Fixed Points

Text by Bronwen Kamasz

How Humans can gather data from the world we move through utilising our own body’s sensing instruments.

Technological and information saturation has rendered us unable to grasp the immanence of global warming. That is, climate change is everywhere, impacting on everything as a gestalt. We are at the dawning of a warm new age. The Anthropocene begins at a beginning – not of the human invention of fire or even the industrial revolution but at the beginning of an end. Wildfires burn across all continents over summer in both hemispheres as beach-side condos slough off the edge of the earth in violent storms throughout the wet. 

In dance we are present, embodied and immersed in this immanence.

My argument is this:

• Human bodies have sensing skills and attributes – these can be used to sense the world, it’s mass and atmospheres

• These subjective skills and attributes have been eroded through disuse brought on by our reliance on objective technology and metrics

• Therefore, re-skilling in the use of our embodied senses could attune us to our world and its rapidly changing climate

Over the last two days I have witnessed three people staring into space in chaotic urban settings indoors and outdoors - an adult in stillness, wide soft gaze not focussed on anything external. Their still/staring a fixed point in the swirling human maelstrom that surrounds them. I find their presence uncanny. 

In 2019, I developed a psychogeography project – Walk  Wait Lean  Ride – that explored experiential moments of rest in busy urban environments without searching for a triangle of public lawn or the capitalist exchange expected within commercial sites such as a cafe. 

In Walk – we moved through the landscape as if through molasses - walking slowly while inviting sensory information to fall in-to the body/mind. For Wait – when at pedestrian crossings we remained still and unmoving even when the walking figure lit up green, the tug to move was palpable, in the gut, creating a micro resistance both physically sensed and political inaction. We stayed in this stillness, waiting, for several cycles. For Lean – we engaged with leaning into the walls of city buildings, street furniture, or public art to share our weight with the city. The sensing organ of the skin meeting with smooth marble, granite, stainless steel and the meaty weight of our muscle and bone melting into the massive, mountain like bodies of urban architecture.  Ride – taking a ride on escalators up and down from floor to floor for several circuits. The regular machinic motion of these moving stairs dulled the senses into varying states of boredom. 

I observed that these activities generated similar qualities in the participants to those of the still/staring people – the wide soft gaze, the stillness and an uncanny atmosphere. 

Hidden aspects of the city emerged – we noticed House Sparrows (the little brown fluffy birds) wait at the traffic lights too, waiting for the signal that is the mass of human bodies moving and stopping to tell them it’s safe to jump down onto the road to search for crumbs. 

Our senses and the skills to utilise them are rapidly diminishing in response to our mediated experience of the world in which we live. Surrounded by industrial materials that make up the devices we use to gather the data with which we shape and measure our world, alongside the technology and imagery that we imagine ourselves a world.

While in our daily lives we commonly use step-counters and fitness-trackers to gather metrics, in science and industry, we have instruments for specialised tasks:

Accelerometers  –    sensitive to the force of gravity, movement and vibration.
Anemometers  –        wind speed and direction.
Hydrometers  –        sensitive to buoyancy.
Inclinometers  –         sensitive to gravity and measure the angle of a slope.
Thermocouples  –     measure temperature.
Manometers  –        used in atmospheric surveys here and on other planets.
Seismometers  –     sensitive to motion in the ground.
Xanthometers  –     measure the colour of sea or lake water.

I am not suggesting that we do not use these meters and instruments for accumulating data for analyses to make sense of our world. However, I am suggesting that we can amass qualitative measurements of all these things and more with our bodies. We have our own array of specialised sensing systems, developed over tens of thousands of years, that enable us to move through and live within our world. The data gathered can be shared and expressed with movement and language. 

As dancers, we often focus on the biomechanics of movement - of muscle and bone, but we cannot perform any of these mechanical tasks without our sensory systems feeding us data moment to moment. Torque, force, acceleration, balance….. a constant, instant and largely unconscious process of reading the data within our environment and making calculations to perform tasks. 

I invite all bodies to dance - to comprehend this immanence, the disaster unfolding. Numbers and statistics float in and out. Our sense of gravity, the weather, the forces of nature that impact on our bodies, tell in great detail the story of our new age. The better we are all able to use the vast array of sensing instruments our bodies come equipped with from birth – the better to understand and know this warm new world. 

In dance we are present, embodied and sensing this.

We can deploy our finely tuned, embodied instruments and with our re-engaged sensing skills move out into the weather to dance, move and make change.

Run out of the studio and into the out of doors! Be in the environment: city concrete, roar of traffic, earth, trees and sky, the carpark of our local suburban milk bar.

I acknowledge the land on which I live, work and create is Wurundjeri country. I pay my respects to Wurundjeri Elders past, present and emerging. I acknowledge that sovereignty has not been ceded.

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Delving into Dance, in partnership with Critical Path, invited those engaged in dance (in whatever capacity) to share thoughts as to why dance matters now… This text was produced as part of this partnership by Bronwen Kamasz.

This initiative is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body. If you enjoy Delving into Dance please consider leaving a contribution. Contribute here.