During November 2017, sounding score was in residency at c.off. This process existed parallel to a process of writing about the work for a forthcoming publication, and this double process of two completely different ways of engaging with the research was an interesting one to inhabit.
Some articulations of sounding score in the context of an interview with c.off can be found below:
When and how was this project idea initiated? (Feel free to elaborate on your source of inspiration for the topic and your exploration of the complex web of bodies and in-between spaces).
sounding score is concerned with the entanglement of material bodies—human bodies, bodies of non-human “objects,” bodies of language/text—and with the spaces in-between these bodies that the act of dancing opens up. The starting point for sounding score was a desire to explore the complex web of bodies, imagination, things, and places that constitute two particular material things—the sounding lines that give the project its name.
This project was initiated in September 2016, and arose from something akin to a research mash-up. The proposal was to bring three strands of my research (which had previously manifested as separate enquiries) together to coexist and connect. My proposal was to observe the existing overlaps between the enquiries and find new ones; to reimagine the possibilities of the enquiries by throwing them into a melting pot; and to let them seep into one another, bleeding and blending.
One of these research strands was the affective entanglement of human and non-human things, which was the focus of a previous project. sounding score builds on those previous explorations whilst also approaching this affective entanglement from a slightly different perspective, being more interested in engaging in a practice of shifting, expanding, dissolving, and reforming bodies’ boundaries—or rather, of attending to the ways in which they are already, always doing so.
How has the project developed from the original idea?
Although the project started as a proposal to mesh and re-imagine previous enquiries, it quickly took on its own identity. The sounding lines remain at the heart of the enquiry, but the process has also generated a lot of iterative and derivative material abstracted from the sounding lines, which has then been layered back onto and folded back into the work in ways I could not have anticipated.
One possibility that has emerged from the original proposals is a collective text making practice. This is something that I am currently exploring the potential of, and which I would like to further investigate within the context of the upcoming studiekretz.
Do you have any specific methods for working with the material?
At the moment I am working with two broad methodologies: a trust in the doing where things emerge and then refine themselves through repeated doing and conscious articulation of the doing; and a reciprocal feedback loop between writing and dancing, where each subtly shifts and shapes the other.
What are your plans for the working process in the studio and afterwards?
At this stage in the process I am exploring strategies for opening the practice to, and crafting it for, an audience. The question that I am working with is ‘what of the research gets shared, and how?’ The idea is that this project will be presented publicly at some point during 2018.
What are your thoughts on the upcoming studiekretz that will be departing from your work, do you have anything you’d like to say to a potential participant?
The studiekretz is a chance for me to share some proposals from my current research that relate to collective text making, and to open a dialogue around the work. I will be proposing a series of text-related tasks, as well as facilitating a discussion structure tor reflect on our experiences of the practices. We will be working in and with the English language.
Elise Nuding 