Space of the Nameless
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Bonarjee, Dominique Savitri. 2024. Space of the Nameless. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]
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Text (Space of the Nameless)
ART_thesis_BonarjeeD_2024.pdf - Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (84MB) | Preview |
Abstract or Description
A sudden loss of self: time morphs, I forget my name, who am I? Rather than pathologizing these personal experiences of dissociation and disturbance of the stable ‘I’, they become the focus of this practice-based thesis, offering a path towards engaging with the unknown in art research. How can ‘detaching the I’ mean forgetting my humanness, allowing me to attune to diverse nonhuman presences invoked by my creative process? By improvising with multiple agencies, can I extend the notion of dance, and make the matter of my body an interface for listening to more-than-human tempos, vibrations, and rhythms?
The purpose of my methodology is to devise, test out, and repeat practices of detaching the I that gradually finetune a ‘transmodal’ sensory disposition of curiosity and reverence towards the unknown. The ‘detached eye’, a koan (in Chan/Zen Buddhism a linguistic device for propagating embodied knowledge) encountered in my Butoh dance research, mutates into the ‘detached I’. This mutation is guided by wisdom traditions that nurture self-porosity: Sufi whirling, Daoist martial arts, yoga, Buddhist meditation. From this ecology of practices, I invent dances of collapsing, wobbling, and liquefying, extending these dances into an (expanded) studio practice that supports material innovation and open-ended processes. I co-create a copper sound suit, concoct fragile skin-like membranes, collect straight sticks, cultivate slime moulds. In the writing, I weave together microphenomenology with écriture feminine, to re-energize the sensory charge of these opaque journeys. My citational practice prioritizes orality, lesser-known voices, and polydisciplinarity. The unusual presentation of the thesis is isomorphic with the curvilinearity of the research trajectory.
The original contribution combines practices for ‘detaching the I’, communicated in the written thesis, and their activation within the viva installation conceived as an instrument that amplifies a more-than-human rhythmic field. The research roadmap is transmitted and vivified through four pedagogical koans. They aim to disorient the ‘I’ from time efficiencies perpetuated by dominant epistemes, seeking to safeguard a Space of the Nameless, a way to generate art and knowing within unknown cosmologies.
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Item Type: |
Thesis (Doctoral) |
| Identification Number (DOI): |
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| Keywords: |
Embodied research, art practice, expanded field of dance, Butoh dance, non-Western spiritual traditions, nonduality, nonlinear time, liquidity, collapse, dissociation |
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| Date: |
30 June 2024 |
| Item ID: |
37224 |
| Date Deposited: |
05 Jul 2024 14:29 |
| Last Modified: |
05 Jul 2024 14:34 |
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URI: |
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