Studies on Fantasmical Anatomies
(2021)
author(s): Anne Juren
published in: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
Studies on Fantasmical Anatomies is an ongoing transdisciplinary artistic research, which encompasses the spectrum of experiences and practices that I have developed as a choreographer, dancer and Feldenkrais practitioner. By drawing on various fields of knowledge – anatomy, psychoanalysis, feminist and queer theories, poetry and somatic practices – the research expands choreography towards disparate discourses, practices and treatments of the body. Based on Feldenkrais’ speculative use of language, imagination and touch, I have developed several body-orientated practices situated at the intersection of the therapeutic and the choreographic, the somatic and the poetic.
The research is articulated through three transversal movements. The first movement is the expansion and distortion of the Feldenkrais Method® from its initial somato-therapeutic goals into a poetic and speculative way of addressing the body. Secondly, I propose experiences of diffraction, "blind gaze" and dissociation as a strategy for troubling the dominant regime of vision. The third movement consists of the co-regulation of bodies and dynamic relationships between the individual and the collective.
Combining fantasy, the fantasme and phantasmagoria, I invented the word “fantasmical” to emphasize how the ability to imagine may create phantom limbs that are as concrete as pieces of bone. Studies of Fantasmical Anatomies are simultaneously a set of practices, methods and places where the corps fantasmé is tangible.
Song of the Cuckoo
(last edited: 2019)
author(s): Joost Vrouenraets
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
How are madness, the spine and Hamlet related to each other in a choreographic process? This exposition displays the collection of documentation of the research. The exposition functions as the contextual backbone for the project 'Song of the Cuckoo', an experimental Practice as Research project in the form of a soliloquy performed by two dancers: Joany Uranka; dancer, assistent researcher, co-creator and myself. The nexus of the project is formed by the three strands originating from (1) an understanding of madness as a performative concept and philosophical perception, a phenomenon of indwelling and study of the transformative nature of creativity, supported by Michel Foucault's thesis History of Madness,(2) the human spine as a choreographic, kinesthetic, (imaginative) anatomical concept as well as an existential metaphor for the idea of becoming, inspired by the embryological phases of birth. And (3), Shakespeare's play Hamlet which is researched as a poetic, literary source functioning as the main inspiration and theatrical search of the totality of the project. The appearance of the character Ophelia in this play is re-purposed and re-imagined for the construction of the narrative and dramaturgical line of the project. The symbolical interpretations of the flowers which Ophelia gives to other characters in the play are translated into specific emotional and physical states of the performance.
The nexus of the project is experimentally embodied by the author of the project and research, myself. The project itself is a practice as research on the above described research question, as well as an emerging meta-reflection on the relation between the author and his work.