Artist Statement
My process has consistently been anchored in creative collaboration and in finding new pathways to connect. I work collaboratively and invite people to invest in the process, providing them with a platform to be creative with ideas and material I introduce, their subsequent evolution, as well as embracing new ideas offered in response. The nature of collaborative research, the relationships and the negotiations involved, how they influence each other and what the connecting components are or could be, are all questions I continually explore. I value taking the time to listen, discuss and critically reflect with my collaborators alone and in group discussion. Collaboration enables me to notice, question and challenge my own habitual methods and tendencies.
My initial approach is to set parameters (structural and spatial) working with the moving body to develop systems, devising scores, sets of instructions built on imagery, text, emotional states and abstract representations. Together we construct and agree on a series of rules and then give ourselves opportunities in which to break them. The permeability of the body within these tasks interests me, the adaptations and the drama inherent in its materiality, fascinates me. I often find it is through these means that an underlying narrative emerges.
Within the process I look for creative triggers, using structured improvisation as well as sharing my movement with the artists involved, synthesizing the conceptual and physical responses that surface. I put internal and external frameworks in place in which we can question, speculate and play, generating a multitude of possibilities, enabling us to experiment within the architectures. Allowing the consequential developments to branch out in different directions and taking a multi -pivot approach is at the core of my practice, followed by the taking of time to connect the dots between the outcomes.
My work is heavily inspired by dynamic structure, living systems and chaos theory. Concepts such as deterministic models, sensitivity to initial conditions, strange attractors, and fractal geometry inspire me. I am interested in chaos theory’s suggestion that, within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant loops, repetition, self-similarity and self-organisation, and I strive to use these principles in the work that I make. The idea that change, be it random or a reaction, is the catalyst for all growth or evolution appeals to me. I love that patterns can be created randomly and destroyed in the same way. And are we not more sensitised or aware of the conditions in which they are broken or disturbed? Is it not the shift that adds significance or meaning and becomes the catalyst for a reconstruction or re-invention of a new pattern? These thoughts feed into the work I create.
Another important influence and inspiration to my current choreographic practice has been my re-connection and refreshed research of Judson Dance Theater’s legacy and its non-hierarchical organisation. Post-modern pioneers, their radical investigations of the fundamental nature and methodologies of choreography eroded boundaries between art and life. These ideas and principles ground my practice.
As a female artist, and a person who grew up in-between different cultures, I am also curious about “perspective-taking”, overall the need for empathy, respect and receptivity, an understanding that there have been, are and will be many points of view. Should we not confess to and take responsibility for our own conditioning, subjectivity and accept others' conditioning and subjectivity? Is it ever possible to be completely objective and unbiased? This profoundly interests me. From both a philosophical and physical standpoint, the latter in relation to movement and the sharing, the embodiment of material and ideas across bodies. How does one embody another’s movement? I’ve experienced the process and it play out on others. Often the process leads to a disconnect, a struggle and a slight loss of self. Might subjectivity in this context be seen as a stronger connection to bodily integrity? Or perhaps our task is to continually strive for intersubjectivity?