Embodied Research

This Post is a reflection on the notion of embodied research.
It is in dialogue with follow  PhD student Rebecca Woodfords-Smith.

07/04/11:Practice session 1: Embodied memory

Discussion on different kind of memories ( Thought memory/ felt memory)
Practice session based on collaborative practice of improvisation.

1. Warm-up: emptying mind - attention exercises : Cages ' 4'33 

Negotiation- making observing
Automatic memory : Chance, Newspaper

2. Kinesthetic observation  ( In paris)
responding to partner's movement (at 80%, 50%, 20%) then adding space
3. Kinesthetic Feedback - Physical
4.Drawings

18th of May Session 2

Self and other bodies in the space : connections / breaks / extension between each other / boundaries
Perception: having a sense of each others' timing.

Difference between the terms Time and Timing in dance
Timing: quantifiable, phrasing, compositional components
Time: quality, duration (Bergson), presence - control

The presence of the performer negotiate the ownership of the time with the audience members.
Through memory connecting with the continuity of our duration (the real time for Bergson)
Time is memory is duration is quality.
Kinesthetic time is the pure experience of time (heidegger) - authenticity.
Fascination with time to know our own duration. it is only possible through the use of memory.
Duration is a process of imagination.

 15th of June Session 3
How is embodied memory conveyed to audience members : process/product?
The relationship between memory felt and memory thought?
The unknown potential of the body.
Practical work on sensation:
Improvisational movement (mover/observer)
Difficulty to name a sensation - tendency to go to the emotion. May be need to record images instead?
difficulty to stay with the physicality of the movement.example of sensations:lightness/opening/breath/lift/suspension/hot

29th of June Session 4

Defining Sensations:
How to word sensation? It seems too difficult to put a word on sensation. I felt that sensation were more a process than a product that I could name.
How can we account for that sensation?
Are there different levels of sensation: A primal - basic survival - and one that build-up from that primal?

26th of July
Influenced by one of my reading
Referring to sensations as 'a kind of felt thought.
Yet any ‘language’ of ‘co-speaking’, of giving voice, to emerge from the propositions of the
Vocabulaoratories must also encounter sensation: non-representational, a-syntactic, nonlinear
movements of thought. This kind of felt thought, charged by the chaotic force(s) of the
unthought, can be called a diagrammatic process.

15th of August
Working form the movement we think we are do -
Working as a feedback loop of the movement we imagine the other do -
Ex from MIranda Tufnell book: ''Widening the Field''
1- Imagine yourself dancing for one minute - eyes closed
The image kept changing/ the context kept changing - on the beach, in the studio with my daughter
2 - Same thing but with the hands clasp
Shift of point of observation/ much more connected with the image of myself, with the sensation -
something about touching my hands.

The more we want to connect, the more we need to expand ...