The Soft Animal of Your Body

‘The soft animal of our body’ er stadig i gang, men i 2016 lavede vi en række performance eksperimenter på Bora Bora i Århus – stadig med udgangspunkt i det sensoriske. Vi eksperimenterede også med en teknik hvor vi kunne tale både individuelt og til grupper via en hjelm med indbyggede transmitter. Via hjelmen fik publikum både lyriske tekster og konkrete instruktioner. I disse eksperimenter havde jeg rollen som den der skrev og transmitterede teksterne.
Dette research-arbejde resulterede senere i performancen ‘Twisted Forest’.

Tekst fra wunderland.dk om dette research project:

The Research for THE SOFT ANIMAL OF OUR BODY is a continuation of Wunderland’s work with radical physical and sensory audience participation into new fields.

With our solid background of working with the audience one by one, meeting one performer at the time, we now want to explore new fields: the audience and the performers moving together as one group. Dissolving who is who, exploring the physicality and inner dynamics in a group.

The research is an important step before the actual production, to know enough about the amount of input and guidance a group needs, how the group changes with the numbers of individuals, and how many performers are needed for a specific group size.
Furthermore we want to investigate how the live animation through sound and words influences the group dynamics. And how the common costume influences the perception and behaviour in the group.

Part of script:

SPEAKER TO ALL (instruction):

Phase 4
Name of the phase: The barrel
Purpose: There is no purpose
Rules: No killings

SPEAKER TO ALL (text):

That little black face

That little knot of anger and fear

crumbled by your mothers comments

dried out by all the things you didn’t dare that day

and that year

the kisses you didn’t want to receive

hugs that were empty, 

hollow hours in front of a screen

little black face remembers

little black face remembers

people you let into your body

dirty footsteps still printed on you

My palms touch your palms

The bones beneath my skin touches the bones inside your hand

I let the little black face close its eyes 

It’s worried wrinkles grow softer

SPEAKER TO ALL (instruction):

Let your palms meet the with the palms of your fellow travellers hands

(bully, cottonfight) – 5-7 minutes