer screen capture software, and other readily available video capture devices. The 2011 premier will boast more creative narrative work and other techniques thanks to the array of new devices such as the iPhone 4, DSLRs, Kinect and more.Now in its fourth year, the native San Francisco-based festival features the very best of over 1000 entries from around the world, highlighting the new accessibility of filmmaking today. The program will feature a competitive shorts program and other screenings, a featured filmmaker profile of Philadelphia-based artist and filmmaker Christopher McManus in conversation with Vimeo’s Andrea Allen, Q&A’s, a community-based social gaming networking simulcast, educational workshops, and multimedia performances.
Updates on FOLD
// November 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blog
I am thrilled to share some exciting updates about my recent video FOLD, which premiered at the Root Division Gallery, San Francisco in September. It has since been shown at the 7th International Busan Video Festival in South Korea and is also being aired on ikono.tv, a Berlin based HD television channel exclusively dedicated to the presentation of the visual arts, in November.
Some other screenings of FOLD coming up in the near future are:
25th-28th Nov 2010
Espacio Enter; International Meeting of Creativity Innovation & Digital Culture in Canary Islands, Spain.
24th-30 Nov 2010
The Big Screen Project’s outdoor digital arts and culture wall is a 30 ft. x 16.5 ft. HD formatted LED screen located in a public plaza behind 6th Avenue between 29th and 30th Street in New York City.
1st-5th December 2010
5th International Streaming festival, the Hague, Netherlands.
Unfolding Fold, 2010
// September 30th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blog, Videos, Works
Original audio – ” Easy” by Anushka Shankar and Norah Jones
Processed by Surabhi Saraf
How I made “Fold”
// September 24th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blog
The idea for Fold came from this one moment in Peel where the video changes from yellow to pink, I wanted to take that moment and expand it. Folding laundry where different colors and textures would swarm the screen every time I pick up a new piece of cloth seemed like a perfect way to get started. Since this video was an extension of Peel I decided to keep the format same (gird of 96 videos) which made the initial part of the process easy. At that time the only furniture we had in the living room was the white couch, which against the white wall, worked as a perfect background for this project. So just one afternoon I decided to set up my Hd camera and recorded myself folding all my laundry from the dryer. It took me about 20 mins to fold all the clothes which I realized was too long for the length of the video, since I wanted this video to have seamless transitions and have a long uncut shot so the video flows as smooth as the fabric. That meant the length of the single raw footage and the sequence of the clothes, color, pattern etc everything had to be perfect, right from the beginning. As expected it turned out to be a big challenge, as I had to do a lot of planning and editing of the clothes before shooting, and realized that I could only do that by trying out different options. Here is Fold’s very first test and the audio is just something that was playing while I was folding the laundry.
Song: Adir Adrimi by Balkan Beat Box
So after a number of tests and editing I first decided on 13mins as the final length of the video but eventually settled with 7mins and 30secs. But before I reached the magical number of 7mins I recorded myself at least 20-25 time folding different sets of clothes, until I found the perfect combination of the colors, geometry, size, gestures, feel and overall flow and dynamics of the video. Below are some of the ideas I was thinking while shooting the videos.
Unlike cooking as in Peel while folding clothes I had a much wider range of gestures from a very small movement of folding a sock to the elaborate movement of folding a sheet, became a fascinating way of bringing the dynamics into the composition. Apart from the visual grid and the patterns that were laid on the top, the inherent geometrical shapes of the clothes them-selves added another dimension to layers. Finally, the color, size and the texture of the different clothes delineating the flow of the composition.
I look at these videos from a choreographic lens and designing sequences of rhythmic movements and accents becomes an integral part of my process. I create visual scores defining the flow, the pattern and the structure of these compositions. After several iterations the final score looked something like this:
As I look back at this experience, I feel in the first half of the video I was zooming in, creating a multifaceted view of a single day’s solitary activity and in the latter half, zooming out and looking at this routine over multiple days. With Fold, I have tried to create layers of structures and overlaying patterns, patterns that a always evolving. For example, at the lowest layer each individual video has its own pattern; in the second layer, the sequenced movements creates another layer of rhythmic patterns of the videos as a group and the final layer is the overall flow and dynamics of the composition.
Artist Wanted Video Feature
// September 24th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blog
I am very thankful to Artist Wanted and Christian Schneider for making this wonderful video portrait of me.
FOLD- Almost there!
// August 4th, 2010 // No Comments » // Blog
Fold is finally coming together, and will soon be exhibited in San Francisco for the first time, details coming up. Here is a sneak peak.
Performance on 6th and 11th March.
// March 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // Blog
February has been crazy busy and March will be the same. First the performance at CCRMA with Jakes and then the planning for Aster’s new office. Now March is staring with two performances and I am really excited. The first one is on the 6th March at SOMArts as a part of an event called 100 Performances for the Hole and the second one is a talk and a short performance at Work of Women Artists organized by BArCMnT at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA) on the 11th. Check them out if in town.