Internal noise: choreographing with and from affective states
About
""Inner noise" deals with a topic that is by its very nature amorphous - that of affect. Inspired by Massumi's writings on affect and Manning’s work on minor gestures, I’m proposing a practice-as-research investigation into methods for creating choreographic material from/with affective states, and the qualities of the resulting choreographic work.
The project is an attempt to bring out the inner noise of the body. By ‘inner noise’, I mean, quite literally, sound. My choreographic practice includes extensive voicework, and I work by allowing the physical matter of the body to affect vocal sound produced. For this research ‘inner noise’ has a double meaning: I also intend to use my voice-body practice to make the “micropolitical background noise” of affect (Closs-Stephens 2022, 38) audible.
The research will be conducted through a series of (solo and group) choreographic experiments using voice, body and text. Manning sees politics as enfolded into everyday affective relations – and therefore as “hard to grasp” (Closs-Stephens 2022, 46). As an artist/researcher, I believe that working at the interstices of existing forms opens spaces and trembles the lines that “articulate how experience can come to expression” (Manning 2016, 7). I hope that thinking about affect through choreography will not only generate new knowledge about how affective politics are experienced in our bodies, but that working with affective dimensions of voice will generate “new ways of having or being a body” (Connor 2000, 35).
In parallel, I’ll run workshops with both performers and non-professionals. I aim to create tools for facilitating somatic experiencing of affect in ways that are safe and (potentially) empowering for participants. The workshop process will allow other voices into the research, acknowledging that “communities of sense are plural” (Closs-Stephens 2022, 43) and that affect exists as much between bodies as it does within them."
