Amanda Season Keeley

SPONTANEOUS ALPHABET

Spontaneous Alphabet originated as a typographic font which was designed and utilized to create a site specific artist’s book this past summer while in residence at AGA Lab/Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. In order to complete this alphabetical project, I was working late hours and would often hear rhythmic movements and vibrations emulating from the floor above, as in counterpart to the repetitions involved in my printmaking process. I went upstairs to discover a Judo class was taught in the evenings. The instructor and I met to discuss our work, drawing parallels between our practices, and that each individual movement was like the letters of the alphabet. The sequences became words, which are assembled into sentences, and when two spar it formulates a dialog. This discourse is the foundation of the Spontaneous Alphabet film- drawing reference points between the physical movements and the architecture of the body in space, harnessing simultaneous energy linked by color and motion.

I aim to edit the full footage into a double screen film installation, pairing motions together interlaced with color and text. The two projections will be face to face and the audience will be invited to step onto a tatami mat stage platform to be surrounded by the film. The sound will be embedded within the platform, to envelope the viewer in an immersive multisensory experience.