Organologic Dance: Corporeality at the Wane of the Anthropocene

peer-reviewed article

Dorota Sajewska

dorota.sajewska@rub.de
University of Zurich (Germany)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0904-6761

Abstract

The author’s point of departure is Bernard Stiegler’s new approach to “organological” corporeality, which encompasses not only biological, but also technological life, organic matter and organized inorganic matter. Based on a comparative analysis of two performance works, Rudy Burckhardt and Douglas Dunn’s Rubble Dance Long Island City (1991) and Tejal Shah’s Landfill Dance (2012), the text demonstrates the potential of inventive corporealities for countering entropy and the progressive disintegration of ecosystems. Although both works involve dance in landfills presented as toxic remnants of capitalism, they approach corporeality in radically different ways. The former is in line with the diagnoses of Anthropocene scholars, highlighting the importance of the human body as living matter in the context of the dead remnants of the industrial age. The latter, in turn, reveals a hybrid corporeality, transcending the dichotomy of organic and inorganic matter and manifesting itself as a network of relationalities with other systems: ecological, geological, technological. The author proposes the concept of “organologic dance” to refer to a performance that projects new technologies of survival in the spirit of the Neganthropocene.


Keywords:

corporeality, video-dance, organology, performativity, organic/inorganic

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Published
2024-09-16

Cited by

Sajewska, D. (2024) “Organologic Dance: Corporeality at the Wane of the Anthropocene”, Pamiętnik Teatralny, 73(3), pp. 125–147. doi: 10.36744/pt.1681.

Authors

Dorota Sajewska 
dorota.sajewska@rub.de
University of Zurich Germany
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0904-6761

Dorota Sajewska - cultural studies scholar, researcher in theatre, dance and performance, full professor at the Institute of Theatre Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany. Her research interests research include performative theories and practices, with a particular focus on anthropology of the body, decolonisation of knowledge and reflections on communal processes.



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