What Now - Photos

In our "Open Office" at WHAT NOW a strange activity was proposed to the viewers: create your own taxonomy or classification and discored how you will identify properties, organise and classify objects according to your own subjective system. An experience that both entertained our curious viewers but also helped them understand a little better what is is we try to do.

Here are a few pictures of the open office and three different classifications.

Anaïs' classification:

Kate's Classification:

Susanna's Classification:

 

Questions we were asked at WHAT NOW

How do you select objects?

Form and content: how do you deal with them in your classification of the selected objects?

What's the transitional stage between objects and movement?

Where did your "obsession" for (with) objects come from?

What do objects offer you that nothing else does?

Are you more interested in the process or in the moment of performing/ presenting?

Do you ever feel that your research is meaningless (in general, as artists/people)?

Do you see your eventual score as directive or indicative?

Welcome to WHAT NOW!

We have been using this blog as a forum for sharing notes and resources between ourselves, having conversations and organising our research in a more linear way than perhaps it feels in the studio. This blog is also a space for us to extend our process, a place that encourages us to analyse and reflect upon our creative practice together. It enables us to present our written work as an indissociable element to our physical work.

As dance/movement artists, sharing our work at What Now! give us the opportunity to open our process and present our research. This is essential for us at this early stage as it allows us to legitimize our practice among a community of dance artists.

Thank you for your interest in our work. Feel free to take your time and read as much or as little as you wish. You can read notes in publishing order, or using labels on the side to select topics that interest you. We'll also be very happy to talk to you and answer any question you have.

WHAT NEXT ?

We have extensively written about "what then" and "what now". But What next ?

In the near future, we are hoping to focus once more in our practical research, spending time in the studio working with our bodies. We plan to refine the method of interrogation of objects as well as further our questioning on object-embodiment-relationship. New strands of our project are also waiting to be explored such as object-function-body. We hope to finally be able attend to our idea of lineage and taxonomy of movement. Our aim is to create a score from the various elements we identified, with the intention to create a performance within the next year or so.

We also wish to explore our process through different media, working with installation, video, sound or text in order to develop and consolidate or processing machine as a skill.

Finally, we continuously seek opportunities to share our process in educational contexts, proposing many approaches to encourage questioning around areas of our research, such as embodiment, perception or exploring one's personal world.

We are looking for support both in the UK and in France to help us challenge and develop a practice that seems relevant to us in the present artistic context. 

The phenomenological perspective and some underpinnings or our process

Elodie speaks about sensation in the post titled “Thoughts on sensation”. She talks about her experience of sensation as the interface between herself and the object as she stands back, allowing the object to present itself to her. As I understand Elodie’s description and the premise of phenomenology I can propose that through her exploration of the object, she is practising the phenomenological reduction. That is, she is setting aside what is known of the object.

The phenomenological perspective opens up the possibilities for information to come from things in themselves, and as we apply it- from the object. We want to source our physical work from ideas quietly possessed by the object, bringing these to our attention through a method which we are devising in quite a trial and error fashion.

‘My body is the fabric into which all objects are woven, and it is, at least in relation to the perceived world, the general instrument of my “comprehension”...’ M.Merleau-Ponty in Baggini & Stangroom, 2004 p.159.

Through our method, as through the phenomenological method, we seek to build eventually toward meaning, via some necessary reductions. In January we were working to build a method which could be replicated, we were trying to break down what happens sensually, perceptually, cognitively, physically and imaginatively when we approach an object as stimulus item. Here I think it is important to note that we are not going be stringent with terminology until that terminology has proved sufficient and necessary for naming parts of our endeavour. For example referring as I just have to the sensual, perceptual and cognate etc facets of experience seems clumsy as the parameters of each term are perhaps not mutually exclusive but since we are concerned with the experience of meeting the object, it is useful to both acknowledge as different, and ultimately reconcile the different qualities of information offered by our faculties....

So, hopefully having made it clear that we understand the impossibility of isolating entirely a faculty of investigation, I hope now to elucidate the rationale behind our endeavour to do so.

We have been thinking about “sourcing” in our process- how in all the approaches we might have to taking information from objects, we want to source this information from the experience we have of sensation, and find the methodology required to access a sensual experience of the object. This is experiential, with some differences noted between what is happening neurologically (for exploration at another time perhaps).


We understand sensation as the privileging of information from the object, a relationship which stimulates corporeal memories, a certain felt “something” (but what is the something that that is?). In some ways it is a trick to ask ourselves to attend to the experience of the flesh and nerves as awakened by the object because they are the medium through which the whole message is conveyed.

We were interested in Berkeley’s notion of objects as “collections of sensations” and Locke’s principle that the foundations of our knowledge are ideas perceived by sensation (e.g. in Baggini & Stangroom, 2004). In January we were quite systematic in approaching the objects through each of the senses. The process happened something like this:

-interrogating the object through the sense

-information travels in the body and generates more sensation

- we keep following the sensation to clarify it

-as the exploration takes hold the second layer of knowledge, imagination, association and memory are permitted/ encouraged to have influence on the dancing, carrying with them instances of meaning and ideas...

-as the physical info gets clearer still, we start to identify an embodied essence of the object and the movement tends to become more of a recognisable vocabulary.

We filmed episodes of explorations; interested in noting any consistency across the sense categories or object categories- this needs further development.


To be continued...

A thought from Merleau-Ponty

“We think we know perfectly well what ‘seeing’, ‘hearing’, ‘sensing’ are, because perception has long provided us with objects which are coloured or emit sounds. When we try to analyse it, we transpose these objects into consciousness. We commit what psychologists call ‘the experience error’, which means that what we know to be in things themselves we take as being in our consciousness of them. We make perception out of things perceived. And since perceived things themselves are obviously accessible only through perception, we end by understanding neither. We are caught up in the world and we do not succeed in extricating ourselves from it in order to achieve consciousness of the world.”

Maurice Merleau Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, 1962, p.5

Project timeline

August 08: Residency period Chez Pras, Charente, France.

Application to Resolution! The Place, London- reserve list (unsuccessful)

November 08: Teaching (at Dance Warehouse) and practical research sessions, Canterbury.

Application to Bric, N.Y- unsuccesful
Application to The Brick, New York- in discussion for future season
Application to Judson Church, N.Y- unsuccessful
Application to Draft Work, Dancespace, N.Y- unsuccessful
Application to Open Performance, Movement Research, N.Y- successful

Invitation to show work at Open Performance, N.Y.

January 09: Research phase with studio space provided by Laban.

Consolidation of thoughts about the project.
Application submission to Point Ephemere, Paris- pending.

Invitation to show work at WHAT NOW, ID.


April 09: Discussion, planning and adminsitration time.
Presentation of research, "open office" at WHAT NOW 17th-19th April.

Tasks & explorations in the studio

Perhaps in order to understand the writings around and about our method it would be helpful to give some examples of the kinds of tasks we have been doing.

OBJECT-EMBODIMENT-RELATIONSHIP

In Canterbury we worked for the first time in the dance studio with various objects selected with little discrimination other that we could carry them.

Objects included:

some of the objects used in Canterbury

a glass jar with red lid
a blue hippo sponge toy
a yellow plastic egg spoon
a metallic pyramid ornament/ box
a red decorative ribbon
red and pink collapsible paper lampshades
a wooden peg
a heavy lead pipe


We were beginning to work with object-embodiment-relationship. We spent time looking at each object and noticing qualities that we felt that object proposed. We especially noted contradictory ideas proposed the object, and ideas which seemed to go against "natural affinities" such as large things having heaviness. There are problems with the word "natural" of course... For each object we discussed tensions in qualities such as the quality of being infinitely amenable without standing up to gravity but with lightness enough to hold some form unsupported (red ribbon.

As we were interrogating the objects we were drawing attention to the obvious physical/ structural properties which are perhaps overlooked through an understanding of what is necessary for the object to sustain it's designed function. For example, the peg possessed two materials and two halves. The peg also possessed energetic potential ( in the spring), a certain life-span subject to wear and tear, strength, bilaterality, one point of flexibility, flat surfaces, tension/ resistance.... All these observations could and did then provide information for our own movement explorations, proposing some strange ideas for us to inhabit.

Once we felt that we had begun to explore the objects verbally, identifying proposed properties and ideas, we systematically explored these physically, then taking time to discuss what was happening for each of us.

METHODS OF INTERROGATING OBJECT-EMBODIMENT-RELATIONSHIP

In January at Laban we worked for 10 days, repeating similar tasks with different objects and slightly different focusses, to make clearer the method of interrogating (taking information from the) object and understand the sorts of physical responses we might be able to generate from certain objects.

This research phase built directly upon the groundwork done in Canterbury. During the studio time at Laban we agonised over how we were attending to the objects, and got really serious about our methodology. We had previously felt the necessity for clarity in our use of language, often finding that we were working with different references, however during this phase the need for concurrence on terms was paramount as found ourselves getting more and more detailed. We noted how in the first instant of attending to the objects we were using the five senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell with a probable preference for sight and touch. We decided then to break down this process, trying to focus on each of the senses at a time. We were interested in investigating if different qualities of information arose from interrogating the object with different senses.

We worked with all combinations of the 5 senses and 2 objects: the piano and the metal object in the photo below. We filmed the danced responses/ processing and timed 7 minutes for each. We have watched the film footage back, interested to see if there is evident consistency either across the sense categories or with each object through all the sense categories. There are some clear correspondences, but not yet enough material gained to state a consistent trend. We will follow up with further research...

A few objects that we approached in our January research phase.

Some questions/ thoughts that arose:

• Our different preferences in interrogating the object- something about activity and passivity.
• The process by which we select objects- we had stronger, more interesting responses to some over others but are not yet clear if there is a reason for this. It would be good to follow this up especially for when we get to a live performance situation...
• Being the object versus a relationship to the object.
• If we can devise a method which is replicable
• If we can re-find danced states in absence of the object, in another time.

Le projet (note en Français)

Notre projet est avant tout un projet de recherche chorégraphique.

Nous souhaitons développer une méthode créative qui nous soit propre et par là même explorer notre identité artistique.

Notre recherche a pour point de départ notre intérêt commun pour la relation entre le corps et l'objet et ce qu'elle reflète de notre relation au monde qui nous entoure.

Notre démarche est dans une certaine mesure le prolongement de nos travaux individuels précédents, notamment nos mémoires de BA. En effet, nous faisons appel aux théories de phénoménologie de Merleau-Ponty et à la sensation telle que l'a décrite Deleuze. De plus nous attachons une grande importance à la perception physique et viscérale et à la mémoire musculaire comme empreinte de l'expérience. Nous tentons donc d'une part de nous fier à l'intelligence du corps plutôt qu'à l'intellect dans notre travail pratique, tout en attachant, d'autre part, une grande importance à l'analyse et la formalisation de notre processus.

Notre recherche s'articule autour de deux axes qui sont la taxinomie et l'histoire personnelle (que nous réservons temporairement pour plus tard) appliquées aux mouvements et aux objets.

Dans notre processus, nous détournons le protocole taxinomique, c'est-à-dire la classification, la dénomination et le regroupement systématique d'éléments (généralement des espèces vivantes), que nous transposons aux objets et aux mouvements. Nous appliquons des critères subjectifs à ce système rationnel et observons par conséquent ce que ces choix révèlent de nos affinités et tendances personnelles. Que se passerait-il, par exemple, si l'on organisait les objets d'une maison non plus par leurs fonctions (les ustensiles de cuisine dans la cuisine, les vêtements ensemble, etc) mais suivant ce que l'on en perçoit instinctivement ? Quelle serait la nature de ce nouvel univers, reflet de notre monde intime ?

Afin de mettre en relation le corps et l'objet, nous explorons l'incarnation physique (embodiement en anglais) des propriétés essentielles subjectives d'objets en essayant de répondre à la question "what is the something that that is ?".

Lors de notre dernière période de travail (Laban Centre, Janvier 09), nous avons décortiqué puis analysé le processus qui conduit de l'interrogation de l'objet à son incarnation. Les différentes étapes que nous avons identifiées et isolées constituent l'ébauche d'un protocole d'improvisation que nous appelons "the processing machine". Celui-ci nous permet de distiller par le mouvement dansé, ainsi qu'à travers d'autres média (verbalisation, vocalisation, dessin, etc) l'information physique, presque tangible, glanée au contact de l'objet. L'improvisation nous permet de clarifier cette information pour en capter l'essence. En effet, notre première réponse physique sert de point de départ au mouvement. L'approfondissement de l'exploration corporelle de cette information primaire stimule la mémoire musculaire ainsi que l'imagination et la connaissance qui contribuent à leur tour à distiller l'information originale. Ces multiples strates sont autant d'éléments qui alimentent à leur tour la distillation.

L'improvisation est donc à la fois le processus et une partie de son produit.

Bien qu'ayant pris le parti de nous détacher des préoccupations de production pour un temps, il nous tient à cœur que ce projet aboutisse à la création d'une pièce chorégraphique. Nous considérons les différents éléments de notre méthode comme autant d'outils de composition qui pourront être utilisés pour la création d'une partition d'improvisation.

Enfin, nous avons conscience d'être à un stade précoce de notre travail sur la taxinomie du mouvement. De nombreuses questions restées en suspens n'attendent qu'à être explorées. Quelle est la nature de la relation entre l'objet et son incarnation ? Comment cette relation est-elle affectée par le contexte, par d'autres objets et la présence de l'autre danseuse ? Notre processus de distillation peut-il s'appliquer à d'autre média (photographie, installation, vidéo) ?

C'est une des raisons pour lesquelles notre collaboration prend une seconde forme en dehors de nos périodes en studio: nous utilisons un blog (http://janineandelodie.blogspot.com) comme plateforme pour publier les compte-rendus de notre recherche, échanger nos pensées sur certains aspects théoriques du travail, clarifier une partie du processus ou la terminologie que nous utilisons. Ce blog nous permet de maintenir un dialogue permanent entre nous. Notre travail peut ainsi exister en dehors de nos rencontres et devient une entité autonome en constante évolution.

The influence of Simone Forti's Logomotion on our research

Our project together is the result of both our individuality and our shared experiences and training. We both agree that the separate Logomotion workshops we took with Simone Forti (Elodie in November 2007 in France and Janine in March 2008 in Italy) play a large part in our current research. Of course, we are not arguing that our process is similar to Simone's or directly derived form her work, our research isn't a straight continuation of the process she led us through. We would like, however, to acknowledge the influence of our experience with Simone's on our joint research.

I remember Simone mentioning the image of using the process to open small windows. These small windows could open to a whole new world to explore. I think Simone's workshops were like windows too: they opened new areas for us to explore or not, planted seeds that could grow right then or that would grow later. This is how I like to think of Simone's influence on our research: she shared some tools, methods, ideas, experiences that took us ahead faster than we would have otherwise. I believe that the workshops mostly helped reveal things that existed in us already.

The most important seed that was planted for me working with Simone was the idea that seemed central to her work: body/mind/world. Improvising with her Logomotion method, I experienced something quite similar to what physically goes on in our processing machine: as we improvise, we build a web between our body and our mind, therefore opening a small window to a/our world, or part of it. The improvisation itself is entirely embedded in that world, that we may have never accessed, or not be aware of.

I also realised working with Simone that something very powerful could happen in the improvisation if I was in a specific physical and mental state of awareness. For the first time then, I managed to source my improvisation from a very deep level of the self that wouldn't be concerned with aesthetic views or putting a preconceived form on the body. The movement could be sourced from the inside-out. This has interested me very much since and I feel that it is partly what we are doing in our process though approaching from a very different place.

I feel that this deep dive requires the mind to be in a certain place; would I be able to access that deep level with the focus on choreography, aesthetic qualities or composition (although in some ways the Logomotion is in itself compositional)? In the workshop we focussed on books we were reading, conversations about them, or on our writings around the books, sourcing our improvisations from these elements or rather, as I understand it now, from the resonance of those experiences. This very strong focus on specific yet undefined elements detaches our mind from judgement of the improvisation or arbitrary choreographic choices and therefore allows us find new paths is the body as well as new connections between the body, the mind and the world.

Although in the something that that is we focus on the resonance of what we perceive from objects rather than on text, the stimulated channels are very similar: in both cases, it strongly had the impression that refining the idea/improvisation/process was like spinning wool. Starting with something quite confused and undefined yet tangible, we follow and clarify a developing thread of idea that demands attention as it can escape us or break at any moment.

The Logomotion workshops also opened new areas for us in the process of improvisation. Working on text, speech and movement with Simone allowed us to explore a certain sensibility that we had and discover ways to use it.
Our use of speech in our research is strongly related to our experience with Simone: it is another media to explore and embody the resonance of the initial stimulus. Speech finds its source in the body and explores the same threads as the movement. Speech and movement are therefore the manifestation of the same non linear thinking process.

For Simone thinking, along with memory, knowledge, imagination and association are key elements of the improvisation: they modify the landscape of the improvisation and focus the attention away from choreographic concerns, opening ourselves to the surprise of new elements.
In our process, we identified those elements as the second layer of interrogation. After interrogating objects with our senses, we let that second layer come into play and inform the improvisation tracing new paths, all related to the original object by association memory and so on.
Simone's workshop really brought the richness of that second layer and the lush playfulness of it to my awareness. Memory, knowledge, imagination and association weave complex links between body, mind and world.

As a conclusion I would say that Simone Forti's greatest influence is in the possibilities that she opened for us. Today, we are not working with the Logomotion method, neither are we focussing on applying what she taught us. However, elements of her work and memories of that experience often come up as we research. We find support, confidence and hope from the powerful human experience that working with her represented for both of us.

Simone

Simone Forti in Orvieto, Italy, March 2008.

J: In the workshop experiences we had with Simone Forti we experienced her Logomotion research separately, but similarly. In Orvieto, I explored speaking-writing-moving really for the first time with any focus and longevity of investigation. In my own practice, I recognise now that the interplay between text and movement has always been present, but in a mostly undisclosed manner. I mean that when I worked with Simone I could feel a "homeliness" in working between text and movement, but that the methodology was unfamiliar to me. I had never exposed my process in that respect, inpart I think because of my infancy as a maker. I found the workshop investigations then at once challenging and familiar....

E: Text, speech and movement have been part of my creative practice for quite a long time. I remember exploring speech and movement in my own choreographies as a student at Laban, as well as sourcing my work from reflective writing, and therefore letting some of it filter in the work. Working with Simone helped me bridge these different elements as well as understand how they can all be the manifestation of the same creative activity. It was extremely challenging to me as it placed the self at the center of the experience, therefore leading me to a very vulnerable yet extremely rich place.

J: As Elodie and I have discussed our work we have settled on the term "track-changing" to describe the potential for information to be converted into another medium. This may not be a clean translation, and here the idea of currency is useful to me. In Simone's work we both experienced and witnessed instances of live processing in the improvised form- when the idea spoken or danced changes either in content or due to swapping between the modes of expression (movement, language). Much much more could be said here about the beauty of clarity in these processes. In recent conversations we have have discussed and shared writings and talked a little of dances experienced with Simone, noting our mutual interest in the integrity of the decision making processes in speaking/ writing/ dancing which follows a stream of consciousness subject to diversion and content switching.

Thoughts on our work in an educational context

Our research project is broadly concerned with a question: What is the something that that is?

When physically negotiating the world we are continually processing visual and sensational information aswell as information coming from memory and imagination.

In dance classes there is often a prioritising of form. We are exploring the relationship between perceptual and physical information and our own movement by exploring the properties proposed by objects. For example this might begin with a personification of object, noticing structural similarities between the object and our own bodies which might suggest "stimulus" type physical visual response. As the process of "seeing" or attending to an object is refined we can notice ideas proposed by the object such as a quality of tiny disorganisation, stability with lightness, having the appearance of integrity but being separable by force...and so on. The aim for such explorations is to open up th world of possibility for physical embodiment and creative engagement with the world through movement when the propositions contain logical oppositions.

The experiments are designed to be fun, suggesting investigative tools for creative play, broadening movement vocabularies, challenging ideas about compositional tools in secondary dance education and making movement relevant in everyday life. In the workshops we are exploring the way that people gesticulate in speech, how their bodies are active in communication and how close this is to the experience of information processing during improvisation.

A return to a state of wonder at the world is possible through attention, too often young people are bombarded with complex sensory information that stimulates them in a manner conducive to physical passivity. We are interested in how to open a channel of stimulation by acting in and on the world, looking twice and taking responsibility for our own physical responsiveness.

Beyond these ideas around movement studies in dance education, we are developing a creative methodology from which we will build a performative score. In March 2009 we are still working to define and refine the terms of this method in our studio practice, thinking, writing and teaching.

A few questions we asked the young people involved in the workshops we did at Dance Warehouse.

1.Have you been involved in a workshop/ class like this before? If not, how was it different from the other classes you have done?

2.What sorts of things are you interested in? This can be subjects at school, books you read, films, music, issues in the world e.t.c.

3.How do you think about your dance classes? Are they for fun, fitness, to be with your friends, perhaps you want to study dance when
you leave school or you can be creative in classes in a different way to other parts of your life. There isn't a correct answer!

4.Is there anything that you especially remember from the workshop- that you enjoyed or found difficult? Did you feel challenged?

5. If we think about the objects we used, can you say something about how that was for you. What relationship did you manage to build with the object, or how did you physically relate to it. Write anything that you remember, I know it was a while ago...

6. We asked you to move without telling what to do, it was up to you to respond physically. How did this feel- was it fun, or scary? Did you feel more confident at the end of the session?

7. Finally, would you like to do more of this type of workshop? Feel free to write anything that we haven't thought of asking!

Here we are again in case you had forgotten what we looked like with all the writing...

WHAT NOW

Sat 18th April 12-9pm, Sun 19th 12-5pm. Siobhan Davies Studios, 85 St. Georges Rd. Elephant and Castle. Bookings +44 (0) 020 7091 9650

http://www.independentdance.co.uk/

http://www.timeout.com/london/dance/event/139288/what-now.html

Where we are at in February 09

We met in January 09, two months after our residency in Canterbury (November 08). Since beginning our process in France we had not had an extended research period with uninterrupted studio time so we were excited to be supported by Laban during this phase.

In the time we spent apart, we were working on applications regarding this project as well as independently on our own projects. This break allowed us to digest the information gathered in our Canterbury session and reflect upon our endeavour.

Upon meeting in January we decided to focus on the taxonomy/classification strand of our research, and leave the lineage/personal history of things for a later stage of the process. In doing so, we were able to narrow our field of investigation and return in more detail to some of the elements we had already identified (i.e. the need for clarity and rigour in approach).

How to define taxonomy?

Taxonomy generally means the practice or principles of classification. It is the science of organisation; organising (typically living organisms) into increasingly broader categories based upon shared features. Traditionally grouping occurs based upon physical resemblances but in recent times other criteria (such as genetic matching) have also been used. Our interest is both in the categorisation and the lineage, but here we are talking about the former.

In our process so far we have been using taxonomy creatively, according to properties that arise from the objects (refer to the process begun in Charente and explored somewhat in Canterbury). To proceed in a meaningful way we have felt the pre-requisite of a clear method a priori, a consensus of opinion about both what we were doing and how to go about it.

We needed to develop a reliable method to identify the main property of an object. We needed to identify the main criteria by which we interrogated objects. Our aim ultimately, however, is to let go of rational, objective criteria in order to access more primary (perhaps complex and subjective) properties of the object – the essence or "-ness". We are therefore playing with alternative truths within a rational system.
In order to use embodiment to access the essence of things, we devised a method based on our early experience of the embodiment of (the perceived properties of) objects in Canterbury. The method we call the "processing machine" is the result of our process at Laban. It defines the tools that are available to us to interrogate selected objects, at one end, and the different media we can use to express the essence of the object identified in the process, at the other end.

During our process, we broke down the different stages of the processing machine. Firstly, looking at how we interrogate objects using tools of interrogation. This is the first level of the method: our five senses. The second level of the method (ways of investigation) allows memory, knowledge and imagination to add a second layer of information.

This stage of our method has its roots in the phenomenology of perception ( Merleau-Ponty), and the idea of looking at the world each time with a fresh eye. As the phenomenological method seeks to bracket pre-suppositions to attend to the world as the objects/ events arising in consciousness, so we seek to begin with the senses, attending to the thing in itself over what we know of it.

Following the method we are devising, next come the media of expression that allow us to distil the information gained from interrogation and investigation. In our improvisations we used movement, speech, sounds and drawing to embody the "what" we perceived from the objects. We had a sense that many other media could be explored such as film, photography, installation, and maybe also smells, flavours ... (if we had the skills to realise these).

(Although we are currently exploring primarily through the medium of the body, there is a precedent in our work to explore through multi-media and we have loftier ambitions for our endeavour...)
Working back and forth between the physical exploration of the method and analysing it, we acknowledged that except from the first level of interrogation, that is to say attempting to use only the senses in our first approach of the object, all the other elements of the processing machine are layers that may overlap adding new information about the object that feed back onto itself, like an inward fountain. The act of moving brings with it information which relates back to the object through the limits proposed by the object. By pushing against these limits aswell as accepting information that readily arises from exploration, we feel that slowly we reach a deeper, clearer understanding of the "ness" of an object, perhaps beginning to name what that something is. It becomes clearer here that all things are an extended along continuums, and though not binary in it's totality, n object proposes itself within a system of binary oppositions, eventually enabling a relation between other objects to be plotted (as with the traditional sense of taxonomy based on genetic information).

It has become quite clear for us that the embodiment of the quality or the essence of an object isn't arbitrary but is strongly linked to how we physically perceived the object at the time. Our improvisation is therefore guided both by the method and the stimulus of the object: it works from the inside out.

We are aware that the method still needs to be refined and practiced. Our aim is for it to become second nature to us, reducing the time we need to both interrogate and distil the information given by the object. This method offers very playful compositional tools that we hope to use in an improvisation score.


All these ideas will be further expanded.

On blogging

Why use a blog?

We are international artists, Elodie resident in Paris, Janine in London. Since embarking upon this project we have worked together in New York, Charente, Canterbury and London. The next phase of our work will take place in Paris in the early Spring 09. Whilst the underwater train does run regularly and (reasonably directly) to our doors, there is a limit to how many times we meet in each others' countries at the moment.

We both agree that the space for reflection afforded by the pauses between research phases are beneficial, and actually probably essential when our work becomes very "heady". However, as collaborators and excellent friends, we miss a regular exchange of thoughts and a dialogue about ideas- afterall we use each to propel our own ideas forward and the work gained momentum through our exchanges.

We each keep notebooks and we periodically make an effort to standardise the information contained so that we have landmarks or summaries of where we are at every now and then. This is really helpful at these developmental stages when there are so many ideas that we are seeking to structure. Inevitably we organise our ideas differently and our diagrammatic representations are different, but this is a shared process so we share them, and the differences can add new information too.

So. Where does that leave us?

Well, as recognised widely these days, documentation is (if not everything then very) important. For applications, evidence of process... And this is a research process. We are using this blog as a forum for sharing notes and resources between ourselves, having conversations and organising our research in a more linear way than perhaps it feels in the studio (where we are often having to review and clarify). It is important for us to know that we are using the same language in the same way at this stage of laying the foundations of a method; writing helps that by fleshing out arguments for subtleties in definition which carry a lot of connotation and thus affect both our understanding of what we are doing, and that of our potential reader/ audience.

In making this resource publicly available we invite spectators to our process in the same way that we invite audience to sharings. We are not presenting a finished work, but threads and snippets.

So in short: the blog allows us to present visual and film work, text and commentary, links and access to our profiles (other ideas/ work/ projects) and helps to keep us in touch across the land and seas. It is like our caravan.

Thoughts on sensation

There are several aspects that I would like to develop, elements that need being mentioned because they feel quite important to me in relation to our process. Although I think that writing about these elements might help our reader(s) get a better idea of our work, they aren't quite articulate in my mind to really write a full note about each of them (but I will soon).

First, I was particularly interested in the different ways we approach objects (this can relate to the note on ways of investigation). We noticed in our second week of our January session that we approached objects slightly differently, not in our choice of tool (though there are some differences here too) but more generally in the relationship we created with the object to interrogate it. I found myself being more passive as Janine appeared more active. (My intention here isn't to privilege one over the other but rather to introduce tendencies that once acknowledged become extra tools available to both of us.)

An active approach would be inquisitive, meeting the object, exploring it from all possible angles as if to discover its hidden secrets. I have the feeling that an active approach attempts to get as much information about the object as possible. On the other hand, a passive approach involves, stepping back, letting the object come to us from a certain distance. The passive approach therefore gains a broader, but not necessarily less precise, sense of what the object.

During our exploration, I drew a link between the latter approach and an area that particularly interests me: sensation. Stepping back during the interrogation of the object I let the object unlock areas of sensation, that is to say a certain amount of physical response in my flesh, my bones, my skin, my guts ... As a response, sensation appears quite irrational yet very tangible.

After experiencing sensation in relation to a an object, the method (our processing machine) allows us to distil the raw information until it slowly becomes clearer. The understanding of the sensation becomes deeper but also easier to express, and perhaps even to describe verbally.

There were many questions in relation to sensation as the information that is distilled isn't the essence of the object itself but that of the essence of the sensation.

However, I feel that sensation could be a basis for classification, sorting objects by the sensation they triggered or by the nature of the sensation itself.

Working with sensation could also be a first element to explore relationships between ourselves and the objects, an aspect of the work we wish to study in our future session.

In any case, I found that sensation gave to my improvisation a certain density that I found quite surprising, challenging and exciting. I felt I could really explore the density of the object within my own body.

Elodie

On the necessity of a research project

Nowadays, it is widely recognised among contemporary artists and audiences that process is key to making work. First as students and then as independent artists we both demonstrated a stronger interest in the process rather than in the final product. Our choice in collaborating together therefore comes from this common approach.
Our initial goal was to work toward making a dance piece, still allowing ourselves enough time and space to develop our process, question and challenge our creativity. However, after many discussions attempting to define the nature of our focus, we realised the breadth of our field of interest and decided to embark on a research project, therefore postponing the production of a choreography.

We feel that a research project not only allows us to spend the necessary time to get a deep understanding of the elements we study, it gives room for risk-taking in our practice, therefore avoiding any familiar short cut to achieve our goals.
Our research also give a context to the questioning of our individual practices. We each approach it from a slightly different angle, each using it as a lab for our own observation. However, the awareness of the small differences in our personal interests remains in the background: personal interests never take over our joint enquiry.

Our choice of method also reflects our interest in the theory surrounding arts. As BA students at Laban, we both based our dissertation on critical theory and philosophy (Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze). Today, we wish to apply our academic knowledge to our creative practice as well as generate discourse about dance as a medium. Exploring taxonomy both practically and verbally encourages us to analyse our method, defining a language specific to it. Finally, it allows us to set our endeavour within a certain context, drawing from theories that previously treated similar subjects.

Furthermore, we view our project as a form of acknowledgement of the influence of artists and practitioners that we had the opportunity to meet and study from. We both took workshops with Simone Forti (Elodie in November 07 and Janine in March 08) whose approach to movement, text and improvisation are key elements of the method we are exploring. (Simone's influence in our work shall be further developed in a separate note). As artists we are also both inspired by american post-moderns (Judson Church, Anna Halprin and their followers) as well as other artists whose creative practices are intimately related to their ongoing research.
Our project can therefore also be considered a demonstration of our engagement in a certain scene. We hope to challenge dance as a form and contribute to the development of choreographic research, within our ability of course.

Finally, the necessity of this research project reflects who we are as general people: moving individuals with a tendency to explore, reflect and analyse the world that surrounds us in order to deal with it the best we can.

Janine

This is Janine in New York. I like to think of our meeting there in May 08 as the begining of our collaboration.

There wouldn't be any Janine and Elodie without Janine !

Elodie

This is Elodie. Elodie is 50% of Janine and Elodie. She is essential to this collaboration.

A thought about the "ways of investigation"

Calling the second level the "ways of investigation" no longer makes sense to me. I have to ask myself if memory, knowledge and imagination show me a way to investigate. There is definitely an exchange between the information provided from the investigation (level 1) which becomes multi-sensory and reinforced by the second level and this remains a constant coming and going between myself and the object in improvisation. The tool(s) of interrogation feels like a tether to the object where otherwise I might follow a related, but not integral avenue of interest in improvisation. The way in which I investigate does depend on the first level (if there is restriction in which tool I can use for example) but the second level is really the key to realising a creative response. So is it the way I investigate ? Not really. It is the basis upon which I am able to carry out my investigation...

Stages in taxonomy

First taxonomical attempts using polarities such as: empty/containing; edible/non-edible; boxes/round. We slowly moved to less rational polarities and even less objective criteria: blue/round; things that are taller than wide/things that are labelled; smooth/things that would tessellate. Form those polarities we began to evoke the idea of a continuum to position elements (things that are taller than wide/things that are labelled but also things that are taller than wide with a label). (August 08, Charente).

Some of the objects used in Canterbury in our exploration of embodiment. We mostly played with the objects, consciously choosing aspects of the objects and transferring them to the body. It now appears to us as the embryo of the processing machine. (November 08).

Studio space at Laban (Laurie Grove, London). The organisation of the space reflects our process: (from left to write) a space to draw, objects to interrogate, the camera to document the process and a space to reflect, discuss and write. Although quite distinct we integrate all those elements as part of the same creative practice. (January 09).

between you and me and the window and the tree

This is a snippet of a little research play during our residency chez Pras, August 08. In the instance of the film we play with appearance/ disappearance as an extension of the kind of illusions and sensory play fleetingly experienced in everyday life. We chose to manipulate the environment, using reflection in the open window to displace the space and also create a screen behind which we are unseen. As an idea it is undeveloped, but offers a flavour of our experiments during the Charente residency.

Chair and hanging installations in Charente, Aug 08

Charente, August 08

Embarking upon a residency period at the house of artist Bernard Pras in Charente, France (August 2008) we had- really for the first time- the opportunity to work and play together, exploring the common ground of our interests. We spent time writing, building, dancing, drawing, talking, cooking, laughing, cycling, filming. We allowed our process to emerge through all these activities in the beautiful French countryside. The house was filled with all kinds of objects- strange and familiar, old and older still. We gradually orientated ourselves to various organisations of these objects. We worked separately at first, enjoying freedom of method. Each quietly set about exploring according to their interest. Elodie's project involved documenting artefacts found in the out-houses, composing an installation of object and owner in a hanging box in the garden (see photos). Janine collected up all the chairs (many and various) from the buildings and set about animating them into a heap escaping the house from windows and doors (see photos). As we talked about what we were doing some central ideas became apparent- those of organising objects and the history of objects/ possessions. From these beginnings we were able to identify a common ground and the central concerns of taxonomy and lineage.

In the beginning: what is the something that that is?

(a short warm up) Laban graduates of 2006, Janine and Elodie have worked individually in various professional capacities over the past two years. Both have sought to continue their professional development outside of institutions, building upon the knowledge gained through study at Laban and a playing with the application of our creativity. We are now developing a long-term collaboration, defining our research ground and devising a way in which to work between the UK, France and beyond. Our trajectories have passed through some common ground- separately we participated in Simone Forti's Logomotion workshops- Elodie in France, Janine in Italy. I think we are in agreement that the experience of this work has formed a keystone of our mutual enquiry (more about this later). For one year Elodie was engaged as a dancer for several artists in New York, and there experienced a desire to source work not only from the body but to explore the remit of her field within the art world more generally. Elodie returned to Paris restless with vibrant creativity and set about choreographing a solo work (premiered in February 08), teaching and wondering about a creative practice which does not as its premise determine any one mode of expression. Meanwhile in the UK and Europe, Janine had been working in various collaborative situations with visual, fine and digital artists. Projects included a film/ live art installation afewsquaremiles for one audience member, commissions from Duckie and the Light Surgeons (site specific) and presentation of work for the stage. Janine has recently been dancing for Valerie Preston-Dunlop's heritage film project, Unearthed and in Southeast Dance commissioned film Opus:One in Folkestone. Our process began in Charente, France in August with a 10 day residency chez Pras exploring with film, photography, movement of bodies and objects. We were exploring ideas of lineage in personal histories of objects, familial relations and movement properties, stating " I know that there is a thing shared, but what is the something that that is?"/ "How do these things belong, what makes it so? From a seeming logic can there develop a new taxonomy whose proposed polarisations and relationships suggest inventive co-ordinates for creative play?" We are interested in new opposites, false tallies and how close we are to being really really very shiny. It's playful, curious work in which we will not compromise technical skill but will enforce compositional discernment through the rigour of the method we devise.