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Practices of tactility remembering and performance

‘Practices of tactility, remembering and performance’ is a practice-led inquiry in which performance-making and writing are equal partners. The thesis comprises a performance folio and a dissertation. The folio comprises two performance works. / the backs of things: This 35-minute work for two dancers had a public season mid-way through the candidature (September 8th – 11th 2005). A DVD documentation is submitted with the dissertation. / here, now: This 50-minute multi-modal performance was presented for assessment during a public season of six performances (March 22nd – 25th 2007). It is a solo piece in which I perform. The work was attended by the examiners and a DVD documentation is submitted with the dissertation. / The dissertation provides a ‘narrative of a practice’ focused on tactility, remembering and performance. It elucidates what has arisen through the dual modalities of performance-making and writing. The dissertation is not an exegesis of the performance folio. Rather, it is a critical and reflective account of the practice within which the performances reside. / The arc of emergent meaning in the narrative of practice comprises three phases: Precedents; Choreographic Tactility; and Intercorporeal Remembering. In the first phase, I discuss the precursors to my subsequent practice of tactility and remembering. I detail how I sought to diminish the effects of the objectifying gaze by staging a series of interventions into the visual field of the dance. In the second phase, I articulate my use of touch, naming it a practice of choreographic tactility. I outline the connectivity of touch and suggest that it fosters an understanding of the intercorporeal nature of selfhood. I posit practices of tactility as arenas for a relational ontology. / In the third phase, I take the notion of intercorporeality thus established and show how it engenders an embodied knowledge of remembering. I define a range of heuristic devices that I established so as to craft remembering in my performance practice. Finally, I draw the discussion of tactility and remembering towards what I term an ‘aesthetics of tactility’. I describe this as a performance domain where intercorporeal remembering is privileged. This is instantiated in the poetic remembering of here, now with which the dissertation closes.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245610
Date January 2008
CreatorsMurphy, Siobhan
Source SetsAustraliasian Digital Theses Program
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
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