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“Metamotion for 270degrees” loosely departs from the biblical story of Salome. The work approaches the young, dancing female body to touch upon myths around femininity in western art history, in conjunction with christianity and the implemented cancellation of that character. Hovering in and out of those images, the performer enters into dialogue with different objects, times, references and narratives and switches roles, being its facilitator, user, friend, sparring partner. At the same time being its subject, the performer is a labourer continuously constructing architectures of imaginations, made out of the physical and metaphysical aspects in the space. The work tries to understand the necessity of keeping a myth alive while at the same time trying to decompose it, such as the relevance of doing so in front of an audience gaze. During a journey of investigating those matters, the performer is entering realms of sensorial,material, emotional, animalistic, architectural and narrative conjunctions while experiencing its own twisted projections, as well.
The work features references of movement artist and actor Terry Notary ( “planet of the apes” and “the square”) such as performance artist Oleg Kulik, sounds by various artists from the archive freesound.org (listed below), Michelangelo, Rodin, the anamorphic skull in the painting “the ambassadors” by Hans Holbein the younger, such as the entrance sound of “the gate” by Björk, whom she is referring to in an interview as following:
“Also, I used a vinyl album of Venezuelan music I had, [Heku- ra–Yanomamo Shamanism From Southern Venezuela], that was recorded in the ’70s—Venezuelan birds. The birds there sound completely different. They sound like R2-D2, or techno. There’s one beautiful sound that ended up in the beginning of ‘The Gate’, a recording of these birds that Venezuelans believe are the ghosts of fetuses. If they have stillborns or young children that die, they think they go into the jungle and make these sounds.” (Read more at http://www.nme.com/news/music/bjork-recorded-birds- sounded-like-r2-d2-new album-2160172#8a0Gf0mflvwzBesO.99)
Credits:
Choreography and performance: Toni Steffens
Set design: Toni Steffens, Frits van Diehl
Costume: Avoidstreet
Lights and technic: Martin Kaffarnik, Vincent Romijn
Sound edit: Toni Steffens
Featured artists in order of appearance:
Björk (The gate), Jovica aka Jovica Storer (freesound.org) Akumasanti ( Little Dragon Pretty Girl xxx) Leosalom, Pan14, botha9johann, arseniiv, copyc4t, RebekahDay (freesound.org)
Production: Stephanie Luehn, Charlot van der Meer, SNDO Amsterdam
Advice: Mehraneh Atashi, Katerina Bakatsaki
Warm thanks to : Michael Scerbo, Ana Vujanociv, Andrea Zavala, Sigrid Stigsdatter, Michele Rizzo, Renee Copraij, Rodrigo Sobarzo, Stefa Govaart
Reviews:
When a tadpole is growing into a frog, its electromagnetic field already holds the information of its legs and body shape. In the essay ‘TransMaterialities’ , Karen Barad refers to a (cruel) experiment,where the electromagnetic field of tadpoles were changed by scientists, which resulted in them growing additional limbs, eyes in different places and other bodily mutations. Following this experiment, scientists concluded that tadpole bodies do not have fixed or defined borders. They carry their suggested futures, just as our DNA, bones and cells carry our inherited pasts, eventually manifesting anew in future times to come. The space in the air, for tadpoles at least, is sensible, intelligent, loaded with information and very much subject to intervention, interaction, and, as the experiment shows, open, porous, vulnerable and corruptible. Space is a part of the process of being, likewise it is part or the extension of beings. Space is oftentimes thought as filled with unlimited potential and possibilities. Yet the tadpoles are connected to space, as space is connected to them, from material (the body of the tadpole) to immaterial (the electromagnetic field of the tadpole) and across timelines. Space is specific enough to carry planted seeds for futures, while those are not necessarily fixed. For it to become a frog in the future, space needs be strong enough to carry information and at the same time remember how a frog is created. What is a future vision is also a memory. Such operation of space could be seen as a form of a creative, spatial training. When training starts in the brain, and something new (or old) is learned, neurones craft new pathways. The brain changes. Being enters the space, and the space enters being.
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