Project proposal was based on the idea of enacting two alternate temporalities in public space:

1. Glenn A. Albrecht’s Symbiocene
2. Donna Haraway’s Chthulucene.

Entering the program with a contemporary dance background, and experience of living on a small, hyper-developing island.

Solo experiments in dancing new materialist concepts with-in peri-urban sites, involving:

• practices to tune attention to body and matter
• application of different lenses for corporeal and material engagement with the site ("corpo-material engagement").

This was influenced strongly by the artistic research of Gansterer et al., (2017) and Hunter (2021).

During the second assessment, I was posed the question of what space and place mean in this research. This triggered some digging, until I came across the work of screendance practitioner and academic Melanie Kloetzel, who presented a book chapter: “Site-specific dance in a corporate landscape: Space, Place, and Non-Place” which discusses the work of Marc Augé amongst other spatial theorists (Kloetzel, 2015). This article brought insight into the different meanings of space and place, inspired an artistic experiment which linked materialist diffraction with Augé’s perspectives on “anthropological place” and “non-place”.

With a more precise focus on diffraction as a theoretical and artistic device, I chose to narrow the focus on materialist theory to the Baradian strand which addresses diffraction most explicitly. Studying Barad’s fem-inal* paper: “Posthuman Performativity: Towards an Understanding of How Matter comes to Matter”, brought a deeper understanding of the underlying concepts from quantum theory, the notion of material-discursive practices, and the performativity of bodies in the materialist sense (Barad, 2003).

* The neologism “fem-inal” is often used to replace the term “semin-al” in feminist new materialist writings to “trouble masculine citation practices and genealogies” (Ringrose et al., 2020, p.2).

Experiments in Visiting - a response to Hannah Arendt and Donna Haraway’s provocation: “to go visiting” as an act of responsibility (Haraway 2016, p.127).

This experiment linked Karen Barad’s “agential realism” (Barad 2003), Deleuze & Guattari’s “lines of flight” (Hunter 2021, p.109), andDonna Haraway’s “tentacular thinking” (Haraway, 2016) - all concepts which weave through new materialism.

This attempt to link concepts with practice brought crucial insight around the value of studying a space through the body, developing sensitive, sensible, and embodied knowledge of a site as a means to shifting relata within it. 

This process was facilitated by the text and scores published by Hunter (2021).

Co-creation experiments with visual artist Abigail Agius, who uses drawing as a main medium, and textile as a secondary medium. Experiments explored ways of materialising body-site entanglements. 

These investigations produced: 

• a loose framework for sited dance practice sessions
• multiple material outcomes, including drawings, maps, images, scores, video documentation.

The material was exhibited as a multimedia installation in a public art gallery entitled place matter(s).

(after Barad) Posthuman Performativity of Place: Towards an Understanding of how Place comes to Matter, using a diffractive methodological approach. 

A key element of this experiment was the complexification of the idea of co-creation, allowing for the living and nonliving, human and more-than-human agents to perform together and co-create the screendance material. Place, as a form of public space, is viewed as an active agent in this process. Co-creation emerges through intra-activity with the components of the place. Matter and meaning of place are shifted through the material-discursive practices enacted by all the bodies in the place. Place comes to matter through human and more-than-human agency alike.

Experiments were always conducted in the constellation: performer - videographer - researcher/director - place.

3 experiments were conducted for a BOK assignment, after which another 4 ensued. In total, the experiments involved 8 different performers and 7 different sites.

This research has evoked a number of paradigm shifts in my artistic practice. Engaging in posthumanist research through the human body means, to me, questioning the boundaries of the human. I am asking: How might we come to understand the human body in a posthuman way? How to reconceive the human body as a “posthuman body”? How to perceive the posthuman body in relation to a public site?  Performing in public space no longer means interaction with sites, it means intra-acting with all different agents within the site, co-creating performance through immanence, emergence, responsiveness. Furthermore, within these intra-actions, there is room for choice, and within this choice there is responsibility and power. I now read public spaces as scapes of power and agency, complex layers of affordances, will, power, and creativity - a realm of multispecies, multimaterial potential. Whether it is an urban, peri-urban, political, institutional, un-developed site, “the future is radically open at every turn” (Barad, 2003).

New Materialism as a grounding for philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics of this research. 

The turn away from the linguistic to the material ties in with embodied perspectives of dance and choreography.

Due to restrictions of access, the live performance component of the place matter(s) installation could not take place. In response to this, the research shifted towards screendance performance, ushering my practice into a new realm. 

A few preliminary screendance clips were filmed before bootcamp 2. Feedback was then applied to develop Prototype 2.

The feedback supported the development of screendance practice which addresses posthuman perspectives of these landscapes. These posthuman perspectives were also ethico-onto-epistemo-logically materialist and feminist. 

This was a point where I chose to limit my focus to materialist theory that engages with the notion of the body. “Transcorporeality” by Stacey Alaimo (2010), and the entry for “Body” in the New Materialism almanac (Rogowska-Stangret, 2017) were main influences, alongside which Haraway’s concept of the cyborgian body (Haraway, 1985) began to connect more through the use of the camera and digital platforms.

Through this focus, Salzer’s proposition of the “somatic camera” emerged as a useful concept and methodological approach (Salzer, 2019). Being a screendance practitioner with a focus on landscapes, Salzer’s research and practice held strong resonances with this work. This was facilitated by the development of our relationship as artistic collaborators, where Salzer invited me on board a screendance film project in Malta as a performer and artistic consultant.

The final steps of this research have involved reflections and editing of the footage:

• somatic editing with videographer to present clips for the micro-symposium and graduation showcase
• simple editing for this assignment and the assessment presentation, using dramaturgical, choreographic, narrative devices.

Alaimo, S. (2010). Bodily Natures, Sciences, Environment, and the Material Self. Indiana University Press.

Albrecht, G. A. (2015, December 17). Exiting The Anthropocene and Entering The Symbiocene. | Psychoterratica. Glenn A Albrecht. Retrieved June 9, 2022, from https://glennaalbrecht.wordpress.com/2015/12/17/exiting-the-anthropocene-and-entering-the-symbiocene/

Arlander, A. (2012). Performing Landscape - Notes on Site-specific Work and Artistic Research (Texts 2001-2011). Theatre Academy Helsinki, Performing Arts Research Centre.

Barad, K. (n.d.). Posthuman Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter comes to Matter. Signs, 28(3), 801-831. JSTOR. https://doi.org/10.1086/345321

Braidotti, R. (2018, May 4). A Theoretical Framework for the Critical Posthumanities. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(6), 31-61. 10.1177/0263276418771486

Cocker, E., Greil, M., & Gansterer, N. (Eds.). (2017). Choreo-graphic Figures: Deviations from the Line (M. Greil, Trans.). De Gruyter.

Gibson, J. J. (1962, November). Observations on Active Touch. Psychological Review, 69(6), 477-491. https://blogs.iad.zhdk.ch/embodied-interaction-advanced-hs11/files/2011/11/gibson-1962-observations-on-active-touch.pdf

Haddad, O. (2016). MAKE MY SKIN. Embodimenta. Retrieved June 9, 2022, from https://www.embodimenta.com/portfolio/make-my-skin/

Haraway, D. (1985). A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminist in the 19802. University of Michigan.

Haraway, D. J. (2016). Tentacular Thinking: Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Chthulucene. In Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (pp. 30-57). Duke University Press.

Hunter, V. (2021). Site, Dance and Body: Movement, Materials and Corporeal Engagement. Springer International Publishing. 10.1007/978-3-030-64800-8

Kloetzel, M. (2015). Site-specific dance in a corporate landscape: Space, place, and non-place. In V. Hunter (Ed.), Moving Sites: Investigating Site-specific Dance Performance (pp. 239-254). Routledge.

Kramer, P. (2015, May). Dancing Materiality: A Study of Agency and Confederations in Contemporary Outdoor Practices [Unpublished PhD Thesis]. https://curve.coventry.ac.uk/open/file/95453abd-9ad9-4154-bd46-7affd402bba7/1/Kramer%202015.pdf

Ringrose, J., Warfield, K., & Zarabadi, S. (2020). Introducing Feminist Posthumanisms/New Materialisms Educational Research: Response-able Theory-Practice- Methodology. Feminist Posthumanisms, New Materialisms and Education, 1-15. academia.edu. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351186674-1

Rogowska-Stangret, M. (2017, July 21). Body. New Materialism. Retrieved June 9, 2022, from https://newmaterialism.eu/almanac/body/body.html

Salzer, H. (2019). Wanderlust in Screendance: The body in landscapes [PhD Thesis]. heikesalzer.wixsite.com. Retrieved January 12, 2022, from https://heikesalzer.wixsite.com/salts/research

Tsing, A. L., Gan, E., Swanson, H. A., & Bubandt, N. (Eds.). (2017). Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts of the Anthropocene. University of Minnesota Press.

Tuin, I. v. d., & Verhoeff, N. (2022). Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

 Experiments in Framing: Body, Material, and (Land)scape… at the same time.

The macro wide-angle lens became a crucial tool to capture a more-than-human gaze on this political site. It also became an agential device, where the choices involved in framing different perspectives was an act of agency in and of itself.

The work of anthropologist and dancer Oriana Haddad held many parallels with the research at this point, particularly her project “Make My Skin” (Haddad, 2016). Haddad speaks of setting the body “out of place”, out of the ordinary daily practices of urban spaces, to re-place the body through a different lens. The images of her body in various urban landscapes brought rich insight into possible aesthetic trajectories. Haddad's images inspired me to dedicate some time to studying image framing, and thus I conducted an experiment in photographic framing within a busy urban landscape with multidisciplinary artist Laura Besançon.

Paula Kramer’s PhD research, “Dancing Materiality” mentioned a process of embodied emplacement, establishing a sense of place through embodied practices (Kramer, 2015). This brought a reconceptualization of my dance practice by grounding it in relation to the concept of place.

Practitioner, academic, and researcher Annette Arlander, also presented artistic and textual material that resonate with this work. In her publication “Performing Landscape - Notes on Site-specific work and artistic research” (2012), Arlander gathers and reflects on her body of work performing landscapes. The chapter on “Landscape as View - Painting, Video Image and Tourism” (p.137) was particularly insightful in relation to the images I was working with, and the context of Malta as a touristic island.

• developing technical skills for filming and editing
• deeper experimentation into embodied emplacement processes, also as live performance 
• further research into posthuman perspectives of public space, possibly across wider disciplines

The Symbiocene idea was eliminated, while the Chthulucene favoured for its premise of “staying with the trouble” (Haraway, 2016). This held stronger resonances for addressing Anthropocene complexities.

Tuning attention to body and matter as a practice of deepening awareness of body-site relations, and the possibitilies within these relations.

The application of different lenses involved on-site artistic dialogue with theoretical concepts:

• acoustic mapping
• tentacular visual journeys
• walking + breathing
• responding to details, micro-movements, gradients, patterns, in-betweens, atmospheric conditions, actions of other agents.

These investigations held strong ethical implications. Being open to and curious about intra-actions in the site had the potential to bring “heightened states of empathetic attunement, radical receptivity with shared spontaneity, even the arising of communitas” (Gansterer et al. 2017, p.134). Furthermore, “the practices of attention support a radical aesthetics, an unmediated (re)connection between body and surroundings [...] Their radical potential is one of re-orientation and re-alignment”(Gansterer et al. 2017, p.134). Giving attention to overwise overlooked details of a site was a choice to interrupt the regular socio-spatial practices with practices based in feminist ethics. Enacting these practices alone in this space, as an individual woman behaving differently to the norm, was a choice to expose myself to scrutiny and questioning.

The magnification of the lens invited a slowing down of body movement. Video material was captured at a high rate to allow the possibility of playing it back in slow motion. This slowing down was an aesthetic choice to allow viewers time to absorb the details of the shots, though it was also an act of resistance against the dominating high-speed capitalist rhythms of the site.

The notion of “-scape” emerged as a more fertile term than landscapes, through Verhoeff & van der Tuin’s recent publication “Critical Concepts for the Creative Humanities” (Tuin & Verhoeff, 2022). The elimination of the prefix land- allowed for the definition characteristic of the -scape to be left open to discovery and agency. 

The materialist concept of diffraction became a crucial conceptual, methodological, and ethical device. Choosing difference over sameness, it conceptually drives epistemological processes away from the normative, it methodologically ensures that processes evolve, and ethically it builds on heterogeneity of bodies and matters. A key prompt to emerge from diffraction was “cracks”, “where are the cracks?”, “how to enter the cracks and move through them” - I would use this in my own processes of reading and writing, and while directing collaborators through the screendance performance processes. 

In line with the optic aspect of diffraction, the macro wide-angle lens brought a prismic perspective on the scape which is distinctively different to that of the human eye. 

The lens also demanded close proximity between the camera and performer (1cm-1m). This more intimate constellation was less threatening to the security forces in the space, and to the passers-by. 

The sensitivity of the lens exposed the agency of sun, wind, weather, dust... wherein we were unable to film in the bright hours of sunlight due to high exposure. This sensitivity carried on and opened up into the next stages of research.

Motivated by a strong will to explore non-anthropocentric dance practices in public space, as a means to building a sense of belonging in places that are difficult to belong to.

Diffraction, taken on as conceptual focus, methodological and ethical approach, brought a more palpable link between materialist theory and screendance practice in this research.

This shift towards screendance supported investigation of landscape aesthetics. It was easier to present audiences with a precise perspective and visual frame on screen, than to create it during live performances. The challenge of (non-anthropocentrically) framing corpo-material engagement practices within  landscapes then emerged. 

Meanwhile, the concept of landscape began to diverge from the research trajectory. My embodied experience of moving with-in Castille Place related not only to the visible, material land and architecture, but also to the less visible, more haunted layers of the site, composed of memories, stories, and experiences from the past, sensorial and affective perception within the present. In response to this, I searched for a term other than “landscape” that could include this ineffable complexity while retaining its accessibility.

I applied Alaimo’s “transcorporeality” (Alaimo, 2010) conceptually within corpo-material engagement as: exchanging matters through surface of skin, porosity of skin, skin as a boundary, wherein these boundaries are shifted, and matter is re-constituted through intra-actions in public space. Methodologically and aesthetically, the focus on skin brought movements and actions that involved meeting the material components of the space through my skin, sensing it, feeling it, studying its haptic qualities (influenced by Gibson, 1962). I considered my dance practice as an exchange of particles across these surfaces - rubbing, tapping, pressing, stroking, brushing the material components. Traces - picked up and left behind, by my body, by other agents, exhanged, co-constituting matters - became a useful prompt. What unfolded was a movement language of touch.

Through the simple edits, I am working on the development of a series of short screendance stories of embodied emplacement. Focus remains on touch, skin, more-than-human perspectives, landscapes, scale, rhythms, material agency, subversion of rules and powers, non-anthropocentric human tales.

Rosi Braidotti’s “embodied cartography” was employed as a methodological approach and artistic device, developing visual maps of the research site (Braidotti, 2018). 

These experiments were conducted in a peri-urban site (on the border between an urban zone and a rural zone). This form of site was chosen specifically for its liminal qualities - being an in-between space, the rules and codes of practice are ambiguous and more pliable.

Each person drew a map of the site to open the experiment, conducted a short series of attention practices, and re-drew the map with fresh knowledge.

A first phase was conducted in a peri-urban site (different from the first prototype). The second phase within a political site - Castille Place, Valletta. 

The choice to work in a political site was based on the following matters:

1. practicing with-in a prominent, political site vs. a peri-urban site seemed more relevant to everyday practices in Malta, and therefore more relatable to audiences
2. the site has complex layers and histories, and would therefore bring greater complexity to the research, while also tickling the social imaginary of the island by working in a site of iconic status
3. the presence of a collaborator during public space experiments gave me the confidence to explore sites where I will be more exposed, more subject to questioning and scrutiny.
   

Underneath this shift was also a sense of responsibility to go towards “ the trouble” and find ways to stay with it.

These experiments built upon the knowledge derived within Prototype 2. They were designed in a way that allowed for emergence of phenomena on-site and a responsiveness to their emergence, within an established conceptual, methodological and practical framework, which was (in brief):

1. meeting to discuss place
2. meeting in place
3. attention practice (derived from Gansterer et al., 2017)
4. movement practice (derived from Hunter, 2021) 
5. spatial exploration practice (derived from Hunter, 2021)
6. landing practice (derived from Gins & Arakawa in Hunter, 2021, pp.70-71).

Key methodological devices were:

listening to the more-than-human,

attention through body,

attention through camera,

attention through constellations,

agency,

agential cutting, 

response-ability,

co-creation,

cracks, 

rhythms, patterns,

time.

Landing in the (land)scape, the final practice, emerged as the key image and thread running throughout the experiments.

A diffractive approach was applied in between tasks, in post-experimental reflections, and in between experiments.

• different perspectives, angles
• camera movement
• attention to sound

Rather than mentioning the Chthulucene, I chose the more accessible and relatable term “non-anthropocentric practices” to speak about the focal point of the research.

Spinning off from a lecture by Sigrid Merx in bootcamp 3, I followed the thread of “haunted landscapes”, touching in on Anna Tsing’s work once more. In “Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet”, Tsing et al. (2017) refer to “anthropocentric landscapes” and this term finally seemed to communicate the type of landscapes I have been working in. I will not eliminate the conceptual focus of “scape”, though I will sometimes use “anthropocentric landscapes” to communicate the research more directly.

The screendance clips will be shared with audiences in Tilburg and online, and eventually also at a small event in Malta.

They involved two collaborators: one scientist and one dancer, both having an interest in the politics of public space though coming from different perspectives and backgrounds. 

This was the first time other people were involved in the research. 

The experience opened up avenues in many directions which was overwhelming at the time, and made me reconsider inviting others on board at such an early stage.

New materialism was chosen as the foundation of the research, positioning the project within a cutting-edge multi-disciplinary research terrain, with potential to relate through and across, and therefore engage in discourse within various fields.

Required shifting position from dance performer in the traditional sense to dance artist and researcher with-in public space.

Integrating this enhanced layer of spatial theory with the conceptual research frame allowed for a more precise communication of the project within the academic context, as well as in conversation with artistic peers and potential collaborators. With the notion of place, the concepts of emplacement, displacement, and belonging came to the surface, and anchored the theoretical frame in more accessible terms.

This narrowing down also re-connected with the initial point of the research: the crafting of belonging through non-anthropocentric practices.

Performers were given freedom of choice for clothing, whether they preferred to stand out or blend in to the site.

The choice of location was based on conversations with the performer to establish a site where they feel out of place and would like to feel more in place, feel a greater sense of belonging. 

There was a shared experience of awe within the constellation after each experiment, where we noticed beauty in places where we had not noticed it before: the meaning of the place, for us, shifted. 

This personal and subjective experience is not easy to communicate outside of the constellation. The body language of “landing” and being still in the landscape were choices to facilitate embodied communication beyond the constellation.

Working within peri-urban sites posed a challenge of communication. Firstly, the geographical term "peri-urban" is not widely familiar, though more importantly, peri-urban sites were not easily identifiable as a category of public space. The liminal nature of such sites did not support the development of a clear research grounding.

A social media profile was created to communicate to wider audiences through public digital space. The instagram handle @movingandmattering became an important channel of dissemination and connection to peers and followers. It sparked interest and intrigue in this research project and in public space discourse within my local context.

The visual outcomes of this research came to the fore through these experiments. My sited dance practice developed into a series of moving images or vignettes. My bodily relationship with the materiality of the site expanded to include a prominent layer of visual awareness, a perpetual visual framing of my body in relation to the space. 

This is where the notion of landscapes started to emerge as the category of public space in this research. 

A public workshop was held alongside the installation to open up the process to a wider audience. The participants were a mix of academics, artists, and people with an interest in the research. Leading others, besides Abigail and myself, through corpo-material engagement processes was an important step in understanding my style of communication. It emerged that my tendency was towards more abstract and conceptual prompts, leaving space for more poetic and less complex language.

At this point, a main concern was how to communicate the work beyond my local context. Feedback from peers, coaches, and experts in bootcamp 2 pushed towards abstraction as a vehicle for wider communication. On presenting some short screendance clips, suggestions were given to play with scale, and also to avoid revealing the whole body in the landscape, presenting less recognisable body parts instead.

The suggestion to play with scale triggered images of subversion: subversion of the patriarchal, monolithic domination of Castille Place by a woman practicing feminist politics and aesthetics, accentuated by the language of touch. This shift of scale and perspective beyond normative practices and power dynamics called for different tools that could capture these subversions: this is where the macro wide-angle camera lens came in.

Slowing down the playback exposed the richness of the performing public space around the performer. The camera lens, although focused on the performer’s body, also highlighted vernacular socio-spatial practices of other agents in the site. This echoed Arlander’s idea that the human body can function as a “conduit” rather than an “impediment” to a landscape (Arlander 2012, p.137). The framing of the landscape in a fairly traditional sense and the consistent presence of the human body within the landscape were choices made to facilitate communication to audiences through the visual social imaginary and embodied cognition.

Images framing the full body, an iconic political building, and the national flag brought across a subversion of political power, while images of body parts scaled to outsize buildings and monuments highlighted posthuman perspectives of the site.

There was a positive response to the footage and imagery in the local context, though the images remained less significant to viewers unfamiliar with the context.

Following on the aesthetics used by Haddad, clothing was chosen to reflect the place, communicating stronger subversion of power when the body in the “neoliberal capitalist uniform” is positioned within the site in unexpected and unfamiliar ways.

Through this experiment sequence, and the experience of the public workshop, I felt it was time to open up the process to other performers and collaborators, to bring in different perspectives and sites, and explore different power subversions.

To initiate this next step, I hosted a workshop with 9 potential collaborators. The purpose was twofold: for them to try out some exercises in moving with-in public space, and for me to get an idea of how we might be able to work together.

• exploring sites outside of Malta
• facilitating workshops for different groups of people
• writing articles about research.