Contextualization - for proposal.
Relation to a larger context
As part of my theoretical research I have been investigating on different philosophical strands that focus on experience, such as empiricism, a fundamental philosophical position that claims all knowledge arrives directly from sense experience; and most lately phenomenology the study of our experience — how we experience.
Movement (of the body) is one of the central concepts in my research, as being something that defines how human beings relate and perceive the world, how they access information, and process it. If communication stands for the transmission of knowledge, indicated as “the transition from one point to the next”, that is as one “directional destination” to the next (at wikipedia), than the concept of movement is intrinsically connected. The question is which role do we play in this constant movement? How oneself is made conscious of the different aspects we are surrounded by.
In regards to movement of the body, one of my main references is Alva Noë, one of the theorists that inspired the EEC programme - Embodied Embedded Cognition. Noë investigates the structures of experience and consciousness (phenomenology); Presenting experience as the "basis of accessibility", allowing humans into "achieving access to the environment".
In an interview with Marlon Barrios Solano, part of the Embodied Techne Series (2012), Noë discusses "Dance As A Way Of Knowing". He explores the idea that human consciousness is something we enact or achieve, in motion, as a way of being part of a larger process. Motion as "sensory motor understanding is what brings the world into focus for consciousness." Noë highlights the fact that motion relies on a "temporally extended involvement", which enhances sensorial perception and consequently produces sensorial change: "transformations that happens in you while you go across the process; what is that transformation? Is understanding, is seeing connections, is knowing your way around." Presenting dance as a way to enact experience, thinking in motion - "dance in a sense of performance is an enactment or modeling of this fundamental fact about the world around us, which we dynamically interact with.".
In dance, along with similar kinesthetic experiences, the human body reaches an intense sensorial perceptual experience, composed of information from many places in the body, finding the need to have an understanding of/control over of sensory consequences of their own movement. It can be seen either as personal, depending on the case- collective, confrontation - creating great awareness.
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, started her career as dancer/choreographer, and is now an independent scholar, philosopher, which part of her research focus on the primacy of movement in perception and our fundamental understanding of aliveness. Sheets-Johnstone defines movement as the foundation of Being and consciousness by ‘‘articulating a metaphysics true to the dynamic nature of the world and to the foundational animated nature of life’’. According to Sheets-Johnstone, ‘‘movement is our mother tongue’’ as we make sense of our own bodies and understand the world. As we move, we discover a sense of aliveness and of being grounded in movement. Movement is the source of our senses,in space and time, subjectively in ‘‘felt time’’. Sheets-Johnstone shows uslife as movement, sensing as motion, interaction, imagining and meaning-making as action.
The question concerning corporeity connects also with Merleau-Ponty's reflections on space (l'espace) and the primacy of the dimension of depth (la profondeur) as implied in the notion of being in the world (être au monde; to echo Heidegger's In-der-Welt-sein) and of one's own body (le corps propre).
The concept of motion is also inherently connected to the development of communication technologies and by the introduction of cybernetic systems, embracing both human and non human entities into a a network of interactions. Arriving at last to the realm of contemporary philosophy, specifically the speculative realism movement, an object-oriented philosophy which arises from what Graham Harman determines to be a core fallacy in contemporary metaphysics, that the “root duality of the universe is not made up of subject and object [….], but of objects and relations".
In the Arts field, I have been looking at the performative turn, particularly to fluxus group and the "instructions" avant gard movement, happenings, Art & Language collective, conceptual art, neo-concrete and lettrism, video and installation art from the 70's until now, as well as performance art, including choreography and dance. It is of my interest how in these practices the role of the body in human experience and perception is emphasized, the techniques and technologies applied.
In dance and choreography, I am mostly researching on post-modern dance, which is a 20th century concert dance form, a reaction to the compositional and presentation constraints of classic and modern dance. Various choreographers and performers developed techniques tied to philosophies in how to move and perform, being Martha Graham's fundamental use of body, exploring basic movements such as walking and breathing or Yvonne Rainer minimal approach to the expression of movement and effort. Different references and choreographic methods in performance, allow for deeper understanding of the potentiality of movement qualities.