18 – 24 March 2019

workshop & presentation | 23 March 19:00 -21:00

lo bil is a York University Interdisciplinary Masters student creating body-based performance art using cross-disciplinary methodologies to correlate research into process, pleasure, vulnerability, an aesthetics of feeling, and the impacts of a social location on identity. Through non-repeated performance gestures, lo generates intuitive research into academic concepts by using physical improvisation, spontaneous utterance, impulse- based scores, object manipulation, and inter relational proposals with audience. Her work has been called “raw”, “amusing”, “transparent”, and often involves creating a feedback loop with the audience.

I am developing a performance-research practice of “dropping” questions into the body, aiming for “non-repeatability” and moving on intuition as a method for understanding philosophical texts.

Encouraging myself to move into states of intoxication through movement provides an entry-point into my unconscious image life, connecting abstract physical impulses to sublimated content by letting speech effect movements and movements affect speech. Making this physical practice into a performative one, layers on an interrelational complication, to notice how the body responds to itself while being seen by others – in this state of hyper-awareness and “felt knowing” – thoughts surface differently.

I become aware of “habits” or psycho-physical patterns of movement and related thought sequences from memory. I try to identify, deconstruct and reorder these habitual patterns into non-repeatable forms, disrupting psychic material that surfaces. I want to interrogate habits that are blocking my ability to create new ways of thinking. I will prepare with texts by Butler, Nancy, Deleuze and Guttari, Ranciere and Agamben.

ARTIST STATEMENT:

I am a Performance Artist. I write with images – sourcing my work from my own identity transparently and investigating my philosophical problems with improvisatory actions and object relationships. I offer audience situations and provocations to dream around. I offer a context for people to think of their own questions and notice their own desires.

I practice for months, but in the moment before the performance, I let go of what I want to happen or expect to do. I ask, “How can I be in front of this audience in an attentive and receptive way and what is moving to me about the topic at hand right now?” I do this action. This first mark on the canvas is an offer that I follow through to the end of the composition. I use body memory as a generative source of possible exchange and inquiry. In this way, I am researching my knowledge and lack of knowledge; I am accepting the reality of my body, the reality of my economic state, the reality of my class, my gender and all unknown aspects of my history.

This performance style is a DIY strategy where in body and thought I am ready to perform at any moment in alignment with my own integrity and the nature and energy of the people present. The “currency” of this methodology is the responsiveness to context – information can be immediately incorporated into the texture, movement, and conversation with the audience – thus the work allows us to unpack questions in a collective way.

I am also researching what it is that elevates my consciousness in the moment of performance – that energetic flow that allows meaning to emerge that I could not have realized if I had not made the performance. This question has come from my constant radical doubt around: why perform at all? I keep performing because actually it is in the moment of performance that I don’t know where I’m going, that I can look back at and say: I know where I am going now, thanks to this performance. As crazy or wild as the performative state can be, it leads me into knowledge.

I would love to have conversations with local artists to help generate more context for the performance proposals and for my thesis writing.
If you are interested please contact me : lbil@rogers.com

The workshop presentation of 23 March

“I propose an open studio performance and workshop.  I will show you what I have been working on in the intersection between movement and philosophy and then I will make some proposals for audience to engage in. No pressure to participate but I hope you will be curious enough to join us for this mini workshop that aims to generate pleasure, connection and interesting things to think about. “

Blog : http://lo-bil.tumblr.com/