between the chamber, the cavity, you
& a receptacle for one or more
CURRENT PROCESS 2023-PRESENT
@ CENTER FOR PERFORMANCE RESEARCH
This work is an ever-developing methodology.
Drawing inspiration from Henri Bergson’s concept of “a vital impetus,” the process seeks to contextualize improvisational creation and instant composition as a methodology shaped by self-organization, the morphogenesis of human nature, and generative movement composition – an approach aligned with Brian Eno’s notion of generative music and Yvonne Rainer’s Continuous Project Altered Daily (1970).
Synthesizes a decade of research in text-based improvisational score-making, ensemble compositions, and emergent worlds. This non-categorical approach resists adherence to any specific aesthetic or medium while it unpacks improvisational impulses, understanding movement as ontological answers to human consciousness and migration. From May 2023—June 2024, I specifically focused on deciphering [from mathematical vernacular] solvable problems – presenting objects, variables, questions to a group of dancers during monthly 3-hour sessions. Goals of these sessions included making full works during each session – providing the gratification of making, completing, and performing – and transcribing each session to text in order to make text-based performance forms written as prose-poetry.
Research began in 2014 with a performance series under the same title – Between the Chamber, the Cavity, You, and a Receptacle for One or More, which engaged over 20 participants both live and digitally. The body of work was presented at various venues across Los Angeles, including REDCAT, Highways Performance Space, Perform Chinatown, Pieter Space, and my former DIY venue, Dynasty Center. In February 2018, the process was invited as a satellite project of the Prospect 4/New Orleans Art Biennial.
ORIGIN STORY | 2015-2018
Part 1 DYNASTY CENTER, CHINATOWN, OCTOBER 2015
PART 2 EXIT OVERLAND, HIGHWAYS PERFORMANCE SPACE, JAN 2016
PART 3 EVERYTHING CAN MAKE ME MAD RIGHT NOW (EVERYTHING),
REDCAT studio, REDCAT, MARCH 2016
PART 4 Between the chamber/displace engine, @ prospect 4/new orleans arts biennial 2018, “The aesthetics of garbage” series
Original Project Description in 2015:
A multimedia, interdisciplinary series featuring live and virtual performances from more than 20 participants with varied artistic backgrounds. This project is the result of collaborative, leaderless conversations pursued and processed privately between director and participating artists. Performers share space only on nights of presentation. As the series continues, more individuals will become involved, more bodies/lands/countries/states are represented. This project aims to enhance local and global pluralism by magnifying immediate reality and giving total agency to everyone in the space. Through verbal, non verbal and unnamable language, the artists will process and provide lenses into their realities while in dialogue, collision and agreement with shared space and time. Central focus aims to distance the physical and mental body in order to illuminate the intersection of the private and public spheres of the individual. It explores the privacy of the body, striving to locate the language of our anatomical home.
During the original process in 2015, I met individually with each performer, all from different artistic backgrounds. During these “appointments” we did all kinds of things – eating, walking, hiking, driving, resting, drinking, cooking, errands, even a doctor appointment – and of course dancing. I was interested in honing the unique dynamics shared between two people– remove either person and the dynamic is completely shifted.
When we finally got to dancing (which always happened at my warehouse/venue, Dynasty Center) it felt like a grand finale conversation. We would share a movement improvisation after a couple hours of being together starting with each observing the other in movement and then eventually we would be moving quite fast as a duet. Many of the artists involved were professional dancers, some were actors, writers, painters, sculptors, but everyone shared the love of movement. Eventually after a few “appointments” with each person over the course of six months, we developed a performance score based on our interaction together. The artist-performers involved did not work together or share space until week of performances. I did not perform to eliminate the one common factor amongst the performers. If I wasn’t there, an intimacy could emerge on-stage by eliminating the one element they knew they all shared.
Full Cast/Team: Erin Bishop-O'brien, Joey Cannizzaro, Camila, Chelsea Conwright, Zach Crumrine, Ariana Daub, Eloise Deluca, Wesley Ensminger, Arne Gjelton, Becca Green, Helena Grierson, Tiara Jackson, Yvonne Lacombe
Pete Laughlin, Kelsey Lanceta, Ryan Masson, Elisabeth Mladenov, Tariq Mitri, Madison Page, Anna Luisa Petrisko, Chelsea Rector, Patrice Roth, Jordan Saenz