Experiencing Interruptions?

Daven Dowse Part II

Daven Dowse Part II
Full Length Run Time: 31 minutes
Short Clip/Trailer: 3 Mins/ 6 Secs

Daven Dowse is an experimental dance film belonging to a two part film series exploring themes of human relationship to place, place-ing, taking place. Shot near the US/Mexico border (with its influence of Rio Grande waterways and notions of boundaries) in Big Bend National Park and vicinity in Texas, Daven Dowse investigates sensory mapping as a means to tap the relationship between geography, memory and place: between humans and the landscape they inhabit. Also tapping into the layers of phenomena found in the geographic expressions of memory emerging from discrete, vast and mysterious residues.
With fascination for the body as site and archive of personal and cultural lineage the film uses several modes of inquiry (movement research influenced by somatic inquiry, instant choreography, contact improvisation) to return to the site and edge of the body’s innate intelligence. Through such an excavation process we hope to reveal an idiosyncratic and intuitive language of the body that precedes the verbal. This unearthing, is not superimposed but instead gathered from memories and impulses arising directly from the bodies of Place - including the land, the elements - a process of returning to forgotten spaces; abandoned zones and places containing so called natural resources to engage in a new dialogue, one of reciprocity and interdependency.

https://www.laurentietz.com/

  • Lauren Tietz
    Director
    Sink, Float, Swallow, Spit and Daven Dowse Part I
  • Lauren Tietz
    Producer
  • Alyson Dolan
    Key Cast
    "Dance artist & choreographer"
  • Lauren Tietz
    Key Cast
    "Dance artist & choreographer"
  • Brandon Gonzalez
    Cinematographer
  • Ziv Kruger
    Cinematographer
  • Travis Weller
    Sound Score
    Sink, Float, Swallow, Spit and Daven Dowse Part I
  • David Howe
    Editors
    The Woo, Daven Dowse Part I
  • Lauren Tietz
    Editors
    Sink, Float, Swallow Spit, Daven Dowse Part I
  • Lauren Tietz
    Costumes
    Costumes for The North Project installation at The Blue Theater Austin TX
  • Project Type:
    Experimental, Short, Other
  • Genres:
    land-based, dance for camera
  • Runtime:
    31 minutes 33 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    September 1, 2018
  • Production Budget:
    1,500 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Black & White and Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Screening at Big Medium at Canopy
    Austin
    United States
    August 28, 2016
    Austin Premiere
  • Black Box / private gallery curated by Leon & Stella Alessi
    Austin
    United States
    February 11, 2017
    no
Distribution Information
  • Lauren Tietz
Director Biography - Lauren Tietz

Lauren Tietz is an interdisciplinary artist, dancer, filmmaker, choreographer, movement teacher and Craniosacral Therapist. She has been devising and collaborating in the development of new work for over a decade. Her collaborations with other artists have spanned artistic mediums and geographies from Austin Texas, New Mexico forests, to the caves of Turkey to the Rio Grande along the Texas/Mexico border.

Lauren completed her MFA in New Media at Transart Institute in 2011. Since beginning her MFA research in 2009 she has been directing and producing experimental films where the body is the central protagonist and kinetic movement often takes the place of text.
Her films have been screened at: On The Wall: Berlin Dance on Film Series curated by Non Fiction/Berlin 2010; The Not Festival: Curated by Luis Lara Malvacias/NY 2011; The 5th International Video Art Festival Camaguey/Cuba 2013; Big Medium Gallery/Austin 2016; EAST Austin Studio Tour Group Show/Austin 2016; Experimental Response Cinema's Local Filmmaker Showcase/Austin 2017; The Austin Dance Festival 2018 and First Street Studio Film Festival 2019.
A few of her earlier movement/installation works that addressed some of these themes include: Improvisational Movement Project; The North Project (choreography & costumes); Arrangement for Manyes and Julius; The Meeting Point (directed by Julie Nathnanielsz), Mammal (TDIF collaboration with Brandon Gonzalez); Kulning (TDIF with Derrick Leon Washington), Sound + Vision: It Never Really Happened cont. directed by Biba Bell), Rattletree Marimba, Solo Performance, Body Shift (Austin City Hall).
Her work as of late has also been highly collaborative. Several of her more recent visual/kinetic/performative/installation works include: Solo Body Channel Site Specific performance, Santa Fe NM, August 2017; Polyvagal Dance and Sound Collaboration April 2018 (w/ Brandon Gonzalez and Nicole Bindler); ABRAHAM CRUZVILLEGAS:HI, HOW ARE YOU, GONZO?/ Exhibition Activation new local Performance Lauren directed- Body Shift performance collective at The Contemporary Austin May 2019; Bloodlines, a new site specific dance choreography for Studio Series Show June 2019; Dance Salon: Solo Show (Ready Set Go) - Allowing Failure while panning for gold new collaboration w/ Jason Traweek (composer) August 2019; Interference Fest- Women Making Noise, September 2019 The North Door, new work w/ sound artist Jason Traweek.

laurentietz.com
Earthskybodyworks.net

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Influenced by the phenomena of the senses, reflexes and myriad survival methods humans employ in response to danger, safety and poetics I perceive the body as both personal and cultural archive. From this intimate perspective I am curious about how our relationship to our own body might be a window to perceive our larger relationship to the body of the earth. Where are the sites of amnesia? What will be remembered, heard, invoked? What has been and will be lost? How might we listen or remember more deeply? My research is rooted in accessing resources that arise from seen and unseen forces. For instance, when lost aspects of cultural or ancestral elements/resources are reclaimed, how might an individual or community strengthen themself/itself in the wake of challenging events or natural disasters? As communities re-access personal and collective agency, might collaborative efforts be approached with different collaborative vision, in this new era of climate crisis? As we remember our collective belonging, might we approach creative practice with more nuanced care for one another?
I am in love with both land and nature-based creative research, a self-taught naturalist. This interest in site and land-based projects has led me to do various sorts of projects including a week long dance workshop and research process called Shape Shifting in the caves of Cappadocia Turkey in 2012, work in the mountains of New Mexico and currently forming a new small and interdisciplinary artist collaborative support system across geographies with three other artists during the pandemic. The North Project was another early catalyst in my artistic trajectory in the arena of working across disciplines in a collaborative setting while seeking to create audience/viewer relationships across geographic lines. It was an example of the kind of interdisciplinary work I am still drawn to engage with, and an approach that I have returned to at different times through site specific work, performance and filmmaking. Daven Dowse is the natural culmination of years of exploration of this nature, utilizing both choreographic and improvisational approaches and methodologies that invite time-based processes within specific landscapes (natural and created). Also influencing within the layers of the creative process were elements drawn from Martial Arts, Butoh and Contact Improvisation as well as phenomenological influences.