Autopoiesis Apparatus ⎻ Site-Specific Research & Performance

Together, Julie and Madelyn spent a month developing a practice of site-specific psychosynesthetic sympoiesis - an automatic, anachoreographic co-becoming between sound and dance, ecology and technology, and more-than-human perception. The project was initiated during a month-long residency at AADK in Blanca, Spain, where we began researching the dynamics of holobionts, digital twins, different ways of sensing within the natural mountainous vistas of the Ricote Valley.

Our research was theory and practice based, with a shared propensity toward multidisciplinarity, weaving backgrounds in psychology, neuroscience, and the arts. In the words of Ursula K. LeGuin, “Science explicates; poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe. We need the languages of both science and poetry to save us from merely stockpiling endless “information” that fails to inform our ignorance or our responsibility.” Taking this a step further, we began to investigate power dynamics in synaesthetic psycho-sensing and non-human ways. We concurred that information, in the form of “data,” is a valid way of perceiving the world, from which we employ to draw a material and non-material bridge between ours and Earth’s digital twins.

Inspired by the rural environment of AADK’s location in rural Spain, we began preliminary practice-based research within the environment. This exploration resulted in spontaneous, site-specific collaborations between movement and sound - most of which were derived from  layered field recordings and automatic musicking with foraged materials and the body. The movement/sound dialogue investigates the notion that all beings ~ mountain, human, branch, stone, digital imprint ~ are boundariless yet carry a weighty sense of self. Working sympoietically invites us to soften the individual and uplift the voices of the vital multitude. It calls on us to reframe hierarchies, binaries, and empirical dogma to understand the slices of co-inhabiting a (non)place.

Special thank you to the people of Blanca, AADK, and especially Giuliana Grippo for your organizing work and supporting our project.