Dance is a way of spending time. It is a way of being in time, and with time. Dancing with other people is a way of making time a shared event, and of filling time with our being there together. It is vital and luxurious, an elaborate form of leisure.
We don't know what time will be in the future, any more than what we will be in the future. Let's imagine that most of the work will be done by computers and machines, some artificial intelligence system, leaving us with far too much free time. If human productivity becomes less important, with which occupations will we spend this wealth? Will we be indebted to productive machines, or develop a new code? Could that be an organic code?
For this workshop we will project ourselves in a speculated future, devising dances and practices that fill no other function that alleviating an absence of time pressure, yet without the guarantee of continuity. We will invent ways of engaging in time and with each other under conditions that have little to do with what we experience nowadays, balancing between utopia and dystopia; between boundlessness and shapelessness; between intimacy and anonymity.
This workshop proposal stems from an encounter between choreographer Alice Chauchat and film-maker Clemens von Wedemeyer, and is an invitation to join their conversation about social relationships, the activity of dancing and what those might turn into. Interested participants can take part in a shooting on the weekend of the same week, for Wedemeyer's upcoming science fiction movie in Vienna.
Participants of the workshop will be able to become characters of Clemens von Wedemeyer's new film ("Last Avatar“), with two shooting days between Saturday 08 and Monday 10 August, directly after the workshop. Interested participants should book and contact Lotte Schreiber (email: lotte_s@gmx.net) for preparations and conditions ideally before July.
Alice ChauchatClemens von Wedemeyer
