PARIP 2003

NATIONAL CONFERENCE: 11-14 September

CONTRIBUTORS

FENEMORE: ANNA
department of contemporary arts
manchester metropolitan university
the housekeeping project: an investigation into spectating knowledges

The Housekeeping Project combines a 45-minute site-specific kitchen performance based on the Housekeeping manual of Mrs Beeton, with a 20-minute paper that aims to address the question: what might be the various embodied knowledges generated by practice as research and for whom are they useful?

My research centres primarily on the spectating knowledges of: somatosensory experience (sensations that occur throughout the entire body rather than remaining localised at a single sense organ and are not necessarily generated by specific external intentions/impulses); motility (muscular rather than audio-visual sensation, a knowledge existing as kinaesthesia and as proprioception); spatiality/mobility (muscular action in a negotiation of external space, a knowledge developed over time and in response to the environment existing as intersubjectivity and synergy); visuality (a mode of seeing existing through haptic potential, spatial awareness and synaesthesia); spatial memory (not a memory of space but a memory that is spatially and temporally located or simultaneous, to the extent that spectators might be affected concretely by such memory in performance events).

I will argue that these are forms of knowledge, whilst remaining aware that such an assertion remains contested. For some, such experiences are simply feelings not knowledges. For me the moment ‘feeling’ become ‘knowledge’ is the moment at which these are acknowledged and articulated as ‘knowledge’. There are many ways in which this articulation might be conceived either formally or informally. In this presentation I draw upon phenomenology, specifically the arguments of Merleau-Ponty, as a framework in which ‘feelings’ might be seen (through acknowledgement and articulation) as knowledge.

Anna Fenemore is Research Associate in Contemporary Arts at the Manchester Metropolitan University, Crewe+Alsager Faculty. Her research focuses on spectating embodiment, phenomenological approaches to performance and theories of space, and is conducted through practice-as-research. She is artistic director of Manchester based physical performance company, Pigeon Theatre.

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