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Practices of reciprocity and witnessing in more-than-human collectivities
- Source: Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, Volume 13, Issue Embodying Eco-Consciousness: Somatics, Aesthetic Practices & Social Action, Dec 2021, p. 167 - 178
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- 27 Jan 2021
- 12 Oct 2021
- 01 Dec 2021
Abstract
Through a somatic approach to my ongoing encounter with the River Wyre, Lancashire, I consider land – its material presence and immaterial spirit/ancestral relations – as primary collaborator. I explore the capacity for land to witness and propel human ethics and expression through the porous and influx body. This opens a mode of witnessing which both bears witness to historic trauma (the less visible entanglements of ecocide, femicide and epistemicide), and to more-than-human manifestations (in this case river and stone) that guide an ‘otherwise’ possibility to this colonial violence. Vocal sounding with more-than-human collectivities opens the capacity for the body to be ‘in two places at once’ – one of Silvia Federici’s articulations of witchcraft – and troubles colonial-capitalism’s division of Life and Non-life. The practice expands Kelly Oliver’s definition of witnessing as inter-human ‘response-ability and address-ability’, through addressing – and being addressed by – more-than-human existents.