Location: Room 409, Dalhousie Arts Centre
Moderator: Christine (cricri) Bellerose
Sponsored by Dalhousie University, Fountain School of Performing Arts
Buried Rivers and Shifting Shorelines: Mobile Performances Shaped by Water
Focusing on mobile performances that have been shaped by water routes– some hidden and others still flowing; I will examine how four particular works, unique in content and form, respond to site, unearth uncomfortable truths, and contemplate how we are shaped by and also shape the land. Featured works include: Something About a River (2002), a five-hour epic
performance by bluemouth inc. traversing the route of the now buried Garrison Creek inToronto/Tkaronto; DISH DANCES (2021), a large-scale performance and installation led by Ange Loft (Kanien’kehá:ka) and Jumblies Theatre + Arts, reanimating the Credit River in Ontario, a place of origin for the Dish with One Spoon agreement which is central to the relationship between Indigenous Nations in the Great Lakes region; SWIM (2021), an audio-play by Pandemic Theatre based on the 8km swim from Güzelçamli, Turkey to the Greek Island of Samos; and finally, Connected as we are (2021), a participatory work I co-created with Sorrel Muggridge, inviting audiences in two separate locations, Canada and the UK, to take a journey
together, beginning from their respective shorelines, while following each other’s directions.
Bio: Laura Nanni is an interdisciplinary artist, curator and producer. Her research considers the process of walking and aspects of mapping and navigation. Her work has been featured in peer-reviewed performance publications, as well as conferences, festivals and exhibitions across the
globe. She is the former Artistic & Managing Director of SummerWorks, presenting an annual performance festival (2016-2023).
In the Middle, between land and water: A research-creation on the practices of washerwomen
This presentation focuses on a research-creation process entitled In The Middle, which proposes to reanimate the gestures of the washerwomen and their ritual and care practices, through site specific performances and actions.
By reducing the gesture to its purest relation of production, to a gesture which is rationalized in its unique relation of speed/product/efficiency, we lose all its relational, collective, embodied (Nastassja Martin, 2015, Tim Ingold, 2012) and therefore vibratory dimension (Renarhd, 2021). With In the Middle, I question these losses through learning gestures and practices that have almost completely disappeared. I also question how the embodiment of material, historical, and empirical data reactivates memories that are “déjà là” (already there, Tourangeau, 2014), ignored, or “inouïes” (unheard) allowing us to weave and terra-form new possibilities (Haraway, 2016) where the path is missing (Burger, 2015).
Based on three case studies – three site-specific performances – my aim is to share the discoveries and challenges encountered during this research-creation. My axes of presentation are the following: – Porosity between performance and historical/ethnographic research
– The lack of archives and the relevance of site-specific and somatic work
– The passages between a work in solo immersion and the transmission to an audience through performative actions
More broadly, I will outline how performative and ecosomatic approaches (Bardet, Clavel, Perron, 2016) bring the unforeseen or the invisible into being; and thus, how it can be manifested trough words or performative actions.
Cette présentation aborde un processus de recherche-création intitulé In The Middle qui propose de réanimer les gestes du lavage des lavandières et les pratiques rituelles et de soin qui y sont liés, par la mise en œuvre d’actions performatives in situ.
En ramenant le geste à son plus pur rapport de production, c’est-à-dire à un geste rationalisé dans son unique rapport de vitesse/produit/efficacité, nous perdons toute sa dimension relationnelle, communautaire, rituelle (Nastassja Martin, 2015, Tim Ingold, 2012) et donc vibratoire (Renarhd, 2021). Avec In the Middle, j’interroge ces pertes à travers l’apprentissage de gestes et de pratiques presque complétement disparues. Je questionne comment la mise en relation somatique et incarnée de données matérielles, historiques et empiriques permet de réactiver des liens inouïes – dans le sens qui ne sont pas entendus -, des mémoires corporelles et de tisser ou terraformer de nouveaux possibles (Haraway, 2016) là où le chemin manque (Burger, 2015). À partir de trois études de cas – soit trois performances in situ –, je partage les découvertes et les défis rencontrés lors de cette recherche-création. Mes axes de présentation sont les suivants :
• Les passages entre un travail en immersion solitaire et la transmission à un public sous la forme d’une action performative
• Porosité entre performance et recherche historique/ethnographique
• Le manque d’archives et la pertinence d’un travail somatique in situ
Camille Renarhd – Postdoctoral fellow
Center of Interdisciplinary Studies In Society and Culture, Concordia University
www.camillerenarhd.com
Camille Renarhd est une artiste transdisciplinaire et une chercheuse postdoctorale associée au Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture (CISSC) à l’Université Concordia, Montréal. Ses travaux explorent les intersections entre l’écologie, les somatiques, l’art sonore et l’art performance. Elle est titulaire d’un doctorat en études et pratiques artistiques (UQAM, U of A). Sa recherche est soutenue par le FRQSC et le CRSH.
Camille Renarhd is a transdisciplinary artist and a postdoctoral fellow with the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture at Concordia University, Montreal. Her works explore the intersections between ecology, embodiment, somatic, sound and ritual performance. She holds a PhD in Art Studies and Practices (UQAM, U of A). Her research is supported by the FRQSC and SSHRC.
Bodies of Water as Agential Bodies in Royal Court Dramaturgy
Students in programs of Drama and Theatre at Canadian institutions will, at some point in their studies, learn that one of the first (this is, the first colonial) theatrical performances, Théâtre de la Neptune En Nouvelle France, took place on the Atlantic Ocean. The nautical setting had more to do with spectacle than consideration for shores or bodies of water as sites or bodies of knowledge, as does the theme of this conference. In light of this conference’s theme, this paper takes a metaphorical trip back across the Atlantic from Canada to the United Kingdom to consider the status of bodies of water as agents of posthumanist embodiment in plays at the Royal Court Theatre.
“What happens when organisms plus environments can hardly be remembered for the same reasons that even Western-indebted people can no longer figure themselves as individuals and societies of individuals in human-only histories,” asks Donna Haraway in her Staying with the Trouble. Haraway approaches this question with “generative joy, terror, and collective thinking” (31). In examining the agential role of bodies of water in Caryl Churchill’s Far Away and Escaped Alone as well as Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children, I argue for the sea and its shores not just as a site for performance but a performance of itself in and of itself. With performances originally taking place at the (noticeably dry) Royal Court theatre, bodies of water leak into the dramaturgies nonetheless and insist upon a revision of “human-only histories.”
Caitlin Gowans, University of Toronto
Bio: Caitlin Gowans is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, where her research focuses on posthuman dissent and defiance in contemporary dramaturgy at the Royal Court Theatre in London, UK. Caitlin lives on the land historically called t’karonto, where the trees are standing in the water.
