Being in contact

: encountering a bare body

Abstract

In reference to my artistic work, this practice-as-research project explores the concept of bare bodies and how to encounter them in contemporary choreography. The thesis draws on philosophical, bio-political and ethical discourse relevant to my discussion of the emergence of bare bodies in choreographic work, and creates a critical framework for a self-reflexive movement between affect and ethics, sensuous address and response. Narrations of bare bodies emerge in both the written component of a choreographed book, and in the creative component consisting of the live event of a lecture performance inhabiting an anarchive. The anarchive is a kind of research repository created and accumulated in the course of my PhD project.
Throughout I argue for acknowledging acts of baring and concealing as culturally situated, anchoring my thesis in practices of being in contact and decolonising practices, and unearthing their methodological weight and nanopolitical significance. I explore non-subjective performativity, implying a fluid conception of identity. Furthermore, I introduce the ideations of an-archic responsibility and choreo-ethics for reassessing contact, relation and solidarity as an ethico-aesthetic project of current choreographic performances. These propositions get probed alongside a shift from spectator to wit(h)ness. In the core chapter on bare bodies, I differentiate and untangle the tones and shades of the triplet naked, nude, and bare, each term referring differently to body and performativity. All in all, the choreographic is conceptualised as a complex field of revelatory experiences built on ecologies of aesthetic perception and realising ethico-political agency.

Date of Award	7 Feb 2019
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Roehampton
Supervisor	Adrian Heathfield (Supervisor) & P. A. Skantze (Supervisor)