Studies on Fantasmical Anatomies

Anne Juren

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.

Video documentation of Sensorial Transference, a lecture-performance and demonstration at MDT, October 7-9, 2021.

Sensorial Transference

In the lecture-performance and demonstration of Sensorial Transference at MDT, I proposed to focus on multiple ways of receiving a treatment through the notions of the proxy body, co-regulation and diffracted attention.

As a practice, Sensorial Transference raises questions such as: How can sense through another body, across another body, within another body, alongside another body, in company with another body, in proximity to another body, in touch with another body? How can intimate, non-expressed and invisible elements, that are fundamental in artistic and therapeutic processes, be made tangible and shareable?

For this demonstration, I invited Caterina Mora and Linda Samaraweerová to perform with me. The treatment is based on a body story that Caterina told me the first time we met in August 2021 in Vienna. The story involved the themes of dislocation and digestion. We agreed that this is what we would work on.

"I will name the session: Dis-location Dis-gestion

dis location

say location

tu dis le lieu

tell the place

dix locations

location

dis gestion

digest

dis 'geste!'

dix gestes

say gesture

ten gestures"

Documentation of a rehearsal at Wiesenburg, Berlin, 2016.

Performers: Anne Juren and Nancy Banfi.

Video: Bruno Pocheron.

This video documents one of the first rehearsals of a Sensorial Transference for one person and proxy bodies. The treatment was made for the person in the back and received through the bodies in the front.

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