Between control and uncertainty by Marta Wörner Sarabia

"Between control and uncertainty" is a practice-led research that combines the kinetic study of the body as a structure and the implementation of media and expanded choreography tools to de-pattern the conventional relationship between body and space in performative environments. Moreover, on a meta-level, the investigation reflects on the tension between control and uncertainty in the act of research itself. With the firm belief that the body has inherent philosophical and epistemological knowledge which can be activated by experiencing and observing movement, I embraced the challenge to name and contextualize that knowledge. This inquiry started from my fascination for the kinetics of the body and its ability to reorganize itself in comparison with other micro and macro structures that do not move that way, such a, for example, the microstructures of materials like metal, rocks or the macrostructures built by the geography of the city and the Port of Rotterdam. The interdisciplinary research addresses the dichotomy structure-destructure and its application and affections to the body. In this sense, the research proposes a tool for de-patterning the habitual relationship between the body of the performer and the external space and offers to the audience a door for de-patterning their relationship with performative spaces. The research has been framed under the inspirational umbrella of the idea of performing the Deleuzian concept of “becoming”, (deriving from the Latin verb “devenire” which means “coming down, falling in, arriving to”). The physical inquiry is focused on the action of “falling in”, "devenire". The exploration led to an articulated and defined set of physical and interdisciplinary exercises that are the core of the dance practice ‘falling in’. In concordance with the practice, the findings of this research can be seen as ways of controlling and ways of facilitating, allowing, provoking uncertainty within the choreographic practice-led research frame. This research artistically materialized in the performance Falling in. Notes on body space and matter premiered in 2019.

#Body

1. A natural decentralized system in continuous transformation in which every element is independent and connected.

2. Source of knowledge. A container with inherent knowledge which is activated by experiencing and observing movement.

3. A door to freedom.

#Dance

1. A dialogue between resistance and acceptance of gravity or similarly between control and uncertainty.

2. I do not know yet and hope I will never know.

#(to) Dance

1. To actively seek transformation through movement. To actively fall in.

#De-structure

1. Undo the solid organizational underlying shape of the parts within a whole. When applying to a body, a way of de-patterning, falling in, a door to the unknown.

When applying to space: visual externalization of the somatic experience of the body while falling in.

#Falling in

1. A playful dialogue between a screaming gravity and a deaf body.

2. The physical practice of becoming. Allowing the parts of the body to change, flight or move within the body without an organizational purpose but through affinities in relation to space. Always arriving.

With uncertainty

For transformation

After vulnerability

While freedom

.

ONGOING GLOSSARY

#Freedom

1. A physical sensation. Experience of the independence between every element of the body to reorganize within the system, generally while falling in. When the potential of every deviation of movement feels sensible.

2. The very quick but expanded moment in which you can experience a lack of fear about uncertainty (while falling in).

#Movement

1. A manifestation of life.

2. The only way to perceive time.

#Silence

1. A state of deceptive calmness. An almost non-visible movement before a visible result of the transformation.

#Stage

1. Functionally, a place of transformation, similar to a street square.

2. Perceptually, the encounter between fragments of different spaces.

3. Practically, a three-dimensional space with gravitational force and a surface to fall in and grow from, where the dimension of the space allows the performer or performers to look for freedom and in which the audience has access to watch, feel or sense from a predesigned point or points of view.

4. Metaphorically, a delimited but a permeable system with a membrane that allows the system to live, like the skin of the body or the cellular membrane.

#Vulnerability

1.The ability to potentially allow transformation. A precondition to transforming the other.

2. A requirement for freedom.

ONGOING GLOSSARY

by Marta Wörner

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