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.