This digital anarchive was developed in reference to my doctoral research undertaken at the University of Roehampton, London. This practice-as-research project explores the concept of bare bodies and how to encounter them in contemporary choreography. My thesis draws on philosophical, bio-political and ethical discourse relevant to my discussion of the emergence of bare bodies in choreographic work, and creates a critical framework for a self-reflexive movement. Narrations of bare bodies emerge in both the written component of a choreographed book, and in the creative component consisting of the live event of a lecture performance inhabiting an anarchive.
This anarchive operates as research repository created and accumulated in the course of my PhD project and documented here in digital form.
Throughout I argue for acknowledging acts of baring and concealing as culturally situated, anchoring my thesis in reflections on performative encounters, unearthing their methodological weight and nanopolitical significance. I explore non-subjective performativity, implying a fluid conception of identity. Furthermore, I introduce the ideations of an-archic responsibility and choreo-ethics for reassessing contact and relation as an ethico-aesthetic project of current choreographic performances. These propositions get probed alongside a shift from spectator to wit(h)ness.
I differentiate and untangle the tones and shades of the triplet naked, nude, and bare, each term referring differently to body and performativity. All in all, the choreographic is conceptualised as a complex field of revelatory experiences built on ecologies of aesthetic perception and realising ethico-political agency.