My residency at Domaine de Boisbuchet in France was all about movement and Forms of Response with tutor Isabel Lewis. Isabel Lewis is a choreographer and artist whose work consists of exercises that address all the bodily senses. She deals with themes such as open-source technology and dance improvisation, dance as a cultural archive and body technologies of the future.

My week at Boisbuchet was a really transformative and transcendental experience involving the human touch, movement, music and building a collective sensitivity in my workshop group. I was really eager to move with other people since covid there has been a yearning for connection.

The workshop fostered this interpersonal dialogue through music, dance improvisation and movement. In the forms of response workshop there was a feeling of returning to our bodies again, holding a mindful meditative state of mind, suddenly being thrown into nature and having a heightened sense of consciousness with your senses by applying practices which Isabel taught us throughout the week.

Boisbuchet being the site for this week of discovery made it impossible not to completely submit to this immersive process of self-discovery. Surrounded by 150 hectares of land, amongst that are scattered pavilions and experimental houses built over the years by designers and architects from across the world. Boisbuchet is an International Centre for Cultural and Agricultural Research and Education in France near the province of Poitiers, founded by Alexander Von Vegesack whose dream was to set up a place where design meets education.

His aim was to revitalise the domain as a place where people can practice and discover culture in its dialogue with nature and agriculture. The complex includes the beautiful Chateau built in 1865 and buildings like the barn that serves as a restaurant and exhibition space. The vastness of the open space and river running by the Mill was a perfect site to host such movement workshops which went hand in hand with our

“ workshop (that) focused on the exercising of the senses that, once attuned, serve to support affective forms of replying to, being with, and moving alongside human, non-human, and more-than-human agents.

Through writing, movement, and listening exercises participants will be guided in processes of individual and collective composition as modes of response to site, space, and ambience. Participants will gain insight into my practice of crafting situations for heightened receptivity and responsibility” – Boisbuchet 2022

My current art practice explores the body through looking at anthropological signifiers and domestic paraphernalia. I use sculpture, installation, audio and video as a way to explore themes of the body and space. I am interested in how we occupy space and the traces we leave behind; my practice examines the material poetics of objects which manifest in sculptural interventions. Before coming to the residency, I wanted to carry on exploring the body and look at it as a site of inquiry and examine the way it archives experience and memory. Previously I was looking at how to archive the body and now I am looking at the body as the archive itself.

I’ve been looking forward to this residency all year to get back to my body and my performative roots. I have been eager to experiment through improvisation and push the body to its limits. Lewis’s workshop was a perfect way to become reconnected with the body and its surroundings, I was really excited to meet her, and to work and dance with the other participants in my workshop and build new connections.

Arriving at Boisbuchet was a really surreal experience, far removed from society in the middle of acres of land, surrounded by nature, art, design and architecture, it was such an enriching environment which I knew was going to be full of life and creativity. More importantly meeting all the participants at our welcome drinks at the Mill right by the running river. It was here that I knew that the week ahead was going to be incredibly transformative in more ways than one. I met some of the volunteer staff that were working there that summer, I also met people who were attending the two other workshops at Boisbuchet. I met artists, architects, designers, chefs from all over the world, it was a melting pot of creativity. The two other workshops happening alongside mine were Alix Lacloche’s cooking workshop Le Banquet des Vivants and the Twisting and Twining of Rattan by Mutt Design. This provided an opportunity for collaboration and exchange with other participants at Boisbuchet and to have fun and make! The food at Boisbuchet was equally inspiring with a whole week of innovative cooking from the kitchen, it was a dream!

On day one we got a tour of Boisbuchet and discovered all its history. Knowing all of what came before and that it was the last week of workshops it created a upsurge of energy and enthusiasm to get started and create! Even the horses on the grounds were descendants from the horses which were first there originally, this got me thinking about these horses as a physical DNA archive of their ancestors which stood on the same soil.

I was really excited to dance again as dancing is my first passion, especially contemporary and improvisation, from making such physical work I was looking forward to reclaiming that power back, exploring collective sensitivity, intimacy and the body.

On the first day I had an incredible experience swimming in the running river at Boisbuchet, and one of the participants in my group had brought a Handpan drum with them which six of us played in the river amongst nature and the swans swimming past, we created a symphony of sounds. It was as if this was the introduction to what was to follow during the week. The sounds the handpan makes is incredible! And the vibrations in the water already got us thinking about forms of response!

Our introduction to Isabel Lewis’ workshop set the president and state of mind for the whole week to come. I discovered a way of breathing and meditating to allow other senses come to the forefront and explore theories behind the gaze. We started the each day by working on breathing exercises and meditation in a seated position. We then made our way up from the floor to standing by moving our bodies thinking about curves and spirals, from here we worked on ‘the gaze’ exercises and focused on one point in the room. Isabel got us thinking about the size of the eye, the weight of the eye, before asking us to focus on things which were in our eye line. We practiced sending this gaze outward and then sending the gaze inward. We then started moving around the space meeting one another’s gaze freely. These exercises Isabel taught us centred our focus to the present and to be wholly in the moment with ourselves and one another.

As the week progressed we became a company of dancers flowing in-between one another. As a small group of 9 we got familiar with each other quickly and were able to develop a collective sensitivity. This was nurtured by the different exercises Isabel taught us, one of which we performed in our final show on the Friday of that week which was synonymous with flowing water, our bodies being the fluid liquid.

During the week we had the opportunity to attend a lecture by Isabel Lewis to learn more about her practice, this really opened my eyes to her philosophies and approach to dance and movement. I gained an incredible insight into Isabel’s practice. Isabel’s background as a professional dancer is what brought her to her current research and interests. Isabel uses dance as a primary technology, she uses it to mediate her relationship with the world, this came through many years studying dance, becoming a scholar of dance and performance practices and 20 years of choreographic works challenging herself with formats and modes of presentation.

She began to question how dance is received in and what format it is received (through the gaze). This sense of the visual came to make her question our gaze and what went beyond the parameters of this very tailored experience of dance (the conventions of theatre). Lewis’s work is incredibly multifaceted, questioning the western cosmologies, social rituals, unify human sensorium’s, how information is disseminated and the critique of the dominance of the visual. Lewis has developed a term called Occasions for her works where there is no outside, she wants to generate an experience where she is the host and the audience are guests to this occasion which is happening everywhere, as opposed to a conventional performance at a theatre.

One of the takeaways from her lecture was exploring how western ideologies heavily rely on the visual and how information is conveyed and transferred from one to another, especially in the age of Instagram where the visual is the predominant source of information. This got me thinking about the archive and how there is potential for the archive to take different forms other than the visual. It pushed me to think how can the body be the archive and how can I record it? I also got to think about how the information is stored in our bodies and how we could get that out? One of the things Isabel spoke about as well in her lecture was the fact that she doesn’t have Instagram. And that she isn’t in favour of documenting her Occasions as she feels they are things to be experienced and they don’t translate fully in film. This lead me to think about how we can record these occasions? And then in a broader context how do we experience art?

One of the most liberating exercises Isabel got us to practice during our residency was her well known ‘unambitious stripper’ work. This work is usually performed in pairs where one participant allows the other to smell then and vice versa from seated. This was followed allowing the other person to look into your eyes and meet our gaze. This exercise was particularly powerful where we were fully giving parts of ourselves away to the other participant willingly. You had to strip down your senses and meet the other persons gaze at the end of the exercise. I was hesitant at first for this exercise but soon submitted to the process and found it really liberating.

The whole week we thought about our senses and explored our surroundings. Isabel spoke to me about smells and the spectrum of smells and the language we use to talk about them. She spoke about common attention, communal concentration, focusing on the body together and ritualistic space. We spoke about one of the ideas which came up in the lecture about removing one of the senses, this is where we came up with the guest and host idea for the performance we were going to do on Friday for everyone!

During the week we did some exercises developed by Pauline Oliveros composer, musician, whose focus is on learning how to listen (Quantum Listening by Pauline Oliveros). One of the exercises I was really struck by was by Oliveros, where we stood in a circle and had one hand on the others back to feel their heart, we hummed and took deep breaths in and out, the idea was to do this for a period of time to collect each-others energy into our palms and then back to our bodies. This was one of my favourite moments of the week, I really felt connected to everyone as a group and saw this as a way to be intimate and heal, from feeling each-others heartbeats. I felt very grateful to be in that moment and present with the group who were so open to experiment and try new things. This is something I will definitely take with me from the residency and hopefully explore with other groups of people!

Wednesday was one of the highlights of my week! The famous porkies party was Wednesday night! I had heard of this infamous porkies party from the staff earlier in the week! As it was the last week of the Boisbuchet season it was going to be extra special. Porkies at Boisbuchet is a tradition that happens every Wednesday night. Everyone including staff go to the workshops on site and make outfits inspired by the theme that week using scrap materials found in the workshop crates, I felt like I was on an episode of Rupauls Drag race! It was a race to the material bin to find the best most inspiring pieces to construct an outfit with. We didn’t have much time to make our outfits before dinner and then party! The theme for this week was Kings, Queens and Queers! So of course everyone had the most elaborate recycled outfits made of car tyres, wet suits, football handbag you name it, it was truly a sea of fabulous!

As our week of exploration came to a close on Friday we had our final day of performances which we had been practicing for all week. This piece we developed with Isabel was called the Repair, Recharge, Reset Pavillion. We particularly thought of the word pavilion to describe the performance because we constructed a space with our bodies, just like the architecture on the grounds. We asked the visitor to close their eyes as they experienced the performance. We organised a schedule where we had guests wait at a nearby bench which was out of sight from the performers as to completely immerse the guest in what they were about to experience with their eyes closed.

Isabel was the host for every performance and guided the guests through the experience each time. Our piece started with using our bodies as the walls for the pavilion, here is where the host guided the guest to touch the parameters of this imaginary pavilion we were constructing with our bodies.

The host spoke about the pavilion being made of organic forms constantly in a state of motion. As we made a wall with our bodies shoulder to shoulder the guest was invited to run their hand along the wall of bodies. We did this performance in the forest next to the running river. The feedback from the visitors was really touching, some were very emotional, some felt like a child again and said they felt free. This made me think about how much of an impact this experience made on the visitors and how necessary our interpersonal connections are as humans.

The workshop made me feel liberated to move my body and to allow myself to make connections through touch, smell and dance. It got me thinking about how we experience the world through a western lens and how to negate that ideology through breaking down heavily constructed boundaries. It was so freeing to experience movement in such a collective way with others as well having the aim to be for movement and experience rather than an output. I have begun to think about collective healing and using the body to dispel and communicate hidden information that has been stored in it. I am still looking at how to transfer these notions to a material or if anything language itself. I learnt such a great deal from this experience and have without a doubt made some really inspiring friends which I have begun to collaborate with since the residency. The week was full of forms of responses to nature, sound, touch and to one another. It had me out of my comfort zone exploring feelings of being exposed to someone’s gaze, receiving the gaze and allowing myself to submit to those exercises. It was a week filled with music, sound, swimming, eating food from the land, building a community and exchange with other creatives talking about what journeys they have been on to the bring them to Boisbuchet. I will never forget the importance of movement and connection and how this plays a huge part in our response and how we see the world. Thank you Isabel for such a freeing, liberating, open and honest experience!

-Never stop moving!