This accessible page is a derivative of https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2951879/3006979 which it is meant to support and not replace.
Video description: Animal exercise extended is one and a half minute video, narrated by the author, describing an exercise for students exploring animal movements, names and name sounds
[Text on screen: Animal Exercise:
- Choose an animal
- Take a position of this animal
- Try to feel the physical possibilities
- Imagine a context (fear, anger, play, etc.)
- Explore different actions/sounds]
Transcription of the audio from the video:
‘The Animal exercise on its own can help students explore their physicality in new and fun ways. However, I was also interested in extending it to also search with students for new ways of developing and playing with vocal and physical material. I started with a separate exercise. First, we chose a simple movement of daily life. [rolling up cuffs of pants] Then it had to be amplified in some way to develop a short choreographic phrase. [a small choreography integrating the cuff rolling] Also using students’ different languages, I asked them to become an animal of a chosen colour. [a picture of a porcupine with a red background] I then asked them to select 3 non-consecutive syllables of their ‘coloured animal’ and use that as their animal’s sound. Finally, I asked them to physically imitate their animal, make their sound, and — given the possibilities of their animal — try to do the movement they had previously developed.’ [student seen and heard (making sounds) trying to roll up the cuffs of her trousers as a red porcupine]
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2951879/3006979#tool-3759176 to watch the video.
Walker discusses her models in relation to several sorts of agency [1] (professional/career, creative, personal, etc.) and how these can establish a virtuous circle. As she describes, ‘the more pronounced the creative and personal agency, the more acute the phenomenological [2] awareness of embodiment became. This suggests that the trajectory towards embodiment was linked with the process towards agency, in which autonomy led to authority, resulting in increased agency’ (2015: 119). As with her Pro-Create Cycle (where she identified the ‘missing link’ of ‘financial/critical evaluation’), Walker’s Embodiment Cycle highlights the importance, indeed necessity, of ‘Embodiment’ not only in the cycle towards personal, creative, and authorial agency but also in the production of identity itself (‘creative “voice”’).
Image description: A diagram with text showing Walker’s Embodiment Cycle 2 — like the two cycles on an earlier page, these include single-headed arrows pointing between four ‘stops’ moving in a clockwise direction.
Click on https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2951879/3006979#tool-3007919 to see the diagram.
So how do these observations relate to my tomatoes, zucchinis, and cucumbers? In ‘The Iterative Cyclic Web’ (Fig.), Smith and Dean mention a variety of ‘outputs’ — archivable results produced in both artistic and academic contexts — that can emerge from practice-led research, research-led practice, and academic research (2009: 20). Performances, recordings, scores, interviews, blog and other social media posts, grant applications, lectures, articles, books, PhD theses — these are just some of the outputs by which we map our careers (if artistic biographies and academic CVs are any indications).
Unlike Walker, my primary interests in this exposition are neither these outputs nor the specific processes that lead to them. However, this is not to say that such processes and outputs are not important; indeed, they are vitally important given the expectations of our product-driven artistic and academic industries. Rather, I am curious about how these outputs can be understood more complexly, as things emerging from multiple and intersecting artistic and research practices. In this way, one can envision each output mirroring the life cycle of an annual plant: a seed is sown and begins to germinate and grow; the plant is nurtured; the plant bears fruit, which generates new seeds; the plant’s life ends and the cycle can begin again. The metaphor of the ‘annual cycle’ is particularly apt for those performing arts productions that have extensive tours, given that most annual plants produce several fruits in a season. Even if always subtly different, annual cycles produce outputs that are understood, familiar, and have a clearly defined lifespan. Also, each output is limited by the capacities of the plant variety itself — that is, each plant’s (production’s) potential is restricted to what it can do in the span of one growing (artistic) season.
The reception and (self-)perception of so-called ‘outputs' are often central to how… [next page: Reflection]
[1] ‘Agency’ refers to one’s capacity to act. It is related to ‘autonomy’, which refers to one’s freedom to make choices, but agency goes a step further to describe also the ability to influence the outcome of one’s choices. ↩︎
[2] Phenomenological research focuses on understanding things through the lived experience of individuals. Its methods therefore concentrate more on subjective interpretations than objective observation. ↩︎