Spasmotive—thinking about the dramaturgy of the spasm

What I'm loving about this project, is the words/thought provoking ideas bouncing between those who are working with me.  Below is something from Dianne - read on...


Dianne here thinking about the dramaturgy of spasm for Spasmotive...

I am being your "outside eye" for this project—offering suggestions in relation to your movement, the design of video projection, and the interaction between those elements and how we attune the viewer into the feel and duration of your physicality.

Things I am reading feed into the thinking. From "Planes of Composition" edited by Lepecki and Joy (2009):

"Spasms call attention to the kinetic potentials of individual bodies—

pushed into movement, caught in stillness, reverberating in between—

questioning philosophical and psychological notions of subjectivity." 

(Jenn Joy "Anatomies of Spasm" p. 66) 

and the wonderful recent edition of Dan Goodley's "Disability Studies" (2017):

"Crip time might slow down, 

halt and find time to think again about how we live our lives. 

Such moments contrast with the speed, haste and mobility of lives 

that work to succeed in a capitalist society. 

We rethink temporality through disability. 

We rethink how we might live our lives: to stop and regroup." 

(Goodley, p 195)

I'm thinking about strategies for managing a theatrical showing, how we position the audience and move between sections, that resists speeding up and which allows the viewer to "stop and regroup."
So I look forward tomorrow to playing with some of the projection tests across the hanging cloth in relation to your suspended body...ways to rethink temporality in a spatial and textural sense.