Anonymous
General Note:
[…] Ellipses Journal for Creative Research endeavours to make bare the process of research and development in creative and artistic research. This is for readers / viewers an opportunity and mechanism to see the types of academic critique engaged with creative research and to make visible the responses and development.
The following peer review was produced blind and in process, the artist / author has subsequently been given the opportunity to respond and develop both the theoretical and interactive parts of the article before publication. What you see published has been edited post this review.
Peer Review 1: Monsters & Fossils
Reviewer: Anonymous
Which aspects of the submission are of interest / relevance and why?
Of particular interest in this piece is its aim to decentre prescribed categorizations – of bodies, movement, inter/subjectivity, and perceptions of dance performance. In that decentring, there is a move towards decolonizing representational aesthetics, challenging the viewer to engage with uncharacteristic shapes that the bodies generate, formed by shadows, physical materiality, and light, and to derive a sense of meaning from the simultaneous organization and dismantling of systems of classification.
This move to reframe – indeed to restructure – an embodied process of becoming an independent, though not isolated, entity (of the merged bodies separating to “become two subjectivities”) draws on pressing ideas of how to co-exist through/with difference and how to articulate alterity (to undo/redo potentially oppressive systems of taxonomic evaluation). The subject matter is relevant in terms of confronting power structures that seek to define, and in turn value, certain ontologies and epistemologies over others.
How are the artistic and research outcomes represented?
The photographs of the dancers call to mind the question of archiving live performance, and especially archiving processes of movement. The connection between taxonomy and dance archiving, while vital, is only subtly implied, and could warrant an explicit address in the write-up. The images present a mode of preservation of once-present, now-absent live bodies in motion. Having not seen the performance live, I can only comment on my perception of these images – that they depict the human body in amorphous ways, where sometimes the skeletal frame of a foot or hand is perceptible and other times the bodies do look more-than-human, even monstrous. This juxtaposition of the representation within the images themselves – of fossilized and monstrous aspects of the human/maybe other-than-human form – ask the viewer to re-think the relationship between bearing witness and attempting to classify. In this way, the photographs express the duality of what is known and what is as-yet unknown, and the powerful (potentially misused) role of the viewer – the taxonomist – in prescribing how the known and unknown co-exist. By creating a dynamic interface, where the photos constantly shift in response to a drag of the mouse, the piece unsettles the capacity for these images – as archives – to act as object remnants (fossils) to be examined and understood. In looking at the photos, there is only a spectral sense of what was – a sign of something that took shape – and we are asked to consider the implications of our spectatorship of those forms, not as diagrammatic but fluid categorizations.
The articulation of methodology could be enhanced with reference to current dance scholarship, particularly on improvisation, awareness, and agency. Bojana Cvejic’s 2015 book on European dance and performance is listed as a reference, though it is not explicitly cited in the write-up. The work’s aim to de-centre “colonially scripted readings of dance performance” could be supported with direct citation, from Cvejic and/or scholars such as Royona Mitra, Vida Midgelow, or certain contributors (re: decolonizing dance) to Sherril Dodds’ 2019 edited collection The Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies. The score does offer a sense of the dancer/researchers’ process – of the mode of engagement – and works well as an appearing/disappearing overlay across the photographs. The performative writing of the dancers is also effective in this way.
How well does the design support the submission?
The photographic images do demonstrate the weaving/unweaving of entities, which explores the theoretical distinction between the author’s trouble between fossil as memory and monster as imagination (and the two – fossil/monster, memory/imagination – as inherently interconnected).
While the score and the performers’ reflective writing add to the experience of the images and contribute to an understanding of how the embodied practice might have been enacted/felt, the writing on the other image squares feels out of place. In particular, the square that references Mbembe and hauntology seems cursory. It might find a better place in the write-up, as the spectral nature of the archive/material remnant is relevant to this work.
A note about formatting: In the second line of photos from the top, the text in the far-right photo beginning with “The workings of the dance…” appears to be cut off at the bottom when the text is fully expanded across the photo.
When I drag my mouse over the photo, right before the text expands across it, I can briefly see that the phrase “At the end the two figures separate and become two” ends with “subjectivities.” Otherwise, this last word is cut off. This descriptive text, like the hauntology text, could be repositioned as part of the write-up instead of overlaid.
Are there any ethical or legal concerns?
None
Conclusions and and pre publication revision:
Reading Foucault through Mbembe offers a productive way to comment on the colonial structures that underpin categorizations of representation, aesthetics, and dance performance. The photographic images of the dancers in process demonstrate a practice of movement creation predicated on undoing/redoing representational forms of dance.
In my opinion, there needs to be a stronger link (referentially) to contemporary dance theory, especially about improvisation, agency, and decolonial practices/methods. This point of reference will clarify the methodology. I would also recommend reconsidering some of the overlaid text on images (aside from the score and performative reflections). It detracts somewhat from the affective potential of the images as they transform when you scroll over them. The cursory reference to hauntology, for instance, could be more overtly addressed in the write-up, along with its connection to dance archiving, which this piece suggests but does not make clear.
Anonymous
General Note:
[…] Ellipses Journal for Creative Research endeavours to make bare the process of research and development in creative and artistic research. This is for readers / viewers an opportunity and mechanism to see the types of academic critique engaged with creative research and to make visible the responses and development.
The following peer review was produced blind and in process, the artist / author has subsequently been given the opportunity to respond and develop both the theoretical and interactive parts of the article before publication. What you see published has been edited post this review.
Peer Review 2: Monsters & Fossils
Reviewer: Anonymous
Which aspects of the submission are of interest / relevance and why?
The article “Monsters & Fossils” poses the question how it is possible for dancing bodies to free themselves from essentialised notions of identity and representation.
The artists, inspired by Michel Foucault, use the division of monsters, as figures of the imagination, and fossils, as figures excavated from memory, to reconfigure the sensual perception in the viewer and create space for imagination.
The artists then, with reference to Achille Mbembe, take a critical look at this dichotomy and ask whether it is not possible to explore questions about the idea of identities as a fluid spectrum.
The two dancers use their constantly moving bodies as research subjects. They approach the materiality of their bodies by means of scores in which the relations of their own physicality and their movement in time and space are explored.
In a further step, they reflect on how these body configurations can be perceived by the viewer, and in time become tangible as body parts (“less than body”), and as figures of imagination (“more than body”). Light supports the transformation in the perception of the bodies in that it both reveals and conceals.
The approach of the research question by means of dance illuminates both the experience of the dancers’ bodies (being a body), and the perception of these bodies by others (having a body). The article suggests the potential of freeing the body from the duality of “monsters” and “fossils”. To this end, they evoke “ghosts” and “phantoms”, as they claim these have not been included in any classification system in the European science project.
How are the artistic and research outcomes represented?
The aim of the artists is described quite adequately.
It would be desirable to hear more about their motivation to free themselves from the “taxonomic trap” of monsters and fossils and the implications that come with it, with reference to Foucault and Mbembe.
Practically, the two dancers’ initial position has their bodies close together, appearing as one being. This appears sometimes as more than just two bodies and becomes something else in the imagination, and sometimes appears as an entanglement of body parts. This effect is successful.
The transformability of the bodies is explored in a variety of ways in the scores, exploring gravity, temporality, melting movements, surfaces, forms of mobility as an eight-limbed organism.
In the implementation of the performance, through movement and sensing in dance, as well as through the reflection of these, the researchers gain new knowledge about the imaginability and representation of their bodies.
How well does the design support the submission?
The project is first described in a concise text with its concerns, questions, methodology and theoretical classification. If one clicks further on to the medially prepared presentation of the project, the screen fills up with numerous photos arranged in a rectangular format, in which bodies, body parts and figures can be seen in the most diverse arrangements and entanglements.
The arrangement of the photos changes as the reader moves the cursor across the screen. This is an interesting effect and brings the illustrated bodies in motion. It would be even more exciting if some of the pictures were not still images but moving images from the dance performance.
The sharing of the research process takes place primarily from the descriptive perspective of the dancers. The images offer only a vague idea of how the bodies transform in dance and evoke new perspectives for the audience. As a reader, it would be even more intriguing to see dance in its moving form, so that one can watch the fluid movements of the bodies in their process of becoming.
Are there any ethical or legal concerns?
Bojana Cvejic’s publication “Choreographing Problems” is mentioned in the sources, however no direct reference to it is made in the article. It would be preferable to mention in the article to what extent the work has taken up ideas from “Choreographing Problems”.
Conclusions and and pre publication revision:
The article addresses a very exciting question by asking how it is possible for dancing bodies to free themselves from essentialized notions of identity and representation. The intellectual inspiration by Foucault and Mbembe is also promising, although could bear further expansion. At the same time, this artistic research shows a fine sense of composition and the sensing of one’s own body in a social environment, which can be seen in the detailed description of the scores and in the experience reflections from the dancers’ perspectives.
As a revision, I suggest that Bojana Cvejic’s book “Choreographing Problems” should not only appear in the references, but that it should be mentioned in what way this book has served as inspiration. In addition, it would be interesting to hear more about the promises and implications that come with freeing the dancing bodies from the “taxonomic trap” of monsters and fossils.
Further, “hauntology” as a term finds its first and most prominent use in the work of Derrida. Mbembe does use the idea of haunting, but doesn’t seem use “hauntology”. Since the authors suggest hauntology offers a way out of European paradigms of taxonomy, the authors might expand on how Mbembe’s conception of haunting relates Derrida’s “hauntology”.
Instead of using only images, it would be desirable to include single video sequences (if available) to illustrate the fluidity of the dancing bodies. Thus, the viewer/reader would be even more involved with their own imagination.
