Malin Arnell in collaboration with Vanessa Anspaugh, Fia Backström, A.K. Burns (Video camera), Anna Craycroft, Nicole Eisenman, devynn emory, Rachel Higgins, Alhena Katsof, KOEFF / Johanna Rosenqvist (Sound), Katherine Hubbard, Zoe Leonard, Clara López Menéndez, Lydia Adler Okrent, Guadalupe Rosales and other materialities.
The two hour action Setting the Scene (2014) came about from an invitation by curators Rebecca Brooks, Daria Faïn, and Shelley Senter to engage broadly with questions of somatics, while they were asking the question “How are we mattering?”
First, the non human: electricity.
A tragedy of the commons,
arising only in the doing
Affects create a field of force that does not tend to congeal into subjectivity.
; I equate affect with materiality
Hungry for wildness,
is a two-way-street
The intimacy between being and following:
called “clownish traits”.
; I am always slightly surprised by what I do.
The melting of cause and effect
this includes (among others) efficiency, trajectory, and causality.
But just what kind of activity is this?
A dynamics of spreading cracks,
An irrational love,
that is not the realization of a plan.
As a response to this invitation, and stemming from a desire for a collective intimacy, I invited fourteen friends and colleagues to come together as a working team, to improvise and help each other with different tasks using a variety of materials (six pieces of 20’ x 50’ clear plastic sheeting; nine pieces of 4’ x 8’ foam insulation; eight large transparent balloons; fifty blue chairs; audience). We engaged in a ritual of uncertainty and trust in which we were both doing and not doing, watching and being watched, touching materials and each other, being touched and moved by objects and each other. Our breathing and the air between us became part of the soundscape made by KOEFF / Johanna Rosenqvist, together with the reading of fragments of texts by Karen Barad.
Setting the Scene (2014) two hour action, which was part of the Movement Research Festival Fall 2014: M A T T E R I N G, Danspace Project, NYC. It was later re-activated together with Vanessa Anspaugh and Magdalena Górska during Final Seminar (2015) at DOCH, School of Dance and Circus, Stockholm. Setting the Scene (again) (2016), was performed during Avhandling / Av_handling (Dissertation / Through_action) (2016), then performed by Malin Arnell, Linda Arnell, Claude Blüna, Katarina Bonnevier, Åsa Elzén, Sophie Erlandsson, Mario Fjell, Ulrika Gomm, Magdalena Górska, Annica Karlsson Rixon, Leffe Kronlöf, Indra Linderoth, Clara López Menéndez, Tilda Lovell, KOEFF / Johanna Rosenqvist (Sound), Frida Sandström, Wibke Straube, Andrea Svensson, and other materialities.
Setting the Scene (2014), 30:24 min, videographer as part of action A.K. Burns.