Autopoietic on #WordyMonday

Sharing performed by Louise Ahl at Nottdance, (c) Carole Edrich 2013

In talking to Louise I discovered that this work in progress started when she decided to investigate the relationship between critic, artist and audience. I was very lucky to see it as I had expected to have to return to London before it was performed. The work progressed during her residency at Dance4 and was performed at Nottdance on Saturday afternoon.

The programme says ‘Intercourse plays with the idea of the relationship between critic, performer and audience as a sexual act. It is a dance discourse not solely based on written or spoken communication but through the action of creating performance.’ However, as often happens in such situations, the work had moved on from there and for me at least, had developed two distinct perspectives.

Louise invited the audience to a nearby cafe to discuss the work afterwards, during which a number of interested parties gave her feedback as to how it might be taken forward. One suggestion was that while the relationships between critic performer and audience had provided a good foundation, they should be dropped in favour of a more ambiguous relationship. Another that she might like to consider the two major messages her work had just presented.

I’ll review this piece later, for now I’ve posted it in response to the suggestion by Chris Kubiak to use Autopoietic as a WordyMonday theme. Autopoiesis is the process whereby an organisation reproduces itself; effectively the action of a self-producing system. I choose these dance images to represent Autopoietic because the dance research is an act of self production, the acts of reproduction with chairs in the performance could be considered to be self production, the relationship between critics artist(s) and audience could be considered as a closed system of self-reproduction and in inviting Louise to develop the theme in residence, Dance4 itself has performed an autopoietic act.