I have had the pleasure of having some writings appear in three artist-led publications recently:

1. Table Conversation # 3 (Articulation).

Table Conversation is an interdisciplinary written conversation hosted by Annika Pannitto and Erica Preli. For more info click here.

2. The Drawing Board, created by Tetrad Collective:

3. This container (Nov-Dec ’16), created by Chloe Chignell and Ellen Söderhult:

After another week of residency at Weld in January to continue re-searching this slippery practice, I am left with a sense that something very clear is emerging, even if it is hard to articulate what it is.

Maybe it is:

something about an expanded body something about eighteen minutes something about a collective text something about the inherent collectivity of reading and writing practices something about the awkward toothy gaps of not-first languages something about contact something about paying attention to things something about noticing the place we are in and that we are co-creating something about the spaces and slipperiness of language something about sounds tripping off tongues something about words oozing out of and sinking back into flesh something about the haptic-poetic something about the dance emerging something like this:

(This post is a chance to articulate my intention(s) for the periods I will be working at Weld during September/October.)

This residency is…

a chance to submerge myself in a few things I’ve left simmering on the back burner over the last year and a half.

a chance to bring three strands/facets of my research together to coexist and reconnect; although they have previously manifested themselves as three separate enquiries, they are all a part of the complex, interconnected web of things I’ve been investigating over the past two years. The three enquiries are: the dancing body in relation to material objects (things), words/text/writing in/as dancing, and scored improvisation.

a chance, in other words, to embark on something akin to a research mash-up.

a chance to: remap and retrace the connections in the studio (rather than through post-practice reflective writing); 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; to let them seep into one another, bleeding and blending; to let them soak into one another and soak into me; to submerge myself in them to see what (re?)emerges.

From 8th-10th August, I will be facilitating professional class in Leeds, organised and hosted by ProDanceLeeds.

It will be a class working towards stimulating and awakening the thinking-sensing body,drawing on release-based techniques to access greater clarity and freedom of movement. Combining individual and partner dancing, and set material and improvisation, we encourage a greater awareness of our own somas, their environments, and the shifting connections between them.

Time: 9:15am – 10:45am.

Location:

Yorkshire Dance

Delighted that I will be involved in helping facilitate this wonderful improvisation festival from 29th June-3rd July 2016, in Ytterjärna, Sweden:

http://www.ciresearchsweden.com/

“A dance festival that aims for research and exploration around Improvisation. We wish to create a space for you to experience, articulate and expand your body awareness. A platform to advance and grow in your movement vocabulary – individually and in contact with others…We are curious to see how our creativity can colour our being, both inside and outside of the studio”

9/02/16

Coffee Morning: Rant. Chat. Eat at Chisenhale Dance Space, 11am-2pm(ish). I am hosting a session on (UN)COMITTMENT. More details and the full spiel on the topic can be found here.

Update: The write-up from the Coffee Morning can now be read on the Rant.Chat.Eat blog, here. 

10/02/16

Leading a workshop with the BA students at Chester University, UK.

11/02/16

Leading an open workshop at Chisenhale Dance Space, exploring the relationship between people and things. 6pm-9pm, pay what you can. More details here.

13/02/16 and 14/02/16

As part of the exhibition Use/User/Used at the Zabludowicz Collection, I will be participating in an event curated by Celine Roblin-Robson exploring work, labour, and exhaustion. I will be using my time in the space from 12-6pm each day to work on a durational solo practice.

Thanks to a certain Cloud hosting a dance-oriented birthday event, my short solo I, object will get its first public showing in London on 29th November, 2015. This little nugget emerged during a particularly frustrating period of article writing, as I grappled with the slipperiness of words and their implications. Here’s the programme spiel:

Linguistically speaking, an object is something that is thrown (-ject) in front (ob-) of something; it is inherently relational, opposed to a subject. It is a generic term that obscures unique or identifying characteristics. It implies distance—whether physical, or emotional (hence the concept of “being objective“). In this work the actual word ‘object’ becomes the object of study; however, inevitably, it is the performer who is drawn into the confused subject/object dialectic created in performance.

More details about the evening can be found here.

The 1st PARSE Biennial Research Conference on TIME will be happening 4-6 November, 2015 at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. I am pleased to say that I have been asked to participate in the panel ‘Art as Method/Archaeology from Afar’ to provide a practicing artist’s perspective on the speakers’ exploration of the relationship of creative practice to the analysis of creative practice through time.

Here’s what the organisers of PARSE offer as a provocation/introduction to the theme of the conference:

“Time arguably has always been at the centre of the research initiatives of the natural sciences, of philosophy and of the many different practices of history and social criticism. However, time also occupies a central place for the curiosity and attention of artist researchers across all the arts. The intensification of the question of time has, in recent years, prompted some to speak of a “temporal turn” across the disciplines. This conference seeks to bring together a range of researchers, drawn mainly from the artistic fields but also inviting researchers from across all disciplines to consider questions with respect to the practices, processes and perturbations of time.”

It should be a thought-provoking few days!

May is conference month, apparently.

Earlier this month I presented a paper on my ongoing research into the relationship between people and things at C-Dare’s symposium ‘Memory ^ sentiment ^ body ^ space ^ object: Dialogues across and between dance and art’. It was a thought-provoking day with lots of criss-crossing lines of enquiry emerging from the various presentations, and it was great to participate in and contribute to.

Later this month I will be presenting a lecture-performance on practicing presence as part of the session ‘Archaeology of the future’ at TAG 2015. I’m looking forward to experimenting with the structure of a lecture-performance and seeing what it offers (or doesn’t) compared to a more traditional verbal paper presentation.