States of Being series of short videos, 2022-2024

A series of several short stand-alone videos explores specific themes based on the interactions that individual dancers developed during their time experimenting in the States of Being video and audio installation. For more information about the installation itself, click here.  Composer Jesse Stewart contributed the musical tracks in the installation. Jean-Claude Batista developed the installation’s custom software.

here and there, now and then, 2024. HD video with stereo sound, 7:11

While interacting with Cheryl Pagurek’s States of Being video and sound installation, dancers Rion Taylor and Wyeth Walker move fluidly through space and time. They traverse public and private locations, inhabit physical and virtual realms, and explore connections and relationships between the past, the present and an uncertain future. Their movements unite black and white film footage with contemporary video recordings, while building a compelling soundscape with composer Jesse Stewart’s music.

Additional information on found imagery and sound in States of Being 4

Variations and Permutations, 2022. HD video with stereo sound, 7:01

Variations and Permutations interweaves footage of dancer Jocelyn Todd and the expressive interactions she performs within Cheryl Pagurek’s States of Being video and audio installation. By combining varied viewpoints and approaches to image-making, from slow shutter to digital screen recording, multiple iterations of Todd’s body and movements through space and time are portrayed. The interplay between layers captures simultaneous yet shifting identities and planes of contemporary experience: physical and virtual, lived and imagined, alternately shaped by both immediacy and mediation.

 

  

 

Boundaries and Thresholds, 2022. HD video with stereo sound, 5:11

Dancer Kenneth Emig explores the liminal spaces, thresholds, and boundaries in Cheryl Pagurek’s States of Being interactive installation, where his inquisitive movements synthesize the videos and compose the soundscape. During a time when relationships are constantly changing between ideas of public and private, individual and collectivity, inside and outside, safety and threat, distance and togetherness, he uniquely expresses our precarious human condition amidst the fluctuating states of being we strive to balance as we navigate new limits.

 

 

 

Being and Becoming, 2022. HD video with stereo sound, 6:04

Dancer Shara Weaver explores states of being and becoming in Cheryl Pagurek’s interactive installation. Weaver’s sensitive translation of imagery, music, and mood into evocative movement embodies our potential for transformation, while bridging the divide between real and digital realms. We witness the process by which the constituent, separate elements – the space, screen, video, sound, coding, and her body in motion – coalesce to produce something more than the sum of their parts: the creation of a new artwork.

Dualities and Pluralities, 2022. HD video with stereo sound, 7:00

Dualities and Pluralities explores relationships between the self and others. Through their individual and partnered movements, dancers Shara Weaver and Elizabeth Winkelaar navigate changing environments and contrasting states of being within Cheryl Pagurek’s interactive installation. Often touching, sometimes apart, differentiated yet always connected, they create expressive compositions of positive and negative shapes using their bodies and the spaces between them, while building a unique soundscape.

Transformations and Negotiations, 2022. HD video with stereo sound, 5:54

While interacting with Cheryl Pagurek’s installation, performer Laura Taler negotiates between contrasting environments and changing contexts. Taler defies conventions of gender and fixed identity; instead, she sheds the bounds between human and non-human, animate and inanimate, and between representation and abstraction, to craft fascinating transformations in her projected image. Accompanying her through this process, Transformations and Negotiations weaves together art and reality, inviting us into the immersive world of imagery and sound created by Taler’s movements in the installation.

States of Being, 2022. HD video with stereo sound, 3:11

Dancer Jocelyn Todd explores and interprets Cheryl Pagurek’s States of Being interactive installation, creating a poetics of our present-day experience through video and sound. Imagery evokes fleeting sensibilities: the built environment and vast natural space, rushing speed and slow contemplation, immediacy and distance, isolation and freedom. Using her movements in space to synthesize the videos and compose a soundscape, Todd uniquely expresses our precarious human condition amidst the fluctuating states of being we strive to balance.