Collapse is one of the principal methods that I've invented, as an embodied research tool within my doctoral project. It is a movement that goes from the vertical, standing biped, to the horizontal position of surrender: to the earth, to gravity, to death. Conceived as an extended time interval of moving meditation, it is not about falling, but rather about sensing the resistance that is always present within the psycho-physiology of the body: there is an energy that refuses the fall, that subverts gravity's pull, that wants to live. This resistance inside the body is what interests me, in it I imagine the possibility of 'a poetics of activism', what dance theorist Randy Martin describes as ""the inner movement of politics that is not readily detectable by standard social science frameworks"" (Knowledge LTD, 2015) I have performed Collapse in public spaces, alone and with groups of participants, most recently to mark the day scheduled for Brexit.

I am currently working on a vocabulary of choreography that is poetic, and suggestive rather than instructive, a type of guided meditation that is visual and viscerally sensorial. I would like to propose to facilitate a large-scale group Collapse for SAR2020 . There would be a 40 minute movement workshop in preparation for this, it is open to all levels. Time-allowing I would like to explore the experience of this dimension with one of the participants (or more if this is possible), by carrying out a microphenomenological interview, according to the technique developed by cognitive researcher, Claire Petitmengin. In this evocation of the Collapse interval, the aim would be to elucidate this ‘undetectable’ experience, through what Petitmengin has described as the ‘transmodal’, a realm of rhythm, intensity and fuzziness. The interviews become a way to further investigate this felt dimension and its relation to the notion of 'embodied politics' and the poetics of activism, as the creative impulse of that inner movement.

Click here to view the remains of this cancelled presentation on Research Catalogue