Remember Your Body

In Episode 5 of Series 1, Johannes Birringer, choreographer and Professor of Performance Technologies at Brunel University talks to Eline Kieft about his journey into combining dance and performance with technologies, why an evolution of body knowledge is more important to him than a specific identity, how our bodies are educated by environments, sensorial experiences and wearables, and how the unknown can be a fertile learning space for growth, creativity and student-learning. The episode includes some wonderful sound-bites to highlight the variety of environmental and sensorial stimuli, based on Birringer's workshop on “underground spatialities” (for Rice University’s Anthropology students).

The episode includes some wonderful sound-bites to highlight the variety of environmental and sensorial stimuli.

Episode notes 

Useful links:

http://www.brunel.ac.uk/dap

http://www.danssansjoux.org

http://www.aliennationcompany.com

http://undergroundspatialities.com/

http://interaktionslabor.de

References

Barba, Eugenio and Savarese, Nicola (1991) A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer. London: Routledge. 

Böhme, Gernot (2017) The Aesthetics of Atmospheres: Ambiences, Atmospheres and Sensory Experiences of Space. Trans. Jean-Paul Thibaud. London: Routledge. 

Birringer, Johannes and Danjoux, Michèle (2019) “Sound and Wearables.” In: Foundations in Sound Design for   Embedded Media: an interdisciplinary approach, ed. Michael Filimovicz, London: Routledge, pp. 243-74.

Birringer, Johannes (2017) “Metakimospheres.” In Susan Broadhurst and Sara Price (eds), Digital Bodies: Creativity and Technology in the Arts and Humanities. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 27–48. 

Birringer, Johannes (2016) “Kimospheres, or Shamans in the Blind Country.” Performance Paradigm 12: http://performanceparadigm.net/index.php/journal/article/view/176

Birringer, Johannes (2013) “Audible Scenography.”  Performance Research 18(3): 192-93.

Birringer, Johannes (2011) “Dancing in the Museum.”  PAJ:  A Journal of Performance and Art 99: 43-52. 

Birringer, Johannes (2010) “Moveable Worlds/Digital Scenographies.” International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 6 (1): 89–107.

Birringer, Johanness (2009) Performance, Technology, and Science. New York: PAJ Publications.

Cooper Albright, Ann and Gerer, David (2003) Taken by Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. 

Danjoux, Michèle (2017) Design-in-Motion: Choreosonic Wearables in Performance, PhD Thesis, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. 

D’Evie, Fayen (2017) ‘Orienting through Blindness: Blundering, Be-Holding, and Wayfinding as Artistic and Curatorial Methods.’ Performance Paradigm 13: 42-72. 

Gaensheimer, Susanne and Kramer, Mario, eds. (2016) William Forsythe: The Fact of Matter. Bielefeld: Kerber Verlag. 

Hay, Deborah (2015) Using the Sky: A Dance. New York: Routledge. 

Ingold, Tim (2011) Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. London: Routledge.

Mitra, Royona (2018) “Talking Politics of Contact Improvisation with Steve Paxton.” Dance Research Journal 50(3): 6-18. 

Oliver, Mary (2014) Wild Geese: Selected Poems. Eastburn:  Bloodaxe Books Ltd.

Paxton, Steve (2008) Material for the Spine: A Movement Study. DVD-rom. Brussels:

Contredanse Editions.

Song, Haein (2019) Ecstatic Space: NEO-KUT and Shamanic Technologies. Phd Thesis, Brunel University London. 

Tsing, Lowenhaupt Anna (2015) The Mushroom at the End of the World:  On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Xu, Zhi (2019) Choreographing Chinese Dancing Bodies:  Yangge and Technology. PhD Thesis, Brunel University London (forthcoming)

Zumthor, Peter. 2006. Atmospheres: Architectural Environments – Surrounding Objects. Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag.

In Episode 7 of Series 2 Finnish architect and former Professor  of Architecture at the Helsinki University of Technology, Juhani Pallasmaa, explains how art and multi sensory awareness lie at the heart of architecture, based on vision and sensing not as automatic mechanisms but cultural matters we learn during childhood, and how seening the mind and body as a continuum and architecture as a verb not a noun is central to his teaching, practice and research.

In Episode 6 of Series 2, leading mobility studies expert Professor Peter Merriman, from Aberystwyth University, talks about the development of the discipline as a field of study in the social sciences, why taking an interdisciplinary approach is important to him and his drive to understand the social, cultural and political dimensions of everyday movement and their impact on national identity and nationalism.

In Episode 5 of Series 2, Auxiliadora Gálvez explains how flamenco and Feldenkrais first stimulated her embodied approach to architectural training. With her students and collaborators on PSAAP, the Platform of Somatics for Architecture and Landscape, at the San Pablo CEU University in Madrid, she explores and experiments on body aware understandings of how humans and environments relate. Making students experience spatial concepts in their bodies has improved student success and creative output, and is why somatic education is now at the heart of Auxiliadora’s teaching, research and architectural practice.

In Episode 4 of Series 2 Arawana Hayashi, who heads up the Social Presencing Theater program for the MIT-born Presencing Institute in Boston, talks about her efforts to use her background in the arts, meditation and social justice in organisational settings. She discusses the development of the change framework “Theory U”, and how she and colleagues such as Otto Sharmer put it to use working with NGOs, businesses and Governments, to encourage change by developing capacities for thinking about the whole system, and by moving towards compassion- and awareness-based systems. 

Tim Ingold, Professor of Social Anthropology at University of Aberdeen, talks to Ben Spatz about the difference between anthropology and ethnography, the importance of collaboration, skilled practice and playing the cello, why he finds the idea of the body problematic, and why he thinks of people as human becomings rather than beings.

In Episode 3 of Series 2 we continue our discussion with Erin Manning and Brian Massumi from the SenseLab in Canada - (please listen to Part 1 if you haven't already). We discuss the emerging 3 Ecologies Process Seed Bank, and how post-Blockchain technologies could reverse today’s economic balance, to collectively emphasize our qualities of experience, making monetary aspects peripheral to our everyday lives.

• On the revaluation of Value, Economies to come by Brian Massumi

In Episode 2 of Series 2 Erin Manning and Brian Massumi talk to Doerte Weig about schizo-somatic workshops at the Senselab, and how new ways of thinking and moving with relational openness and group subjectivity would benefit teaching and learning in universities of the future.

• SenseLab website
• Three Ecologies Institute

In Episode 1 of Series 2 Gil Hedley talks to Doerte Weig about how discovering our inner bodies allows us to experience our bodies as continuous, to accept muscles as scientific mental creations, to understand how our connective tissues fascia enables movement, and how with appreciation for our bodies we can even come to love our fat.

Dr Jonathan Skinner from Roehampton University talks to Eline Kieft about how dance has become integral to his research and teaching and the challenges he has faced as an academic and a dancer on and off the dance floor.