Description:

The work of Australian choreographer Shelley Lasica reveals a sustained exploration of dance, movement and the varying contexts in which they can occur. WHEN I AM NOT THERE has been produced to accompany a performance exhibition reflecting on forty years of Lasica’s choreographic practice. Design critic Laura Gardner reviewed the book, below are some extracts from her text –

"Light travels easily through the internal pages of ‘WHEN I AM NOT THERE’. The book is printed on paper with high ‘show-through’—the visibility of printing on the reverse of a sheet of paper. The stock, notable for its uniquely low opacity, is designed by book designer Irma Boom. It has the rustle of tissue paper wrapping a recent purchase and the fine, lightweight handle of a bible paper. The book’s designers Stuart Geddes and Žiga Testen sourced the paper stock for its capacity to create unexpected moments between pages, inviting light through its fibres and layering the images and text of the book, blending them together, confusing its topography...

... The lightness of the pages is a metaphor for the book’s subject: the fugitivity and ephemerality of a contemporary dance practice...

... Beyond the difficulties of archiving dance in general, Lasica’s practice is uniquely elusive in character. The book’s designers address this with a deft minimalism. The book is both dense—a little over 700 pages—and compact—about B5—in size, its softcover enclosed by a dust jacket. It feels specific despite the expanse of its subject, and heavy despite the lightness of the paper. The typesetting bears a light touch, letting the images take precedence. The stock on the book’s cover is toothy and bright against the black ink of its dark cover image. This image shows a figure blurred by motion, mid-dance: barely there. We take this to be a performer, perhaps Lasica herself, but one unadorned by an elaborate costume or set...

... The main archival gesture of ‘WHEN I AM NOT THERE’ is the arrangement of a substantial image section reproduced from Lasica’s collection of material. The works are catalogued thematically and then indexed by an alphabetical code. Letters, marked in the top right of the image pages, correspond to each dance work. Multiple performances of the same work are also assigned a numerical designation: as in A1, A2, or A3, for example...

... Under this thematic regime, the reader lands in a flow of images that allows the works to blend and morph (with the help of the light paper) into each other. Lasica’s figure, at times joined by other dancers, repeats throughout, travelling through the sequence of images. Within this flow, the reader is able to construct their own version of the archive, and thus of Lasica’s work...

... In the see-through publication-archive of ‘WHEN I AM NOT THERE’, the reader is given multiple points of view from within the archive, allowing it to be endlessly re-animated into new experiences and constellations"