Ep. 11 - BLOT (Body Line of Thought): performing microbiology

PuSh Play

Vanessa Goodman and Simona Deaconescu chat about their show, BLOT - Body Line of Thought, which will be presented at the 2024 PuSh Festival from January 22-23 at Left of Main.

Show Notes

Gabrielle Martin chats with Vanessa Goodman and Simona Deaconescu about their show, BLOT (Body Line of Thought). They discuss how this unconventional performance developed through installations and iterations, the body as microbiological being, and the role of “bio-friction” in their show. They also discuss:

• How can the body be redefined as a microbiological being?

• What is nature when affecting and being affected?

• How did this project emerge? Did the subject matter come up later or was it how it started?

• How can the idea of contamination be both positive and negative? How is the body governed by microbial environments?

• How did installation work and numerous iterations affect the development of the piece?

• What is “bio-friction”?

• How does this piece intersect with social identity?

• Can bacteria shape our preferences?

• How much do we control what we actually do and feel?

• How is this performance unconventional?

• What is the difference between movement that sensualizes vs. analyzes?

About Vanessa Goodman

Vanessa Goodman respectfully acknowledges that she lives, works and creates on the ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. She holds a BFA from Simon Fraser University and is the artistic director of Action at a Distance Dance Society. Vanessa is attracted to art that has a weight and meaning beyond the purely aesthetic and uses her choreography as an opportunity to explore the human condition. Her choreographic practice is driven by weaving generative movement and audio into performative environments.

Her work creates a sense of intimacy between our surroundings and the body. She has received several awards and honours, including The Iris Garland Emerging Choreographer Award (2013); The Yulanda M. Faris Scholarship (2017/18); The Chrystal Dance Prize (2019); The Schultz Endowment from Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2019); and the “Space to Fail” program (2019/20) in New Zealand, Australia and Vancouver. Her work has toured Canada, The United States, Europe and South America. Recent collaborations include Graveyards and Gardens with Caroline Shaw and BLOT with Simona Deaconsecu.

About Simona Deaconsecu

Working across genres and formats, Simona Deaconescu examines social constructs, at the border of fiction and objective reality, sometimes with irony and dark humor. Her work explores future scenarios of the body, creating spaces in which nature, history, and technology meet, and the notion of choreography extends beyond the human body.

Simona Deaconescu holds a BA and a MA in Choreography from The National University of Theatre and Film Bucharest and a BA in Film Directing from Media University Romania. In 2014, she founded Tangaj Collective, an organization that works with transdisciplinary artists and researchers. In 2015, she became the co-founder and artistic director of the Bucharest International Dance Film Festival.

In 2016, she received the CNDB – National Centre for Dance Award for her contribution brought to Romanian contemporary dance. Over the years, she developed part of her projects in collaboration with CNDB, and in 2022 she became an Associated Artist of the center. Developing artworks greatly influenced by science, she was supported by European Projects based on research and interdisciplinarity, such as Moving Digits and Biofriction. In 2018 and 2022, she was nominated as an Aerowaves Artist with her works Counterbody and Choreomaniacs.

Land Acknowledgement

Vanessa joins the podcast from Mi'kma'k territory in Nova Scotia, where the African Nova Scotian community helped build much of the existing infrastructure.

Simona joins from Bucharest, Romania.

Gabrielle hosts from the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Show Transcript

A complete transcript of this episode will be available soon.