Desigining the Body of Research

(23rd June 2025) Fourth research question (after 2nd Tutorial with Astarti):

“What happens when I try to remove political implications from my body in performance?"

Aim:

Learn to detach political implications from my body in performance to test if it is possible to achieve an apolitical body and how that is read, perceived and understood in performance contexts.

Objectives:

1. Identify the political implications that I would like to remove, read and reflect on theory.

2. Find practices and methods that could do that. Test approaches as opposition, erasure and hiding.

3. Create performance experiments.

4. Collect feedback and audience responses.

5. Reflect on what other implications are coming out from the performance.

Field:

Artworks:

1. Body in Movement (Trio A, Yvonne Rainer, 1966) (Reclining Rondo, Lucinda Childs, 1975) (Watermotor, Trisha Brown, 1978)

2. Body in Ambiguousness (Self Unfinished, Xavier Le Roy, 1998)

3. Body in System (One Year Performance, 1978-1986, Tehching Hsieh)

Theories:

1. Deconstruction (Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida, 1967)

2. Power/Knowledge (Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault, 1975)

3. Becoming (A Thousand Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, 1980)

4. Performativity (Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, Judith Butler, 1990)

5. Ephemerality (Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, Peggy Phelan, 1993)

Gap: Absence of a way to decline attaining political identities after deconstruction.

Contribution: Confirming a possibility of denying to bear political identities.

Urgency:

Personal: A desire to find a way of not being bound by any political judgement.

Societal: A need to verify the possibility of not being involved in any political positions and to be aware of what to do if it is impossible.

Field: A want to suggest whether it is possible to choose identities which are fluid, formed and performed through power relationships.

Methods (Methodologies)

1. Documentary Research (studying and distinguishing concepts of political identities)

2. Autoethnography (reflecting on my political identities based on my own experience in societies)

3. Phenomenology (experiencing practices for removing political implications)

4. Reflexive Journaling (organising my xperiences throughout the practices)

5. Survey and Feedback (collecting the data from the audience for the aim and the fifth objective of the research)

Ethics:

* Careful reflection on political identities suggested in the research process.

* Avoiding judgement of which political position is good or bad, right or wrong.

(22nd June 2025) Third research question (after 1st Tutorial with Astarti):

“How can reclaim biomechanics as a practice of embodied awareness to enable individuals to recognise and interrupt unconscious patterns of movement causing violence?"

Aim:

Confirm the possibility of biomechanics as an artistic tool for body awareness to expose internalised violence in society and influence decision-making.

Objectives:

1. Create and perform a set of human body movements emphasising basic motions.

2. Survey any changed perception of the movement of the human body after watching the performance.

3. Define types of violence and provide cases of how the human body relates to social structure.

4. Conduct a participatory session to embody movements of bodies in violent situations and try to make different choices.

5. Collect feedback from the participants-spectators regarding the aim of the research.

Field:

Artworks:

1. Trio A, Yvonne Rainer (1966)

2. Group Primary Accumulation, Trisha Brown (1973)

3. Nulle part & partout, Myriam Gourfink (2024)

Theories:

1. No Manifesto, Yvonne Rainer (1965)

2. No Manifesto (Reconsidered), Yvonne Rainer (2008)

3. Phenomenology of Perception, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945)

4. Parables for the Virtual : Movement, Affect, Sensation, Brian Massumi (2002)

5. Violence, Slavoj Žižek (2007)

Gap: A lack of connection between biomechanics and awareness of societal body.

Contribution: Providing a case of reclaiming biomechanics as a method of re-patterning movement to perceive internalised violence in society.

Urgency:

Personal: A desire to find out how to connect biomechanics with social engagement as a component of art-making.

Societal: A possibility of providing a way to ease conflict situations by complex values in society.

Field: Need to acquire another perception of utilising biomechanics as a tool for awareness of the body for political decisions.

Methods (Methodologies)

1. Biomechanics (Scientific approach for understanding the kinetic principles of human movement in the physical world)

2. Somatic Practices (Focusing on the experience of the sense of body and movement through the physical embodiment)

3. Movement Analysis (Recognising and interpreting the pattern, techniques, emotions, motivations of the movement)

4. Participatory Action Research (Embodying the movement of bodies in different situations and experiencing the effect through participation)

5. Audience Survey and Feedback (Collecting the data concerning the impression of the PaR from participants for the aim of the research)

Ethics:

* Emphasising consent, safety, and autonomy for all participants-spectators.

* Avoiding judgement or diagnosis of movement as good or bad, right or wrong.

* Careful reflection on the diversity and dignity of bodies presented in the research process.

(7th May 2025) Second research question (after Massia trip):

"How can I use biomechanics to create my performance?"

(14th April 2025) First research question:

"What would happen if I try to remove political implications from my performance as possible as I can?"