trance lecture dance

In collaboration with Thomas Proksch. Critical Techno is a trance lecture dance meditation — a two hour collective journey in-between listening, dancing, words, sounds, beats, sweat, constellations and bodies in space towards an unknown destination. A sea of voices and sounds through which we to swim/move in order to understand and unfold their momentary and collective meaning. Theoretical texts are combined with poetic texts to become a somatic score, creating a journey where listening becomes an embodied experience, with a desire to give voice to the underrepresented — feminist, fantastic, occult, queer — writers, theories and concepts, merging them into a new story. The hypnotic voice as in a guided meditation takes the audience on a collective imaginary trip. The music is eclectic, from field recordings to drum beats, always referencing the techno culture with a wink, supporting the transformative experience of the crowd. Could dance parties become moments of collective reflection? How can we use joy and natural highs as catalysers for understanding?

There are so far 3 editions of Critical Techno: Tumbling Wor(l)ds / A Channeling Body / Biomorphia.

photography Lila Neutre

TUMBLING WOR(L)DS

Critical Techno #1 / Tumbling Wor(l)ds examines the relation of bodies with their (architectural) environments. The New Local / Cityland / Kaai Theater, October 2018

SOURCES

Sarah Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life
Judith Butler, Notes toward a performative theory of assembly: Bodies in alliance and the politics of the street
Samuel Butler, Life and Habit
Madeline Gins and Arakawa, Architectural Body
Erin Manning, Relationscapes
Erin Manning, Choreography as Mobile Architecture
Sadie Plant, Zeros and Ones
Starhawk, The spiral dance
Miranda Tufnell and Chris Crickmay, Body Space Image
Kuniichi Uno, The Genesis of an Unknown Body

video camera: Naïmé Perrette, photography: Stine Sampers

A Channeling Body

Critical Techno #2 / A Channeling Body unfolds questions around otherworldly body experiences: possession and channeling. February 2019 @Coupé Décalé / La Raffinerie Brussels, July 2019 @Lounge Impulstanz Vienna

features excerpts from the following texts:

Anita Berber, Cocaine
Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1947-1955
Akwaeke Emezi, Freshwater
Arun Saldanha, Psychedelic White
Ben Harper, an Ode to the Night
David Morehouse, Remote Viewing: The Complete User’s Manual for Coordinate Remote Viewing
Bronislaw Szerszynski, Plantetary Spirit
Chris Crickmay and MirandaTufnell, A Widening Field: Journeys in Body and Imagination
E.E. Evans- Pritchard, Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande
Erika Bourguignon, Multiple Personality, Possession Trance, & the Psychic Unity of Mankind
Lenore Kandel, Peyote Walk
Maya Deren, Divine Horsemen
Mina Loy, Lunar Baedeker
Terence Mc Kenna, Food of the Gods
Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough
Osho, And Now And Here
Ruy Blanes and Diana Espirito Santo, The Social Life of Spirits
Roger Callois, Mimicry and Legendary Psychaesthenia
Starhawk, Dreaming the Dark
Starhawk, Spiral Dance
Yoko Ono, Grapefruit

video camera: Frederik Aerts, photography Dymphie Lemmens

BIOMORPHIA

In Biomorphia we are exploring the relations between human and nonhuman entities. Ranging from mythological stories to indigenous cultures’ totem and spirit animals, science fiction and horror, we want to look into the mysteries of the substances we are made of and in relation with; our organisms and the micro and macrocosmos that is unfolding on different levels. The non-human entities that are part of our cycle of exchange. Becoming animal: the text-compilation brings attention to our animal nature, and tells different tales of shape-shifting and human-animal metamorphosis, to invent a new species future.

previous and upcoming presentions: June 2020: workingtitle festival Brussels, September 2020: BUDA no party bootcamp Kortrijk, May 2021: Fondation Fiminco, Paris, July 2021: Tanznacht, Berlin, December 2021: Le Generateur / Centre Wallonie Bruxelles, Paris, August 2022: Konvooi Festival Bruges

Text sources:

Becoming Animal, David Abram
Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram
Life on Land, Emilie Conrad
A Widening Field, Miranda Tufnell and Chris Crickmay
The Beast within—Anthrozoomorphic Identity and Alternative Spirituality
in the Online Therianthropy Movement, Venetia Laura Delano Robertson
Life and Habit, Samuel Butler
Thinking with Animals—new Perspectives in Anthropomorphism,
Lorraine Daston and Gregg Mitman
Sensitive Chaos, Theodor Schwenk
Animal Subjects—an ethical Reader in a Posthuman World, Jodey Castricano
Mutants and Mystics, Jeffrey J. Kripal
The Case of Animals versus Man before the King of the Jinn / A translation from the Epistles of the Brethren of Purity, translated by Lenn E. Goodman and Richard McGregor
The Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas
Mysterious Creatures—a Guide to Cryptozoology, George M. Eberhart
Animal Body inhuman Face, Alphonso Lingis
Collective Sensations, Alice Chauchat
Dreaming the Dark, Starhawk

critical techno