FIXING is a durational dance social tracing project performed at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (PQ) by myself, Natalie Robin, and Marysia Stokłosa. Over the course of 3 days for 8 hours a day, FIXING uses the social activities of the Plaza as the catalyst for an accumulative movement score, mediated by the performer bodies and marked by chalk and/or yarn lines, drawn as a remnant of audience and performer activity that then alters what's visible and brings forth an evolving, imaginative, interactive installation for performers and audience to respond to.
The performers use their bodies as sorts of divining rods, embodying survey spots or junctures in the environment as active, human relationships to space and will invite viewers to join. These physicalized moments serve as performance "announcements" of what's encountered. Here mapping exists as a human act of noticing - the score is determined by what WE notice, what we do, and by others' work and by audience intervention. The overlapping topography of environment and social activity includes the humanity of the mappers and mapped.
Beginning with the intention to follow and to mark—to fix in time and in space—the social movement of the Plaza, we find a social practice of riding others’ rhythms and energies until our encounter is cut off and captured by the end of the Plaza, the limit of our activity. PQ attendees lead us in chalking elaborate footpath designs on the cobblestone or asphalt, or altering their pathways to linger longer in the sensation of widened somatic attention, or mimicking us and switching the game of follow the leader. Some hurry through it or ignore us while others return to try passing time and space together in a different way. When people walk, we walk with them, and when they stand still, we circle their feet, marking their pause.
The visual maps and responsive movements of FIXING accumulate, deteriorate, expand, complicate, and distort the space over three full days, tracking the complexity of activity in the Plaza and proposing new opportunities for play, new ways of moving through the space. The dance concludes with the removal of the layered maps and a performed resonance of the maps and landmarks, once gone.
Co-creation and performance Meg Foley, Natalie Robin, and Marysia Stokłosa
Presenter Formations Performance Festival in the 2019 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space
Curator D. Chase Angier and Serge von Arx
The visual maps and responsive movements of FIXING accumulate, deteriorate, expand, complicate, and distort the space over three full days, tracking the complexity of activity in the Plaza and proposing new opportunities for play, new ways of moving through the space. The dance concludes with the removal of the layered maps and a performed resonance of the maps and landmarks, once gone.
Co-creation and performance Meg Foley, Natalie Robin, and Marysia Stokłosa
Presenter Formations Performance Festival in the 2019 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space
Curator D. Chase Angier and Serge von Arx