Volition
The body is always moving. Constantly layering familiar gestures to create a vocabulary. Volition tries to unlearn these movements, to find the body anew. Through a structured imrpovised score, developed on residency in the gallery space, three dancers approach the same problem. Each attempt is recorded and displayed on the screen in the space for the viewer to compare and contrast.
Every fingerprint is a dance. These objects are relics, cast off scaffolds of activity once done, ditritus from experiences once had and excesses of process made between body and sculptural matter.
This project seeks to destabilise understandings of ontology through the body in movement. Dance is born out of the society that it is created within; it’s a social experience. The traditions, the values, the way movements evoke gender or become an expectation of performance are emblematic of that society. Bastin considers the physical body an archive of the expectations places upon it. The exhibition of performances, choreographic processes and artefacts draws from the sometimes-discordant methodologies of sculpture and dance, to create a record of unlearning. A failed attempt to decode what has been learnt by three sperarte bodies over time.
Volition, 2018
35:00 live performance, single channel video/ installation
plasticine, wax, plaster, clay (sculptures)
Volition was developed by Zoë Bastin and performed by Lydia Connolly-Hiatt, Jess Gall and Sue Hockey at c3 Art Space. Photographs and video documentation by Jacqui Shelton, Madeline Bishop and Chris Bowes. This project was developed with the assistance of Deanne Butterworth.