Never been human I am bird: on the Shape of Love

This essay approaches the field of posthuman performance, focusing on the personification of love in the form of Eros. After focusing on the changing depictions of Erotic love across archaic and classical Greece, the essay then delves into the theatrical depiction of winged love in Aristophanes’ timeless comedy Birds. The author argues for the importance, in performance practice, of love as ethical praxis, suggesting that real erotic love is a fundamental energy driving performance. The critical takeaway of this essay is the need to perform a love that is not merely anthropomorphic or anthropocentric— a love of humans for humans— and the importance of practising more-than-human love, to tether living beings in an interspecies web of bonds and relations

"Set in Poland, that is to say Nowhere": Alfred Jarry and the Politics of Topological Space

This article is intended to shed light on philosophical considerations on the ontology of space (situation) as put forward in the prose and dramatic writings of French iconoclast Alfred Jarry, by posing that Jarry's notion of space is dynamic in a twofold sense. Firstly, Jarry's sense of space is consistently described in terms of a sense of temporality (duration), which is why Jarry's sense of space is distinctly higher-dimensional (space- time). Secondly, I argue that Jarry's reaction against conventional modalities of scientific and artistic thinking take the form of a subversive turn (which Deleuze calls the Great Turning), via the pseudoscience of pataphysics, which is directed not only against metaphysics, but also a geometric understanding of the physical and metaphysical worlds. I argue that Jarry's conception of a spatio-temporal ontology is distinctly non-geometric, or topological in nature. Topological imagery allows Jarry to present a more vital and fleshed out sense of living space-time, within which a new politics of space and time is activated by the forces of endless change and continuous deformation. I argue that through the topological corporeality of Ubu, Jarry promotes a sense of ABSTRACT theatre within which the dynamic properties of topological space become actualised in the way of a politics of the unimaginable, an Ubuesque realm where, through the power of technology and the imagination, the exceptional and unrealisable rule

Perspectivas teóricas para una Arqueología Interpretativa de la muerte

Frente a la paulatina secularización de la experiencia de la muerte en las sociedades tecnológicas contemporáneas, los autores proponen, desde la ciencia arqueológica, las bases teóricas de un modelo interpretativo derivado de la Historia de las Religiones, la Etnohistoria y la Etnografía, como herramienta analítica para estudiar y valorar el sentido ritual y sagrado que las sociedades tradicionales le confieren a este fenómeno, pues consideramos que ésta es la vía más adecuada para acercarnos a su verdadera comprensión. En este sentido, el interés del presente trabajo será el de reflexionar acerca del fenómeno mortuorio en el contexto del pensamiento mítico que caracteriza a las sociedades tradicionales, con el objeto de derivar algunas implicaciones arqueológicas que demuestren la posibilidad de orientar investigaciones sobre la dimensión ideacional de la cultura en el pasado.  

Binary Coded Performance

The article explores the possibility to use a binary code as a code language that can be staged or choreographed. It mentions that numbers one and zero are performative as they can be read as indicators of failure and success. It notes the susceptibility of the numbers to the bodies that are counting and actors on whose fingers these numbers are actualised. It also emphasizes that the notion of digitality in computer technologies expresses the logic of binarism at a corporeal semiotic level

Rudolf Laban and Topology: a Videographic Analysis

This article explores the somewhat neglected theory of topological movement developed by the Hungarian artist and researcher Rudolf Laban. The piece begins with an examination of Laban’s understanding of space in relation of the notion of the kinesphere. I argue that Laban’s idea of space is essentially derived from a rationalization of outer movement (geometry), which enables him to break movement down into analytical units, and rearrange these into a meaningful syntax, a language (dance, mime, or theatre). I then go on to explain Laban’s idea of a synthesis between outer movement, and another sphere of movement known as dynamospheric (which refers to more fundamental inner forces that involve psychological and emotional dynamics). Crucially, these dynamic forms are modelled by Laban through the use of topological surfaces. I further support my analysis by an investigation of Laban’s unpublished book Effort and Recovery, and also by taking a videographic approach to a number of important filmic studies of topological movement observation. The article concludes with the idea that Laban’s graphic approach to movement analysis can be further enhanced, particularly within the study of topological dynamics, with the help of vision technologies such as film, video, and computer animation. I briefly discuss William Forsythe’s reinterpretation of Laban’s analysis via moving-image technologies, before concluding with a short description of a video study entitled Labanimations, which I carried out recently with video artist Sebastian Melo, and in which I reexamine Laban’s artwork through video techniques such as long exposure photography and slit scan

Variations on a Fugitive’s Song: The Performance of Disappearance and Forced Migration in Chile

This text could be read as if it were a four-part fugue, beginning with the exposition of a subject or motif that will be elaborated and developed in due course. The word fugue derives from the Latin fuga, which means the act of fl eeing or chasing; in the musical sense, voices may be said to chase one another in the course of a contrapuntal composition such as a fugue. The Latin term is also linked etymologically to words such as ‘refuge’ or ‘fugitive,’ all terms indicative of an act of fl ight. The conceptual fugue I am embarking on here uses the basic structure of this musical technique and the metaphor of the musical chase to take the reader through an analysis of the acts of disappearance that took place during the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in Chile (1973-1988). I will argue that state-sponsored terror and disappearance during the Pinochet years did not efface the voice of the opposition, but on the contrary, it elicited a powerfully orchestrated political vocalization that was deployed performatively in the way of protest song and street chanting

Digital Dance-theatre as a Multidimensional Romance Notes on the production of C8's Flatland

This paper is an account of practice-based research and artistic work carried out by the authors in the field of digital dance theatre (C8’s Flatland). The work addresses the question of body-machine interaction from the point of view of a relationship (or digital romance), involving continuous and discontinuous processes of movement characteristic both to humans and technological machines. The essay explores Andre Leroi-Gourhan’s notion of ‘multidimensional graphism’ to speak of a type of digital writing that does not give prevalence to textual writing, to choreographic writing (or the virtual embodied writing of dance), to visuals, or code, but which functions as an amalgam of all these. We speak to Brian Rotman’a idea of gesturo-haptic language, as a kind of lingua franca that enables machines and bodies to relate to one another as part of the same intercommunictaional transaction, and as part of the same creative process for the emergence, and self-emergence of multidimensional artistic form

Trabajos en torno al pukara de Topaín (segunda región, Chile). Campaña 2011

[ES] Se presentan de forma sintética los resultados de la segunda campaña de campo del proyecto. La campaña se desarrolló entre finales de noviembre y mediados de diciembre de 2011 y consistió en tres tipos de trabajos fundamentales. El primero fue la documentación superficial de aquellas partes del entorno del sitio de Topaín que habían quedado documentadas de forma sólo genérica en el primer año, 2010. Para ello se siguió una metodología de trabajo muy similar a la empleada entonces, poniendo el acento en la documentación de las relaciones estratigráficas entre diferentes sectores de los canales de irrigación y entre éstos y las demás estructuras (terrazas, construcciones). El segundo fue la realización de algunos sondeos en determinados puntos del amplio conjunto de terrazas y campos de cultivo, con la finalidad de documentar su estratigrafía interna y de recoger muestras para contribuir a determinar su uso y datación. El tercero fue iniciar un programa sistemático de recogida de muestras en diferentes sectores de los canales de irrigación, y en algunos perfiles naturales, con la finalidad de realizar en ellas analíticas que permitan aclarar sus procesos y secuencias de formación, uso y abandono.[EN] This paper summarizes the results of the second field season of the project. The season took place between the end of November and mid December 2011, and consisted of three main work packages. Firstly, the detailed documentation of those sections of the environs of the Topain settlement site that had been only sketchily documented in the 2010 season. To do that, a methodology was followed based on the documentation of the stratgraphic relationship between different sectors of channels and between them and other structures (cultivation terraces, huts, storage barns...). Secondly, the completion of some test pits in different points across the ample terraced area, aimed at documenting the internal stratigraphy of terraces and fields and at taking a series of samples to further analyze the processes of their construction and use. Thirdly, the inception of a systematic programme of environmental sampling across the whole area of study, mainly in the network of channels and in natural profiles, aimed at acquiring a de- tailed characterization of the sequence of natural and human-induced processes occurred in the area during the construction, use and abandonment of Topain and the cultivated spaces around.Peer Reviewe