Engaged dis-identifications, NOTES#1: gesturing towards existence “with/out” representation

1. Po-ethic inquiry: layering existence

THERE IS ME
(inhabiting a heart-beating body limited by temporality)
THERE IS ME AND YOU
(relating through a historically scripted social body)
THERE IS ME IN YOU
(worlded and composting within a wider earthly body)…

…and THERE IS NEITHER ME NOR YOU
(in nothingness/every-thingness beyond time, space and form)

2. Stretching spaces

• What is the relationship between performance, activism, pedagogy and daily life?
• What is the relationship between the physical and social bodies?
• How can we create a sense of trust that can engender a safe and brave space where we can take risks together?
• How do we create a space where risk and care are equally nurtured?
• How do we combine humour and discipline, lightness and seriousness?

3. Nuancing affectabilities

The body

The body as something we have (object)
The body as something that we are (self)
The body as a place we – and others – inhabit (home)
The body as semi-autonomous entity we temporarily depend upon (host)
The body as territory (landscape)
The body as cell of wider metabolism (land)
The body as enabler of relationships (connector)
The body as stories we carry (narratives)
The body as interface of legibility (meaning)
The body as discursive regime (scripted)
The body as transgressive space (un-scripting)
The body as (un)becomings (performative)
The body as visible and invisible relations (knowable/unknowable)
The body as affective constellations (galaxy)
The body as fractal of universe in motion (cosmos)
The body as nothing and everything (time)
The body as palimpsest

4. Incubating performative practices

“Be present to the complexity of this encounter. Acknowledge the existence of all that you don’t know about the person standing before you, all that you won’t know about them, all that is unknowable about them. [pause] Be permeable, let yourself be seen and see  at the same time. Acknowledge the existence of all that you don’t know about yourself, all that you won’t know about yourself, all that is unknowable about yourself. [pause] Be present to the unknowable between you.”

Image credits: Image 1: Composting Expectations, photo-performance collaboration with Manuel Vason, with support from Rubiane Maia and Maritea Daehlin (Chiapas, Mexico); Image 2: Reconocer sin conocer (gazing), performance-pedagogy practice featuring Dani d’Emilia & Vanessa Andreotti; Photo Gallery: Performance-pedagogy practices facilitated by Dani d’Emilia at Roundabout.lx (Lisbon). Images: Valentina Vargas

Engaged dis-identifications is an artistic-pedagogic collaboration between Dani d’Emilia and Vanessa Andreotti that explores the workings of non-notional possibilities of co-existence through performative practices. It attempts to translate post-representational modes of engagement into embodied experiments that reconfigure the connections between reason, affect and relationality.