Ecosomatiques

Politiser l’écologie depuis les gestes

Politicising ecology through action
By Joanne Clavel, Research Fellow at the CNRS, Université Paris Cité, as part of the first summer school of the Malvaux forest ecomatic exploration centre organised by Eve Chariatte and Gregory Stauffer.
Conference in French (English support): Thursday 22 August at 6.30pm at the Kunsthaus Biel Library, followed by an aperitif outside.

Somatic practices are making increasing inroads into the world of choreographic arts. Whether dancers are using somatics for purely technical purposes – to improve the amplitude and efficiency of their movements – or for interpretive purposes – to develop the qualitative and expressive nuances of their movements – or for the pleasure of moving and sharing a practice, they all want to nourish their movements by freeing themselves from pedagogies based solely on the reproduction of an imposed form. The body once again becomes a ‘laboratory’ for experimenting with perception, attention and what moves us internally, like an invitation to travel. The use of the term ‘soma’ marks an inventive twist on the word ‘body’, so often considered to be anhistorical, substantial and universal. We will return to this history of somatics through the figures of Moshe Feldenkrais, Bonnie B Cohen and Anna Halprin, each of whom developed their own somatic techniques.

Often based on the construction of situations to be explored, making subjective experience a ‘site of knowledge’ that has been constructed and tested, somatic practices can also seek to ‘undo’ gestures, to ‘deconstruct’ or ‘displace’ habits. It is in this interstice, where gestures and environments are co-constructed, that I will attempt to politicise somatic gestures in the light of ecological disasters and thus develop ecosomatic thought-practice