video still
camera: Andy Cavatorta

Lisa Bufano's Morphology: morphology.lisabufano.com
Performance Art video podcast.
Go There

After I performed Fancy in Vienna using table legs stilts that Boston sculptor Jason Karakehian constructed, I went to the Contemporary Artists Center in the beautiful Berkshire Mountains of North Adams, MA. During this residency, I began thinking of my unique experience as a prosthetic user as an opportunity to fully transform my body and its movement into something else (read more about my thoughts at the CAC). After videotaped some movement ideas, with the Berkshires providing a spectacular landscape of mountains, I re-found video and animation. I began to sketch a range of physical modes, or characters, based on certain physical conditions. Working primarily with prosthetics, I explored the movements, gestures, and landscape and place (habitat), or objects that seem natural to the character. Performing simple movement sequences primarily for video, I produced short time-lapse and live-action videos: 4Legs, 2Legs, 0Legs, Kite, and Quarry. The images from this work were compelling and inspired a wave of sketches and possibilities that would expand physical transformation on different levels. What is the opposite of stilts? How do time, gravity, distance, water, air, wheels, spikes, flippers, or a large articulated fin alter the form, make me move, and also, what kind of place, habitat, scene, or story, does the character belong to? The larger question, that i now realize informs my interest in movement and performance, is how to feel natural moving.

There are currently 3 videos in various stages of incompleteness that will be published 2008.

The Morphology video podcast is a series of taped and edited performances and processions published online. You can subscribe (free) through itunes or a newsreader or stream through the browser.
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