Vanio Papadelli
Laughing Gas: multimodal processes of writing for autobiographical performance
Drawing on a long lineage of artists-researchers who have been experimenting with the intersections between language and movement (e.g. Alys Longley, Miranda Tufnell, Vida Midgelow) and experimental authors (e.g. Hélène Cixous, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Claudia Rankine), this presentation will focus on multimodal processes of generating and staging writing for the autobiographical performance project Laughing Gas (Oxytocin Collective Care, 13 May 2023).
Multimodal writing for performance inherently entails stages of translation which can be experienced and analysed through a hybrid intersemiotic and phenomenological lens. These stages are not always linear and can be defined by a dynamic oscillation and blurring between the ‘source text’ and the ‘target artefact’, namely between movement or visual stimuli and text or sound. The interrelationship between any two modalities in processes of translation could also take the form of collision, convergence, echo, friction or even deliberate illustration and description.
To this end, I will share examples from a set of slides which include images, sound recordings, original texts in different fonts and spatial arrangements within each slide, and quotes. The slides were designed as spatiotemporal events – translating perceptions of performance space into the rectangular digital space of a slide – with the aim to ‘choreograph’ them as an autonomous performative artefact but also as a visual and textural ‘storyboard’ that supported the generation of performance material for Laughing Gas. What will then be exposed are processes of ‘lifting’ the texts off the slides to translate them into recorded texts and sounds that were received by the audience via headphones while the performer was interacting with installation-oriented modes of writing and moving live and site-responsively.
Moments of translation and mistranslation (paraphrasing) from one modality to the other will be unpacked insofar as they allowed the production, editing and final delivery of writing to be perceived as ‘choreography’. The emphasis will be on what was lost and what was discovered – how truth is impregnated with deception and imagination – through a multimodal process of distilling and reimagining autobiographical material as palpable and mutating ‘becomings’; a layering of perceptual and feeling states; and a translation of memory fragments in ways that can be relevant for other individuals and communities (Freeman, 2016, p.146; Etchells, 1999, p.101).
Bibliography:
Campbell, M. & Vidal, R. (2019). Translating across sensory and linguistic borders: intersemiotic journeys between media. Palgrave Macmillan.
Cha, T. H. K. (2022). Dictee (Restored edition). University of California Press.
Cixous, H. (2005). Stigmata. Routledge Classics.
Etchells, T. (1999). Certain fragments: Contemporary Performance and Forced Entertainment. Routledge.
Fraleigh, S. (Ed.). (2018). Back to the dance itself: Phenomenologies of the body in performance. University of Illinois Press.
Freeman, J. (2016). New performance/new writing (2nd ed.). Palgrave Macmillan.
Longley, A. (2017). I wanted to find you by inhabiting your tongue: Mistranslating between words and dance in choreographic practice. In Choreographic Practices, 8:1, pp. 27–49.
Lushetich, N. (2016). Interdisciplinary Performance: Reformatting Reality. Palgrave Macmillan.
Rankine, C. (2015). Citizen: An American lyric. Penguin Books.
Tufnell, M. & Crickmay, C. (2004). A widening field: Journeys in body and imagination. Dance Books.
Bio:
Dr Vanio Papadelli is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, performer and maker specialising in movement, physical theatre and embodied approaches to writing. She mentors and lectures regularly in Higher Education, mostly Trinity Laban, Rose Bruford College and Goldsmiths. Her work engages with vulnerability, memory, care and candidness fusing physicality, video, autobiography, and text into poetic, surreal and immersive environments and has been shown in Greece, UK, Italy, Poland, Germany, Egypt and Lebanon. Feminism, ecology, surrealism, ritual and phenomenology strongly inspire her practice. Key practitioners who have influenced her work include Song of the Goat Theatre (Poland), Farm in the Cave (Czech Republic), Studio Matejka (Poland), Meg Stuart (UK), Nancy Stark Smith (UK/Spain), Charlie Morrissey (UK/Malta), Kirstie Simson (UK), Simonetta Alessandri (UK) and Miranda Tufnell (UK).
Vanio has co-created with artist and movement/drama therapist Tania Batzoglou the life-long performance ritual project CANDID that reflects on how female friendships evolve over time. She has co-facilitated with Rakhee Jasani intergenerational projects for women that combine yoga, movement, and writing (funded by Culture Seeds Mayor of London) and has facilitated and organised community arts projects. As a performer, she has worked for and collaborated with an eclectic mix of theatre, dance and performance artists (Theatre Lab, Athletes of the Heart Lab, Song of the Goat Theatre, Angela Woodhouse, Jia-Yu Corti, aswespeakproject, Alex Crowe, Nesreen Nabil Hussein). She is currently developing the solo project ‘Laughing Gas’ that exposes the importance of language and physical handling in maternity care settings and will be performed in May 2023 as part of Oxytocin Collective Care event (Middlesex University).