throughLINES [2023]
throughLINES was a five-month expansion of ongoing research into certain overlaps of cartography and choreography in order to question traditional spatial navigation. Inspired by the Situationists of 1950s Paris, the modern geocaching movement, and cognitive theorist Michael Leyton, throughLINES examined how ignoring directions given by urban planning creates unique pathways through the landscape that lead to a shift in cognitive understandings of place. These paths yielded a narrative demonstrating an interconnectedness between place and destination.
Algorithmic walking scores determined how distance was covered and documented. A connection with the local geocaching community was also made to better understand their use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and hidden destinations in public space. Movement dialogue with the architecture of buildings and locations found during these explorations was paired with a studio practice to develop and arrange choreographic material. throughLINES looked beneath the grid at how different modes of navigating public space can alter and fix our understandings of location, drawing further connections between choreography and psychogeography.
A list of works consulted can be found here.
The rules, like streets, can only take you to known places. Underneath the grid is a field - it was always there - where to be lost is never to be wrong, but simply more.
- Ocean Vuong
In the end, all maps do is assert that this is there. [T]he power of the map is, quite literally, a function of the power of the posting which, by embedding a fundamental ontological proposition inside a locative one, leverages the power into a performance of the real.
- Denis Wood
Video clips of studio practice sessions used to process choreographic sketches of places encountered during geocache location searches.
throughLINES was a research project funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR, aid program DIS-TANZEN by the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland.