Abstract
AbstractThis article approaches dance through the lens of new materialist theories (speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, thing theory, posthumanism, etc.), considering the possibility that objecthood need not align with inertness and movement need not be excluded from the realm of the substantive. Deploying a practice-based methodology informed by participation in works by Simone Forti and Maria Hassabi, as well her own movement investigation, the author considers theoretical positions that counter the persistent association of dance with ephemerality while also broadly questioning the relationship between dance and theory.
Highlights
I n the summer of 2011, I stood barefoot in the concrete courtyard outside of The Box Gallery in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, sweating, knees bent, meeting the weight of bodies held aloft in Simone Forti’s corporeal sculpture, Huddle
A partial list of these interconnected discourses includes speculative realisms, object-oriented ontologies, thing theory, actor-network theory, contemporary animisms and vitalisms, deep ecology, critical plant studies, posthumanisms, and—to borrow a phrase made popular by Jane Bennett (2010)—“vibrant” materialism
In the case of PLASTIC, this means reflecting on the conditions of display that render things—including movements and the people who perform them—perceptually “available” to museum audiences
Summary
I n the summer of 2011, I stood barefoot in the concrete courtyard outside of The Box Gallery in Los Angeles’s Chinatown, sweating, knees bent, meeting the weight of bodies held aloft in Simone Forti’s corporeal sculpture, Huddle. Long after its first appearances in performance and in text, Huddle’s acquisition by MoMA (along with several of Forti’s other works choreographed between 1960 and 1961) indicates a great deal about the material conditions that the dance demands for itself. Art historian Megan Metcalf details a six-year-long trajectory of discussion and logistics culminating in the 2015 purchase, pinpointing the “minimal, straightforward qualities” that, in addition to their status as harbingers of conceptualism and minimalism, make Forti’s early works compelling candidates for museum acquisition She goes on to write, that Huddle “strained the museum’s definition and purpose,” with respect to the dance’s liveness, its intimacy, and its tendency to scramble “hierarchies between objects and people, artwork and audience” (Metcalf 2018, 148–149). In the case of PLASTIC, this means reflecting on the conditions of display that render things—including movements and the people who perform them—perceptually “available” to museum audiences
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