Sketch of Togetherness – Epistemes of temporary encounters
The 2019 annual conference of the Gesellschaft für Tanzforschung (Society for Dance Research) was entitled Sens(e)ation in Dance and Research and dedicated to examining the knowledge produced by the body in dance through sense and sensation. The focus was on the extent to which this knowledge can inspire new artistic forms, stimulate research into aesthetic and performative methods and enrich the relationship between dance and scholarship. What forms of knowledge are implicated: experiential knowledge, practical knowledge, embodied knowledge, knowledge of the body, aesthetic knowledge? How are these sens(e)ations narrated, archived, observed, translated, created, communicated, remembered, documented and presented? And how can they create links to the outside world?
At this conference, Lea Moro, Alexandra Hennig and Mona De Weerdt presented the serial performance Sketch of Togetherness, a project that makes the encounter the focus of artistic research, addressing the production of meaning / sense / sensuality, touching / being touched as well as the specific qualities of physical co-presence in interpersonal relationships. It implicitly deals with what experiential and physical knowledge is produced by different professional activities and refers to the sensual materiality and socio-cultural situatedness of knowledge. Sketch of Togetherness additionally generates choreographic and technical production knowledge about new artistic formats. In their lecture, Mona De Weerdt, Lea Moro and Alexandra Hennig asked which materials, physical and sensual qualities of an encounter can be observed. Can an encounter be choreographed and how can unpredictable interpersonal dynamics become artistically productive?