2022-24
planthroposcene research
DANCE IN PLANTHROPO-SCENE
BODY- & COMMUNITY-BASED RESEARCH
How learning the perceptual and relational language of plants can reorganize bodily habits, attentional modes, and social norms? Working with tissular fantasies and cellular intelligence, Dance in Planthroposcene research explores new sources of articulation and connectedness in dance understood as artistic and social practice, delegating agency to the peripheries and spaces in-between. It is inspired by Natasha Myers’ call to vegetalize human sensorium, critical plant studies and perception theories, particularly Laura Sewell’s ecological perception and Karen L. F. Houle’s concept of becoming plant.
Learning specifically from plants directs attention towards immersion and reciprocity of metabolism, dissolving rigid boundaries between organisms and their surroundings, mixing the cellular and cosmic, material and energetic. It is a labour of giving in to the sensations and pleasures, tangible conditions of ours, diving into the affects, animacy and mysteries of material world. It offers a prism to rearticulate human-environmental relations and tools to practice biocentric, environmental modes of awareness, relatedness and collectivity.
Alongside dance practice, the project focuses on the notion of co-creating atmosphere, sparking reflection and experimentation around placemaking, commoning and organizing within more-than-human sociality. It moves across converging physiological and socio-cultural layers: from particles, through communities of cells and bacterial colonies inside organisms, to the circular dramaturgies and aesthetics of presence in (folk) dances, care culture and strategies of prefigurative grassroots movements.
Within the project, a porous Plant Babes collective was instigated following the need to practice new forms of creating, researching, organizing and solidarity in collaboration with plants. It brings together Berlin-based dance artists interested in the intersection of somatics, choreography, ecology, and work culture. The collective functions both as a research structure and as an experiment in alternative forms of organizing - creating a space for shared inquiry and mutual support within the local scene.
RESIDENCIES:
CREATIVE TEAM:
Concept & facilitation Dorota Michalak
Research Julek Kreutzer, Maryna Makarenko, Dorota Michalak, Cary Shiu, Akseli Aittomäki, Joske Beckers, Michela Filzi, Aaron Lang, Magdalena Meindl
SUPPORT:
Tanzpraxis Scholarship by The Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe