Isabel Costa​

In Distant Movements we close our eyes. Thus we immerse ourselves in the imagination of our own space and we can not control how we appear on the screen. We are guided through this space, at the same time real, virtual and imaginary, by a voice. It is this voice that creates a shared mental space.

In this shared space our bodies dance and interpret, each in their own way, the words coming in two different languages. It is clear that in the immediacy of our interpretations, our smallest differences occur, revealing an unsuspected value. So many bodies, so many dances: in-reproducible, inimitable. And each one gets in tune with the other and dances with the other, imagining the dance of the other in his own inner space.

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In July 2018 Daniel Pinheiro, a performer and visual artist based in Porto, Muriel Piqué, a choreographic artist, researcher and performer from Montpellier and I started working on a new project called Distant Movements. In this project the intense presence of and attention for the unseen other, experienced in another online networked project called Distant Feelings*, is extended with an exploration of our bodies in motion and the imagination of the other who also moves, who also dances.

Distant Movements wants
– to give an intimate access to a danced, dancing body
– to reveal the body to poetry / to acces a poetic body
– to activate a body at a distance
– to research – the relation body-machine, their interdependence, their entanglement, the connection, the constraints – meeting at a distance mediated by cables, the voice, our imagination, our sensations – the relation between the real space / virtual space / imagined space.
– to share the magic of dancing together over distance

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Distant Movements uses performance as a tool.

Distant Movements manifests itself as
– a research web site; an anarchive** : traces intended to be potential carriers, that can be reactivated.
– a series of online experiments
– online participatory performances accessible via zoom.us
– performances / installations in situ
– video traces some of which will have the status of a stand-alone art work.

Distant Movements can be followed here : distantmovements.tumblr.com
 

So far we had 7 sessions. In the future we will invite more people to assist in our experiments.

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* Distant Feelings is an ongoing project by Annie Abrahams, Daniel Pinheiro and Lisa Parra – an online ritual of contemplation on our situation of being together while being separated. Eyes closed, no talking.