Moving Matter: A methodology for material-led collaborations

Abstract

Interdisciplinary movement artists and educators Rob Kitsos and Meagan Woods share the process behind Moving Matter: material-led collaborative choreographies, a research-creation project that offers a methodology for rethinking the dynamism between raw materials, garments, and the body. Moving Matter steers the locus of choreography and wearable design away from human hierarchy to instead support truer collaboration amongst all moving materials, both human and non-human. In a challenge to normative structures where costumery operates ‘in service’ of dance, the textile designs for Moving Matter do not support the complete autonomy and freedom of moving humans; the wearables have striking characteristics of their own that limit what the human body can do. In establishing parameters, we intend not to reverse the hegemony of human-led design to human-suppressed design, but to re-recognize the agency of all matter through material-led collaborations that support distributed power and collective, innovative approaches to making. This paper details the artists’ studio process and their methodology template for material-led collaborative process that can be adapted for practices within and beyond performance and art disciplines.