Nonfiction of Levitation

Lecture-performace

August 10, 2013, Kosmica 2013, Laboratorio Arte Alameda, Mexico City, Mexico.
June 7, 2011, Kosmica 4, The Arts Catalyst, London, UK

#levitation

Levitation – between the worlds of mythologies, science fiction, poetry, magic, science and technologies — has been perhaps the most dreamed and desired invention. In its enormous variety of incarnations, from the purest lightness of angel to diamagnetic levitation of living matter, there is something profoundly contagious about it, and no wonder its opposite, gravitation, is one of the greatest mysteries of physics (and I’d dare to say of experience) to be solved. Yet, when it comes to the tangible reality⁠, one can barely say more words than a merely body’s floating without any physical contact with solid ground or suspended in the air — what is it like to levitate. Avoiding fantasies, myths, pseudo-science and even physics (at least partially), as well as allegedly weightless phenomena like OBE, aka out-of-body experience, astral projection, and the imagination (although I believe it deserves a rigorous scrutiny), in this lecture I attempted to bring the floating ideas of levitation to the ground. With the help of six assistants and a custom designed strap harness system I performatively simulated various contemporary levitation technologies — flesh hook suspension, neutral buoyancy, aerodynamic hovering, free fall, orbiting. And in doing so, had drawn various perceptual ‘blueprints’ of lightness in terms of ‘naked’⁠ experience, or simply put, how the absence of gravitational burdensomeness is being perceived.

Walking on the Wall: an introduction to the field of design choreography

2012 October 6, National Art Gallery, Vilnius, Lithuania
Curated by Dovilė Tumpytė and Gerda Paliušytė

#lecture #performance #partcitipative #ride #design choreography

“I have in the past felt sorry for the ceilings and the walls. lt is perfectly good space, why doesn’t anyone use it?!", Trisha Brown once said while stepping out through a window to take a walk on the façade of house. The pioneer of contemporary dance, she didn't begin to explore wall walking with ballet shoes, but rather using climbing equipment. She not only created an entire new choreography vocabulary and space for dance, but also demonstrated that discoveries in choreography often arise from a change in physical surroundings or settings, in this case combining architecture with harnesses, wires and pulleys. It is this insight of hers that embodies the approach of design choreography that I am developing — creating human movements through design.

This hybrid of lecture and fairground ride reconstructed the famous American choreographer, Trisha Brown’s piece “Walking on the Wall" (1971). Unlike similar reconstructions, this re-enactment was performed not just by the author but by the audience as well — the public was given a chance to take a stroll on the façade of the National Art Gallery.