In my PhD project, Social Choreographies of Emotion, I am investigating the commodification of emotions through the lens of social choreography. By focusing on emotions of love and fear I am examining how they are choreographed and what are the processes that lie underneath this social choreography. My aim is to assert choreography as a tool for mirroring and reflecting on social changes of our affective realm.
Can social choreography be a tool for re-inventing our affective-intimate sphere? How can choreography be an agent in rendering transparent various systems of control that invisibly organize our subjectivities and choreograph our lives? I want to make these questions visible as staged social choreographies in the research which frames a place of social gathering for observation. The choreographic investigation of these questions steps into the fields of psychology, sociology, and technology, as it observes emotions as social-cultural practices and reflects on their recent embeddedness in technology. The research is devised as an accumulative layering of theoretical reflection /deconstruction, affective embodiment, social gatherings, and performative staging which articulate methodologies of appropriation of established social formats in a performative frame.
Dragana Bulut is working with choreography and performance. She regards the theater as a public forum: a place of social gathering for critical investigation of the various structures and intersections of aesthetics, economics, and emotions. By appropriating established formats, she creates performances rooted in the tension between the material and the immaterial realms, between tangibility and affect, to explore the space between reality and fiction. These social choreographies bring to light the, often, overlooked shifting processes that choreograph our behaviors as a society. Her work has been presented in various contexts (including: HAU Hebbel am Uffer Berlin, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Tanzquartier Vienna, InTransit festival Berlin, Pact Zollverein Essen, Museum Folkwang Essen, Sophiensaele Berlin, euro-scene Leipzig, Akademie Schloss Solitude etc.)
In my presentation at ARF, I will reflect on the previous phase of work as well and challenges of the research while giving an overview of my findings and results. I will also use the opportunity of encounter with the forum audience to offer the experience of some of the performative – staging methodologies I have been working with.