UA Digital Cinema Collaboration ‘Moving Around Heidegger’ Chosen for Prestigous European Exhibition

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. – “MAH: Moving Around Heidegger,” an interdisciplinary art project conceived and produced by University of Alabama faculty and students, has been chosen for screening in the international exhibition “Globalscreen 2008-2010: Simulations.”

The exhibit opened Feb. 13 at the Schloss Ringenberg Institute in Hamminkeln-Ringenberg, Germany, and is touring Europe throughout 2009-2010, including stops in Germany, Italy and Bosnia. “MAH: Moving Around Heidegger” has been selected for inclusion in a DVD compilation of 26 international artists.

Collaborators Dr. Hank Lazer, poet and UA associate provost, and Dr. Janeann Dill, an interdisciplinary artist and faculty member of UA’s New College, engaged 25 undergraduate student-artists and alumni to produce “Moving Around Heidegger.”

The collaboration involves elements of digital video, poetry, music, animation, dance, drawings, art installation and dome projection. Students participating included student choreographer Courtney Marr; dancers Caitlin McGee, Noel Pollard and Bryant Henderson; alumnae India Williams and LeNa’ Powe; and undergraduate athlete Kathryn Marr.

Principal photography for the project was shot in the broadcast studio of the Center for Public Television at UA and in the art department’s Woods Gallery.

Dill’s students from her Seminar in Creativity, Seminar in Contemporary Animation Studies, Independent Studies and Fine Arts 200 served as film crew and production assistants alongside CPT’s Mike Letcher and Ben Henson, Dickie Cox (formerly UA Libraries), Justin Gaar (alumnus) and Scott Barnes (UA Libraries) as principal crew members. A father of a student was involved as well. Jeff Burgjohann served on the crew with his daughter, Carri.

“Hank and I spent a year in discussion to thoroughly conceptualize this work ‘from the inside out’ before giving form to this first part of a rather complex project that will be fully realized in stages,” says Dill, executive producer and director of the digital film.

“It was equally exciting to take my students into a laboratory environment where they could not only bear witness to pedagogy in action, but to directly participate in its realization. I really loved working with these students! Not to mention, my former students, my colleagues and, especially, Hank Lazer.”

A link to the “Simulations” exhibition of digital art, curated by Judith Nothnagel, can be found at http://globalscreen.org

Partial funding came from New College, the Creative Campus Initiative and the College of Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office. In-kind contributions were provided by University of Alabama’s Schools of Music (recording), theatre and dance (costuming and props), art department (gallery facilities) and Center for Public Television (staff and studio facilities).

UA’s College of Arts and Sciences is the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.