Lauren Baines
Choreographer | Curator | Catalyst
Site-specific performance "An offering: for endings and beginnings" created for Tiffany Singh's "The Bells of Mindfulness" (2013). Still from film by San Jose State University Film Production Society.
Site-specific performance "An offering: for endings and beginnings" created for Tiffany Singh's "The Bells of Mindfulness" (2013). Still from film by San Jose State University Film Production Society.
Site-specific performance "An offering: for endings and beginnings" created for Tiffany Singh's "The Bells of Mindfulness" (2013). Still from film by San Jose State University Film Production Society.
Site-specific performance "An offering: for endings and beginnings" created for Tiffany Singh's "The Bells of Mindfulness" (2013). Still from film by San Jose State University Film Production Society.
The Bells of Mindfulness
by artist Tiffany Singh
In 2013, I was asked by New Zealand artist Tiffany Singh to create a performance to activate her installation The Bells of Mindfulness at Montalvo Arts Center in Saratoga, CA. The resulting site-specific performance ritual, An offering: for endings and beginnings, addressed the cyclical nature of life and the possibilities for simultaneous death and rebirth to aspects of our lives.
Singh's The Bells of Mindfulness is a social practice artwork created to examine the role of sacred space in contemporary society. "Drawing on the Buddhist tradition of using temple bells as an aid for mindfulness, she has suspended 1000 handmade and fairly traded metal bells and 1000 paper cranes attached to brightly colored ribbons from a persimmons tree in Montalvo’s Italianate Garden, creating a tranquil space for rest and reflection." - Montalvoarts.org Guests were then invited to take a bell and bring it to a space they considered a sacred space, and then to submit an image of the bell in its new home and story about their sacred space. With these posts, Singh is creating an online tapestry charting the dissemination of the bells.
To learn more about Singh's work, please visit her website here or on Montalvo's website here
You can see a short documentary on Singh's installation including footage from my performance at left.
Collaborations & Performance Installations
Effect|Affect
The collaborative work of Lauren Baines and Matthew Johns, Effect|Affect is imagined as series of interactive performance installations featuring modern dance and real-time media manipulation (in the form of lighting, projection and audio technology) to create an immersive and responsive environment for performer and audience. Exploring the interaction between bodies and technology, passive and trained responses versus conscious circuitry acting with agency, the relationship between performer and the simulated environment shifts over the course of the performance. Each performance develops as a duet between technology and performer as they become equal agents in altering the audio and visual landscape as dancer(s) and media artist respond to one another in a structured improvisation. The first iteration of this series premiered in August 2013 in San Jose, CA at the ZERO1 Garage as part of ZERO1: The Art and Technology Network's Bring It! Series.
Reflection: A Sequence of Events
In 2012, Bay Area artist Ernest Jolly invited me to create a site-specific performance for his installation Re-imagine. The resulting solo, Reflection: A Sequence of Events, addresses ideas of reflection, contemplation, and internal struggle.