WHAT WOOD I BE

What Wood I Be is a performance that emerged out of necessity for a deeper connection to the woods, to all the woods. It is about the im/possibilities of intra-acting with a wooden pallet. It is a physical encounter between two bodies, exploring how to move, vibrate and swirl together. By shifting human perception of the object towards being a subject and a body, there is the opportunity then, for the human body to gain an enhanced sensation of materiality. The risk of recovering this feeling of materiality is to get in touch with the fears and worries of the body’s fleshness, vulnerability, and mortality, but this may also come accompanied by a heightened renewed excitement of being alive. In this sense, affection and vulnerability suddenly become a terrain in which the relation between the performer and the non-human body can take place.

What Wood I Be es un trabajo que surge de la necesidad de establecer una conexión profunda con los bosques, los árboles, la madera. Es una exploración sobre las im/posibilidades de ‘intra-actuar’ con un palé de madera. Es un encuentro físico entre dos cuerpos, explorando cómo moverse, girar y vibrar juntos. Al cambiar la percepción humana del objeto para que sea considerado sujeto y cuerpo, se abre la oportunidad para que el cuerpo humano adquiera una sensación expandida de materialidad. El riesgo de recuperar esta materialidad es el de entrar en contacto con el miedo y la preocupación propia de la carne y de la mortalidad del cuerpo, pero a su vez acompañado de una renovada y elevada sensación de vitalidad. En este sentido, el afecto y la vulnerabilidad se convierten de repente en un terreno en el cual puede tener lugar la relación entre el performer no-humano y el performer humano.

“The neologism ‘intra-action’ signifies the mutual constitution of entangled agencies. That is, in contrast to the usual ‘interaction’, which assumes that there are separate individual agencies that precede their interaction, the notion of intra-action recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their intra-action.”

“Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning”
Karen Barad

“(...) the notion of intra-action constitutes a radical reworking of the traditional notion of causality (...) the world’s radical aliveness comes to light in an entirely nontraditional way that reworks the nature of both relationality and aliveness (vitality, dynamism, agency).”

“Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning”
Karen Barad

performer, choreography & concept

Feli Navarro

guidance

VestAndPage

choreography assistance

Clàudia Ferrando

photography

Fenia Kotsopoulou

production

Home of Performance Practices

festival commission