Choreographic Assemblage and a Multiplicity of Creativity / Rosamond Martin (2019)

The document Choreographic Assemblage and a Multiplicity of Creativity re-presents and simultaneously develops a choreographic research process which has resulted in multiple inter-woven, multi-modal, theoretical, methodological and performative outcomes. Using a Practice as Research (hereafter PaR) model, a series of interrelated and on-going investigations have been carried out around the question of how choreographic assemblage might re-present the in..consistency, in..stability, in..congruity and contradiction experienced, through the multiplicity of being, as a permeable self. Investigations considered the experience and manipulation of multiplicity in the performers; the aesthetic of it in the performance happenings; and the stimulation of the sensation of multiplicity in the audience. All research simultaneously reflected and reified permeability, and as such involved investigations into the theory and experience of embodiment, boundaries, relatedness, situatedness, perception, dis/individuation and entanglement. The research therefore continually problematizes any binary definition or form of reductionism.

The research was motivated by: the personal lived experience of permeability and multiplicity; a belief that this is a common, culturally situated, socio-political phenomenon; a desire to make work that reflects the incongruity and instability of this lived experience; a resultant need to interrogate and disassemble my own performance-making practice, based as it was on congruent, normative, classic realist narrative structures.

I propose that findings from such an investigation are best re-presented through a practical application of some of the theories, methodologies and practices that have arisen during the research. The thesis itself therefore, is both a practice in, and an example of in/congruent assemblage: a multiplicity of creativity re-presenting, problematizing and facilitating the ongoing development of an emergent, multi-modal, multi-directional multiplicity of creativity.

I curate a selection of heterogeneous research outcomes, which include choreographic performances, installations and immersive events, as well as emergent theories, practices, methodologies, and critical observations. I provide some explanations on language and terminology emergent from my practice and articulate some of the key theoretical assumptions that underlie the research, as well as providing examples of choreographic work. The document situates the research, in relation to my own personal life as well as in the contexts of dance, choreography, research and academia, and reflects on how this situated-ness affects the work in turn. As such I consider the research and its various outputs, including this document, an extended statement of my own researcher positionality.

Congruent with the intentions of the research and all component investigations, this assemblage of heterogeneous component parts is articulated and composed in such a way as to recognise the intra-action between form and content and re-present the incongruent rhizomatic multiplicity of the research itself. It is essential therefore that the document permit multiple entry points, voices and ways of knowing, in a practice of non-hierarchical, non-linear assemblage.

According to the belief that incongruent assemblage facilitates new meaning making, the document is composed in such a way as to oblige the reader to consider how they navigate it. Through such a process of meaning making in relation to an overtly biased and partial assemblage, the reader may become more aware of their own positionality and agency, and thus (in a reflection of how audiences have experienced and been entangled in the choreographic works that have emerged from this research so far) the reader’s engagement with the research contributes to its becoming.