HOW DOES ZOË LIVE IN THE WORLD?
Thank goodness for the company of great feminists in lockdowns. Rosi Braidotti, Donna Harraway, Karen Barad, and Jane Bennett, have been wise guides in the making of Zoë, their distinguished thinking across posthuman potentials has affected the trajectory of my passions and attentions. For the sake of flow I am departing from my footnotes bibliography for just a moment. My embodied brain (Braidotti) dislikes neat categories and essentialist lines of connection, preferring the quantum concept of entanglement (Barad), and tentacularity (Haraway) along with the vitality of matter. (Bennett). Intersecting, diffractive, embodied and affective research have contributed to the emergent materiality that is Zoë. A shout out too, to Teresa Brennan and Kathleen Stewart whose very different approaches to understanding affective transmissions informed and delighted my journey.
The articulation of discreet ideas is necessary in the written form (unlike my performance practice) it feels like a betrayal of the entanglements that are in the work and its making but I will give it my best shot. Furthermore, against my better judgement, but true to my life long mission, I denounce Neo Darwinism and Neoliberalism as structures that require radical contestation due to their detrimental affects on art, community and the planet. I fear all this is wildly ambitious for this little old acrobat! But acrobats stand on the shoulders of more than one at a time, and they enjoy risky endeavours.
Acrobatics (from Ancient Greek ἀκροβατέω, akrobateo, “walk on tiptoe, strut”)
Affect: amused, as my posture changes while sitting on my chair.
Peppered throughout this document are a series of affects in purple, that give credit to ‘feeling states’ as essential sources of decision making and inspiration, along with a series of political asides rendered in orange. This lively approach loosens the singular authority of the text, incorporating my conceptual analysis with my emergent responses.
My intelligence resides in my body, it is my teacher, the container of my lived experiences and my artistic expression. There is a long history in my body that has been trained to affect others, beginning as a gymnast receiving a score and evolving into an arts practice that invests in embodied cognition to create evocative, inspiring and/or troubling art in a range of genres. I am compelled to move, I think through doing and create acts of performance that ‘do’ something rather than describe something, it is the doing, both in the making of, and the performing (sharing with) that offers the potential for change.[1]
‘We’ (AGC) devise performance in response to the world around us, to our immediate relationships with each other and to the many relational aspects of our lives, exploring the entangled associations that feed into the making of our work. We are philosophically posthumanist. Often we are more comfortable with our affective transmissions than our analytical efforts. I am thinking with feminist philosopher and psychoanalytic theorist Teresa Brennan here;
“By the transmission of affect, I mean simply that the emotions or affects of one person, and the enhancing or depressing energies these affects entail, can enter into another”[2]
It is the doing together, at times literally (in the same place on the same task) at other times with our differentiated practices followed by viewings and listenings, that afford shared affects and in turn shared meanings. I propose that, this sharing of affects, creates the authentic culture of this group at this time, making this thing. Devising allows for multiple threads of simultaneous development it is relational and remains contingent, each artists’ offer is in constant transaction, requiring an ‘evenly hovering’ attention.[3] I consider this group devising process to be both a creative and a political act. It is a refusal of the artist as individual genius, and of linear production systems, it embraces complexity and community as Braidotti says,
“. . .we do need a people, a community and an assemblage: we – this complex multiplicity – cannot survive or act alone”[4]
Aside: I leave the ‘visions’ to men as they are closer to God aren’t they?
We have been in a part-time process for over a year, slowly building a live performance as we simultaneously cultivate the conditions for conceptual and corporeal conversations. Between lockdowns we are a thriving community of beautifully uncertain artists sharing interdisciplinary responses to discover how Zoë might exist in this world and what might sustain her. I cannot sustain the vimeo subscription, password Debirisbatt
I am thrilled by Jane Bennett’s explanation of collaboration and contestation between bodies (human and non-human), and I need to share it here
“It is one vortical process . . . . . . first a “fall” or conative impulse of matter-energy then an aleatory swerve that produces crash encounters between protean bits, then a stage of confused turbulence, then a congealment or crystallization of matter into bodies, then a decay, decline, and dissemination of the form. And finally: a new fall, a fresh swerve a different configuration of turbulent forces, another set of formations, a different rate and sequence of decay and decline. . . . and the sequence of stages repeats but each time with slight differences”[5]
thanks Alex (see relations)
Affect: happy dance,
I want to spin in circles until I am so dizzy I fall,
Then, stand while the room is circling around me,
I feel like I am still moving although I am standing still,
as I take a step, my body is not stable, perhaps it no longer belongs to me?
Zoe falls, she spirals, she is a table whirling dangerously that lands unpredictably, there – a new offer – a what next? She is in turmoil with misunderstandings, mistakes and missed moments looming large. She decays, she slips and slides, she manifests as concrete action, acrobatic trick and as spoken text. She reconfigures as sound-file and watery projections support her. She carries and supports, she tumbles and lands. She doesn’t know which way to go.
The practice of collaboration generates problems and solutions in joyous energetic exchange.
When artist Clara Mee Yee Chan offered her ‘symbionts’ as an alternative way to think about costumes we appreciated her proposition.
Affect: we are silent (rare for us) and wide eyed,
as we feel the potential and the complications of this idea,
we let go, we fall, we are vulnerable.
This generous offer shifts us, (we had been working with futuristic angels as a design idea although none of us could satisfactorily articulate what these angels were). As Bolt understands only too well,
“In the creative arts . . .it is these ‘misfires’ that become the source of innovation and movement. This is the ‘stuff’ of research.”[6]
This crash of encounters with the symbionts generates new actions, and discharges new analysis.
The Symbionts are Zoë, hybrid creatures, they are a contribution to and a joining with Haraway’s Speculative Fabulations;
“Camille Stories are invitations to participate in a kind of genre-fiction committed to strengthening ways to propose near futures, possible futures, and implausible but real nows.”[7]
Clara’s symbionts integrate soft sculptures with the costume, they will play havoc with the physical language of acrobatics – Isn’t this the point? To be changed by our imagined relationships with the non-human, and to relinquish or at least adapt “our” dominant language?
Affect: playing havoc calls new actions in.
I am making new connections with Haraway’s sympoiesis and our dominant movement language – “acrobatics” – is a making with, as we render each other capable.[8] I have decided that “symcrobatics” might be a more apt name for this language we create bodily, with all of our collaborators – the humans, non-humans (on and inside us), the atmospheres and objects we encounter, and the embedded tradition(s) of acrobatics we embody.
Affect: unsure about “Symcrobatic”
Is it bold or stupid?
A risky feeling, I’ll just try it on for now, see if it fits.
We request a prototype of the head pieces as soon as possible in order to physically work with, and discover the new movement vocabularies they produce. Meanwhile, we imagine inviting the nest, mushroom and cloud to the table, they become our imaginary ‘companion species’.[9]
The table is a traditional circus apparatus, it is a territory with a language that includes tumbling, table sliding, and slapstick, historically a male act, we are de-territorialising[10] this circus act to interrogate the table as a meeting place, we are Zoe, we are the world, we are three women meeting or presenting as the world, maybe both? we are reworlding[11]. Perhaps this is a ridiculous notion. Daily we explore what the table affords us, there are opportunities and hindrances and both produce responses.[12] The table has domestic and corporate connotations; it is also surface, shelter, bridge, platform, obstacle, ledge, wall, cliff and more. We invite all of our collaborators to the table too, sound files, images for projection and dramaturgical provocations, we are open to disruption and flow.
Affect: the table generates a physical vocabulary,
a projection surface a sounding board and a habitat,
sometimes it is just in the way.
We are fortunate to have Sharon’s (see relations) home – a converted warehouse – with it’s open space as our creative studio, we share this space with her children and two dogs. We have a renewed appreciation for the entanglement of bodies that is acrobatics, we are tactile beings, and without each other’s bodies this language doesn’t exist. We are affected by, and, we integrate the quality of the dogs as they respond to our movement; running excitedly, barking at us, suspended in stillness, waiting, who will throw the ball? one scene is now called ‘DOG’
Affect: we feel dogish, Sharon feels very at home.
Clara delivers our headpieces for trials. We devise new sequences while wearing these soft sculptures that limit our peripheral vision and offer new bodily approaches, we improvise with the table, allowing our partial symbionts to alter our movement choices. We are tiptoeing, these costumes require some caution, Spenser (see relations) is concerned we look childish; perhaps if the bright red mushroom is a darker colour?
Affect: send in the clowns.
Zoë trips over her own snail-foot, she is blinded by clouds, she is dog, she is microbiome, she is a mushroom calling the extinction race while standing on her head. (see support material)
Zoë listens, she looks, she senses the affects of her doings, she reconfigures with surfaces, gesture, somersault and spoken words, it’s a lively balancing act of affective, embodied and embedded entities human and non-human,[13] or as Bennett tells us we,
“Give up the futile attempt to disentangle the human from the non human” because “All forces and flows (materialities) are or can become lively affective signalling.”[14]
During our warm-up,[15] we discuss the lack of response to our urgent environmental issues and the slow progress of feminism due to the gatekeepers – (the patriarchy and advanced capitalism). I throw my hands in the air, I’m tired, I theatrically resign. My fatigue becomes a physical improvisation, it is with, on, and around the table, it seeks the edge, the fall, decline and decay. It seeks death. I attempt to pack up the table alone. It is too big for me, it creates frustration, I devolve, the table resists my blows kicks and throws. I am exhausted, I resign again, my collaborators are enthralled, a little scared, engaged.
Affect: passions seek actions and expressions.
A little bit dangerous is exciting.
Zoë is in Lockdown again, bom bohm.
We work from home and online, as, like many others, we respond to the covid-19 conditions aptly expressed in the Journal of Public Space recently,
“The experience of the virus has focused our view firmly on public space . . On the one hand, as we looked out of windows over empty streets and on the other, as we ‘met’ through the vastly increased digital public space.”[16]
Along with most of Victoria, we are connecting via zoom, hopeful it would be for a short time and we could be back on the floor together soon, bom bohm!
Aside: Zoom stocks have had a rapid rise in value
At first, we consider what we have done and the meaning these doings have produced. We make running orders and discuss changes. . .
We sense the need to re-integrate the white shirts from our original photo shoot, (see poster image with the symbionts.) The shirts reference the power of humans as businesses and corporations, with this reference we implicate our own responsibility for this world, in what we do and don’t do. Haraway speaks to this,
“Response-ability is about both absence and presence, killing and nurturing, living and dying – . . .” [17]
While Alaimo merges materiality and politics,
“Material feminists emphasise the strange agencies of bodies, places and substances as well as the economic political forces that enable or prevent us from understanding these agencies.”[18]
Aside: We have been directors, committee members and associates.
We recognise power imbalances as they play into governance structures
and align with neoliberal funding models.
Affect: Crashing encounters.
Clara re-designs, and makes these new costumes. But we cannot try them on. We must wait as the delta variant takes off and fear spreads, lockdown will remain for some time yet!
Affect: Falling again, turmoil.
Zoe is in danger, she needs adaptation, she needs variation, disillusion, diffusion or dissemination!
I bring back my writing and my digital arts practice, echos of Balcony Dances, shadows of Thresholds Pieces (see background to the background.) Zoe affirms she plays with text, video, animation and green screen.
She has forbearance for my critical lack of technical prowess, she sees my digital aptitude differently, she shares my clownish traits. Zoe and I are under-produced but my peers and professors say we belong to a community of practice that celebrates the home-made. We are handcrafted and daggy but they think we are humorous and engaging, I am secretly delighted and Zoe is happy too.
Perhaps philosopher and political theorist Jane Bennett is right, . . .
“to speak with vibrant matter requires ‘clownish traits.”[19]
Affect: send in the clowns.
My colleagues and I reconvene with Zoe.
I share a video I have made during the lockdown. It is an experiment with repurposing a rehearsal video while experimenting with opacity producing an evocative relationship between the movement, the table and the soft sculptures we wear on our heads. The technical magic of ‘opacity’ in imovie, enhances meaning, it offers a suggestion toward the use of projection and toward the choreography when we return.
‘We are not the same’ [20]
video password: Debirisbatt
Affect: another Debra (peer) feels the weight of the world.
How some will find a gap and make their way while others will spin and fall off.
How we act has a profound effect on everything and everyone
It made me feel intrigued and then anxious,
I wanted to help hold things up and be a part of the structures to support the characters.
Creative Provocations
Alexandra Harrison (see relations) initiates creative provocations responding to our ongoing research as we attempt to keep Zoë close. We encourage playful experiments in any form to be shared at weekly meetings. Responses include movement sequences, writings, photos, videos, drawings, and a painting. Here are four.
ROAR
What is Zoë’s ROAR? [21]
My response:
I rework a scene from the rehearsals, this is a text that is spoken while we move around the space seeking something unknown. I assemble the text (acronyms) as a visual image, record them with voice memo, try out an animation application and record against a green screen while animating the snail Clara has made. (video password Debirisbatt)
Affect:(thanks again Deb) is “Overwhelmed.
The constant stream of things that need our attention and our action that is so much we do nothing.
The poor snail explodes under the pressure,
no longer able to cope in a world that is paced beyond capacity.”
GASP
What is the opposite to a Roar?
Spenser’s response:
Gasp!
It’s part of my repertoire.
See a thing falling off the table.
Watching someone miss a trick.
Hearing about a broken leg.
A hand in the dark.
Or the fist touch of the ocean in winter.
I have no control over it.
It makes the not so bad feel worse for those that hear it.
It is full of worry, concern, uneasiness and trepidation.
But it’s a default setting of mine.
It’s not in everyone
I swallow them up
Pulling all the in-action or inability to change a situation deep inside myself
Like if I pull it in fast enough, I will change the course of the next few seconds
Or ease some of the pain.
Erase all memory
It’s a life saving action.
If I don’t do it the terror will stop my heart.
A short sharp intake of breath saves me.
And the world around me ticks on.
It’s firmly part of me.
A full body reaction that only supports my own nervous system.
Like a yawn bringing a breath of wakefulness
A human vacuum cleaning up Fright, anxiety and fear.
SHIMMER
“It is a process of encounter and transformation, not absorption, in which different ways of being and doing find interesting things to do together.”[22]
Sharon’s response:
FATIGUE
“Caught between stasis and expectation, we could surrender to despair, or take our chances and reinvent ourselves. Exhaustion can become affirmative. [23]
My response: ‘I’m resigning’ assembles recorded text, (thanks Naima) with green screen experimentation thanks Gina and video footage sourced from Studio 1 and 2. (see background to the background)
video password: Debirisbatt
Filmed /editor/text Debra Batton, voices Debra Batton, Sharon Gruenert, Spenser Inwood, sound arranged by Naima Fine, Set design Debra Batton from studio 2 Running on Rocks, (see background to the background)
Affect: hyperstimulating, its too much, its difficult, overwhelming,
A desire for tension release but glad you didn’t
(responses from peers and professors to this video)
I am surprised by these responses.
Aside: this text was written when we first went into lockdown 6, it was re assembled with the video I made later, as an experiment with green screen when we were given access to building 50 at RMIT
I’m Resigning
My arguments are in order,
How many species?
Even the most contentious agree that a retroactive truth is not enough
How many degrees?
Humiliating procedures, clear standards and mournful manifestos
There are always extenuating circumstances
How many brands?
I dissent differently
To be discreet
Between revolution and extinction
A petition, a plea, an appeal
How many refugees?
To slip away quietly
A scarcely noticed showdown
An inherited martyrdom with reliable procedures
Longevity is prolonged suffering
An impoverished retirement
How many bugs?
Reaching the limits
There are always extenuating circumstances
Everywhere the feral goodness
I give notice
I relinquish
I am not unhappy with my decision
This seems like an end, however ‘I’m resigning’ is the beginning, the opening scene, of course, this chronology too is temporary, as we will soon escape and Zoë will be free to project her multiple meanings and lead us astray once more.
ta dah!
More!
Footnotes
[1] Bolt Barbara. ‘A Performative Paradigm for the Creative Arts?‘, 5 (Working Papers in Art and Design 5).
[2] Brennan, Theresa ‘The Transmission of Affect’ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2004) 3 Accessed July 20, 2021. Proquest Ebook Central created by RMIT on 2021-07-20
[3] Harvie Jen Lavender Andy. Making Contemporary Theatre, International Rehearsal Processes. Manchester Unity Press 2010
[4] Baidotti, Rosi. ‘Posthuman Knowledge’ 18
[5] Bennett ,Jane. Vital Matter A Political Ecology of Things, Duke University Press 2009 119
[6] Bolt A Performative Paradigm for the Creative Arts?’,
[7] Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Duke University Press Durham London 2016) 136
[8] ibid 16
[9] ibid 11
[10] Deleuze and Guatttari Wikipepia In critical theory, deterritorialization is the process by which a social relation of components, a territory, has its current organization and context altered, mutated or destroyed. The components then constitute another new relation, and become reterritorialized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deterritorialization
[11] Haraway Donna, J. Staying with the Trouble Making Kin in the Chthulucene
[12] Ingold, Tim. ‘Back to the Future with the Theory of Affordances’ 2018 FHAU Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 )1/2:39-44 Rejoinder to Keane, Webb. 2018. “Perspectives on affordances, or the anthropologically real.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 8 (1/2): 27–38
[13] Braidotti, Rosi. Posthuman Knowledge
[14] Bennett, Jane. Vital Matter 119
[15] The warm-up is not just about the physical preparation, it is a checking in, offloading if necessary and a time for sharing thoughts and insights, it is a vital part of our collaborative practice and can be 30 minutes or 2 hours!
[16] Bravo, L., McCormick, M., Hillary, F. (2020) Reviewing and Speculating on Public Space Futures through a New Lens, The Journal of Public Space, 5(4), 1-6, DOI 10. 32891/jps. v5i4. 1445
[17] Haraway, Donna J. ‘Staying with the Trouble’ Making Kin in the Chthulucene’ 28
[18] Tracie Alaimo ‘Your Shell on Acid’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNLsvtd_4bE April 11 2014, Center for 21st Century studies University of Texas Arlington viewed on 13th Aug 2021. Anthropocene Feminism Conference Website: http://c21uwm.com/anthropocene
[19] Bennett Jane Vital Matter, referencing Adorno, Theodor. Negative Dialectics. See bibliography
[20] Braidotti. Posthuman Knowledge “This half of her statement We are all in this together but we are not the same”
[21] Braidotti Rosi, “Writing as a Nomadic Subject’ Nomadic Theory” Comparative Critical Studies 11. 2–3 (2014): 163–184
https://rosibraidotti.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Braidotti-Rosi-Writing-as-a-Nomadic-Subject.pdf 106
[22] Bird Rose D Shimmer: When All You Love is Being Trashed. Tsing A, Swanson, H, Gan, E, Bubandt, Nils (ed.), Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet, University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis 2017b G51 https://rmit.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/61RMIT_INST/4t5l5f/cdi_proquest_ebookcentral_EBC4745557
[23] Baidotti, Rosi. ‘Posthuman Knowledge’ p 18
In the Middle of Zoë 