The presence of digital technologies in the fabric of everyday life in globalized, neoliberal contemporaneity is ever-expanding and was exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic (cf. Preciado 2020). From social media to facial recognition-based policing, from digital activism to social credit systems, from cloud-hosted workspaces to dating based on deep learning algorithms, from connected home devices to health-tracking apps, from big data mining to the screen-mediation of relationships: the digital participates in the construction of our sense of self and interpersonal relationships; our modes of work, social organization and forms of sociality; our sense of our bodies, identity, and belonging; our subjection to and conception of power; our spaces of living, access to culture and modes of sharing. While this proliferated digital presence – in its transcendence of political, cultural, social as well as affective and cognitive boundaries – may be qualified as an invasion, in this workshop we propose to interrogate it as a pervasion: as the process through which the digital increasingly imbues particular aspects of life, mediating and transforming societies and subjectivities. What we seek within this widespread, gradual and often unnoticeable process of pervasion is more than the disciplinary, hierarchical, constraining or the emancipatory, enhancing effects of the digital: the nuanced imbrications of both.

The workshop is an invitation to collectively reflect on the ways in which choreography responds to the physical, psychological, social, and political shifts brought about by the pervasion of the digital. Choreographic works have in recent years effectively addressed such topics as „artificial intimacy“ (Begüm Erciyas, Pillow Talk, 2019), the „hyper-presence of screens“ (Simon Ellis, Between Faces, 2018), the notion of „liveness“ (Charlotta Ruth, We Do it by Hearts, 2009), the distributed authorial voice of social media (Annie Dorsen, The Great Outdoors, 2017) and data „immortality“ (Chikako Kaido, Age of Curse, 2020). Inscribed in the framework of Critical Dance Studies (for the term cf. Martin 1998), the workshop conceives of choreography both as a cultural artifact that is part of and reflects social and political realities – often exemplifying and implementing dispositifs of discipline and power (Lepecki 2007, Allsop & Lepecki 2008) – and as a way of grasping these realities by turning a critical lens upon them – i.e., containing within itself the seeds of embodied and performative resistance (Klein & Noeth 2014). Choreography has in recent years also been interrogated in the multiplicity of its meanings (Cvejic 2015, Foster 2011, Leon 2020), while the notions and practices of expanded choreography (e.g. Spangberg 2017, Ingvartsen 2016) and social choreography (e.g. Klein 2010) further accentuate its capacity to analytically dissect or even programmatically design actions and situations beyond an autonomously construed „dance“ field. In these multifaceted manifestations, as well as in its possible disconnections from human corporeality (Portanova 2013) and its critical reflections on the notion and status of movement (Cvejic 2015), choreography can be seen as a toolbox through which our imbrication with the digital can be processed.

While the relationship of choreography to the digital has received very wide interest, this primordially lies in the technological „enhancement“ of dance as well as the shifting aesthetics and practices of choreography through its interactions with digital technologies (Dinkla & Leeker 2002, Dixon 2007, Horstkotte & Peeren 2007, Birringer 2018). The capacity of choreography to address the effects of the digital on both a personal and a collective level has been less systematically addressed. In parallel, the pervasion of the digital introduces important shifts – augmented through the Covid-19 pandemic – in the modes of work and transmission of both choreographic and theoretical research. The pervasion of the digital will constitute a space where these thematic fields can be addressed from a practical, theoretical and interdisciplinary perspective.

The workshop’s themes and processes will be organized using the structure of the anagram, as developed by Maya Deren in her work An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Film and Form (1946). The source of the anagrammatic approach in a cinematographic publication reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the project, while its multidimensional structure fosters non-linear thinking, adapted to the hyperlinked, distributed thought processes of the digital age. The workshop's anagram organizes material along two axes. The horizontal one invites explorations of the pervasion of the digital within three thematic „clouds“: Embodied subjectivities in the digital realm / Immaterial / virtual communities / Interrelating with data and algorithms. The vertical axis invites participants to approach the above-mentioned „clouds“ through different modes of address: Observing, describing, mapping / Conceptualising, arranging, configuring / Responding, acting, resisting.

We invite 20-minute contributions in multiple formats – theoretical exposé, presentation of practice, performative or interactive intervention, hybrid – by artists and theorists from relevant fields. Contributions should be loosely situated within the proposed anagram and are to be conceived as triggers for collective reflection. Based on these inputs, we will work through discussion and (digital) mind-mapping to define topics of common interest to be explored further, notably through the development of choreographic scores, translating the ideas discussed into experiential/embodied/digital formats. In order to provide ample time for exchange, the number of participants is limited to 8–10. The results of the workshop will be shared with a small audience composed of University of Bern Theatre and Dance Studies students (tbc). We plan to develop a publication as a follow-up project to the workshop, gathering the participants' contributions as well as their post-workshop reflections. Please send a 300-word abstract and a short (max 200 words) biography to johanna.hilari@itw.unibe.ch and annaleon@tutanota.com by November 15th, 2021. Please include information about the format of your presentation and any spatial/technical needs. Selected participants will be informed by December 20th, 2021. Funding will be applied for to contribute towards travel and accommodation costs; more information about this will be available in the coming months.

Bibliography:

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Johannes Birringer: Augmenting Virtuality, in: International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 14/2, July 2018, pp. 224–28.
Bojana Cvejic: Choreographing Problems. Expressive Concepts in Contemporary Dance and Performance. Performance Philosophy. Basingstoke 2015.
Maya Deren: An Anagram of Ideas on Art, Form and Film, in: Maya Deren and the American AvantGarde, edited by Bill Nichols. Berkeley 2001.
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