A laboratory on human-nonhuman assemblages, junctions and meetings
In this lab the participating artists investigate what it means to choreograph and being choreographed by non-human things. The focus lies on the encounter with the material, the exploration of the material constitution of things. The lab asks whether actionability, self-organisation and seminal influence which traditionally were the domain of humans, can be extended to non-human entities, and how such a perception might change one’s own body and its movements. The lab investigates the human body with regard to its being harnessed and embedded in material arrangements, constellations, and translation processes. It deals with non-human bodies in various close and touching relationships with man. We are also intrigued by the relation of material bodies and the language surrounding them. Which dance will emerge if the things are declared co-choreographers? The lab researches impersonal material aspects inside and outside the human body. Can the »it« be conceived as an actor, just as active as human language? And how can »it« be made to dance?
In the foreground of the lab is the question how the investigation of things and objects – their materiality, their socio-cultural import, and their existence in language – can become the motor of choreographic and performative work. Can choreography be conceived as a (re-)assemblage of human and non-human bodies in continuous motion? Which movements ensue from the encounter of human bodies and things, and how can attributions of subject and object be obliterated?
Martina Ruhsam in collaboration with Alfred Lenz, Anita Kaya, Brigitte Wilfing, Claudia Heu, Sabina Holzer, TE –R and philosophy unbound