Choreography is a score for a bodily or movement practice that purveys a politics in which power relations and ideological effects are rendered visible. My work with choreography enters domains beyond the aesthetic, and to me any piece of choreography can be seen as the product of choices that represent the social and political consequences of a given action.
I am interested in how choreography and the moving body create conditions of resistance to different hegemonic regimes such as colonialism and capitalism as well as magico-religious belief systems. I think of the intercultural encounter as performative, as a choreographed activity. And I think of any kind of oppression or discrimination as a type of choreopolicing -- a prevention of any formation or expression of the political. How do choreopolitics interact with the choreopolicing of oppression within/during any intercultural encounter? Using choreographic practice as a frame of reference, can new resonances be developed through the innovative spirit of creative praxes to sensitise the body to meaningful intercultural encounters?
In this residency, I will be exploring questions like:
How does the project of 'decolonising the mind' relate to the project
of 'decolonising the body'?
What are the possibilities of other ways of thinking about interculturality
through the bodypolitics of knowledge?
Is it possible to learn from the movements of the Other in an intercultural
encounter?
Rajinder Singh
MA Race, Migration and Decolonial Studies
Artist in Residence, 2019 - 2021
‘Decolonising the Body, Decolonising the Mind’
MA RMDS-based collaborations:
Circus as Intercultural Encounter
Solidarity Lab 2020
SOC30570 Solidarities, Power & Difference 2021