How do we forge connections between disparate modes of expression? Can we register information in many ways simultaneously? Through kinesthetic touch, visual understanding, vocal resonance, vocal sound, verbal meaning, physical and emotional empathy? What does it mean to ask each other questions in all these different channels of information? We are working to define a performance practice that allows us to register and structure information in multiple ways.

Over the course of six months Nichole Canuso worked with six collaborator/performers (Meg Foley, Jennifer Kidwell, Guillermo Ortega, Scott McPheeters, Helen Hale, Eun Jung Choi), Oral Historian Suzanne Snider, choreographer/writer/philosopher Karinne Keithley Syers and vocal teacher Jean Rene Toussaint. Together this group of 10 artists explored and researched the relationships between modes of expression. Ellen Chenoweth was an integral part of the project, collecting reflections from participants at several points throughout the process. Click HERE for her writings which combine those reflections with her own observations.

HOW TO USE THIS SITE

The research phase of Body of Text culminated in a showing comprised of six sections, selected from a larger body of experiments that had taken place over the course of the project. We chose to work backwards from that showing in structuring this documentation of the project as a strategy for managing the proliferation of experiments and directions undertaken. Rather than giving a chronological narration of this process, commenting on this limited set of sections becomes a container for documenting the background and process specific to each section, as well as a vehicle for preserving the interrelations of ideas and material that grew (and are still growing) between the sections. Reading through each of the six sections in order will give you both a history and conceptual map of the project. You can also navigate this site using the sidebar of elements, including articulations of the different trainings and workshops, which in turn link through to the section documentations.

SPrintupport for the research and development of Body of Text has been provided by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.