- Michel Foucault, Cultural Geography, Space and Place, Public Space, Museums, Museums and Identity, and 8 morePostcolonial Studies, Postcolonial Theory, Performance Studies, Dance Studies, Dance History, History of Museums, Collaboration Of Archives, Libraries And Museums, and Interdisciplinarityedit
This essay contributes to the performative branch of somaesthetics through an exploration of the triangulated relationships among performers, audiences, and sites. Dancer agency, the multisensory nature of audience experiences, and... more
This essay contributes to the performative branch of somaesthetics through an exploration of the triangulated relationships among performers, audiences, and sites. Dancer agency, the multisensory nature of audience experiences, and embodied encounters with non-traditional dance sites provide lenses for analyzing the dynamic relationships between these elements as live performance unfolds. Through theoretical frameworks and two dance case studies—TooMortal (2012) by Shobana Jeyasingh and Dusk at Stonehenge (2009) by Nina Rajarani—the authors draw upon somaesthetics to examine the holistic comingling of embodied aesthetic appreciation and physical environments.
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Arts and technology field scan commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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This essay explores the bodily nature of Michel Foucault’s heterotopias as a means of delving into the complexities of access to and representation in museums today. Informed by contemporary debates around postcoloniality and museum... more
This essay explores the bodily nature of Michel Foucault’s heterotopias as a means of delving into the complexities of access to and representation in museums today. Informed by contemporary debates around postcoloniality and museum histories and practices, this essay is situated at the ambiguous intersection of embodied experience, spatial theory, and physical museum spaces. Predominately considered in relation to spatial difference up until now, adding a corporeal element to the analysis of the heterotopia both connects the theory to Foucault’s accompanying lecture, “The Utopian Body,” and provides a bridge between this concept and pertinent issues of memory, identity, agency, and the plurality of voices that orbit museum collections. In this respect heterotopia is a space of possibility as well as a reminder of boundaries, borders, and limitations. To get to the intimate vantage point of the mobile and multifaceted individual, this essay proposes viewing the heterotopia via distinct, yet simultaneous and intertwined levels of scale. Providing a flexible structure, these levels enable the analysis of spatial difference as emerging from and embedded within broad social landscapes, internal spatial ordering, and individual encounters. Within this frame, material, conceptual, and interactive discourse is made manifest in the “other space” of the museum. Neither structure nor static archive, the museum is a potential forum or nexus, a threshold, and the starting point for conversations that expand far beyond its doors.
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Philosopher Richard Shusterman neologized the term “somaesthetics” to develop a branch of embodied philosophy that is explicitly open to combining theory and practice, considering the body to be both a seat of knowledge and a means of... more
Philosopher Richard Shusterman neologized the term “somaesthetics” to develop a branch of embodied philosophy that is explicitly open to combining theory and practice, considering the body to be both a seat of knowledge and a means of engaging with the world. This article applies somaesthetics to understanding and empowering dance audiences, contributing to the practical branch of somaesthetics via two tracks—cultivating awareness and the ability to express experiences. Using sensory ethnography and autoethnography, we unpack the multisensory experiences of audiences via two site-based dance case studies, TooMortal by Shobana Jeyasingh (2012-2014), set in historic churches; and Maaya (2012) by Gauri Sharma Tripathy, Shivani Sethia, Seeta Patel, and Yamuna Devi, staged in Westminster Hall. Using the example of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), developed by Philip Yenawine and Abigail Housen, we further offer an avenue for examining how somaesthetics can be combined with the tool of open-ended questions as a means of cultivating personal aesthetic awareness and facilitating group learning. Through somaesthetics and the practical devices of auto/sensory ethnography and VTS, we underscore the open-ended nature of arts encounters; multiple forms of knowledge; and the combination of subjective experience and larger contexts and stimuli.
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This essay contributes to the performative branch of somaesthetics through an exploration of the triangulated relationships among performers, audiences, and sites. Dancer agency, the multisensory nature of audience experiences, and... more
This essay contributes to the performative branch of somaesthetics through an exploration of the triangulated relationships among performers, audiences, and sites. Dancer agency, the multisensory nature of audience experiences, and embodied encounters with non-traditional dance sites provide lenses for analyzing the dynamic relationships between these elements as live performance unfolds. Through theoretical frameworks and two dance case studies-TooMortal (2012) by Shobana Jeyasingh and Dusk at Stonehenge (2009) by Nina Rajarani-the authors draw upon somaesthetics to examine the holistic comingling of embodied aesthetic appreciation and physical environments.
This essay contributes to the performative branch of somaesthetics through an exploration of the triangulated relationships among performers, audiences, and sites. Dancer agency, the multisensory nature of audience experiences, and... more
This essay contributes to the performative branch of somaesthetics through an exploration of the triangulated relationships among performers, audiences, and sites. Dancer agency, the multisensory nature of audience experiences, and embodied encounters with non-traditional dance sites provide lenses for analyzing the dynamic relationships between these elements as live performance unfolds. Through theoretical frameworks and two dance case studies-TooMortal (2012) by Shobana Jeyasingh and Dusk at Stonehenge (2009) by Nina Rajarani-the authors draw upon somaesthetics to examine the holistic comingling of embodied aesthetic appreciation and physical environments.
Research Interests:
Philosopher Richard Shusterman neologized the term “somaesthetics” to develop a branch of embodied philosophy that is explicitly open to combining theory and practice, considering the body to be both a seat of knowledge and a means of... more
Philosopher Richard Shusterman neologized the term “somaesthetics” to develop a branch of embodied philosophy that is explicitly open to combining theory and practice, considering the body to be both a seat of knowledge and a means of engaging with the world. This article applies somaesthetics to understanding and empowering dance audiences, contributing to the practical branch of somaesthetics via two tracks—cultivating awareness and the ability to express experiences. Using sensory ethnography and autoethnography, we unpack the multisensory experiences of audiences via two site-based dance case studies, TooMortal by Shobana Jeyasingh (2012-2014), set in historic churches; and Maaya (2012) by Gauri Sharma Tripathy, Shivani Sethia, Seeta Patel, and Yamuna Devi, staged in Westminster Hall. Using the example of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), developed by Philip Yenawine and Abigail Housen, we further offer an avenue for examining how somaesthetics can be combined with the tool of open-ended questions as a means of cultivating personal aesthetic awareness and facilitating group learning. Through somaesthetics and the practical devices of auto/sensory ethnography and VTS, we underscore the open-ended nature of arts encounters; multiple forms of knowledge; and the combination of subjective experience and larger contexts and stimuli.