Always Already still in progress: As part of our interest in hybrid forms — specifically human/plant and human/machine — we are looking at the way human movement is influenced by work and by technology and by flora — especially the way time-lapse photography allows us to see the movement of seemingly stationary plants. Osmosis is an uptake of behaviours or conditions caused by habituation or repetitive exposure, it causes work-related or other environmental motion to find its way into our bodies. Social, traditional, and popular dance co-opt — deliberately or through a kind of osmosis — movement and gesture from the conditions of daily life, sport, leisure activities, and from work, whether from centuries past or current technology. Dance adopts movement from yarn spinning, assembly line interface, digital glitches, from piece work such as carpet weaving, or the blowing of tree limbs in the wind. We move toward what we are most subject to regardless of whether that influence is consciously sought.
We have not assembled a compendium of the ways this kind of influence filters into the bodies of people who dance. We are looking specifically at entanglement and repetitious durational accumulation. We are looking at the reaching and clinging of pea shoots seeking stability from structures in their immediate vicinity. We are adopting the kind of foot work that resembles the rhythms of textile machines. As part of the durational elements of our installation some of our movement resembles repetitive motion from machines or human/machine interface. Through repetition our movement shimmers between its relations to popular dance and repetitive labour. We are looking at the way our lives become enmeshed with what most occupies us. We are looking at insignificant gestures which become significant through relentless repetition. These two threads sit interlocked.
