Ecologies of Movement: In Search of a New Aesthetic Paradigm

Abstract

An awareness of ecological crises and digital media “contagion” are two key forces that affect contemporary global culture. As a result, our present human condition appears to be one of acute political awareness. Striking, however, is the limited stimuli to respond to political effect. Aching gaps between emotion and action, or an inertial inaction, now appear endemic. The tension between the imperative to act, and the limited actions taken, create unsupportable tension. In 2013 psychotherapist and philosopher Peter Pal Pelbart suggested “political distress” was a reactionary state responsible for transversal issues of mental health distress. Boermans terms it “affective fall out”, prompting the question: ‘how may we affect “the fixation” of the self in the in-between state of the affectively-perceived need to act, on the one hand, and the failure to do so, on the other? Boermans argues that our ability to respond, give attention to and rearticulate relational boundaries lies in a co-active (collective) space, that is, in motion, in the dynamic interactions between individuals that fosters the becoming of the actants. Proposed as “acts” of silent activism these rearticulations of relational boundaries are seen as ways in which the aesthetic may be linked to the ethical, and implicitly to the political. Positioned from this context, Ecologies of Movement (EoM) examines new modes of perception or relational resonance through generative semiotics and embodied co-action. EoM explores the notion of movement within four-fold coordinates: within a relational space, within open dialogue, within physical dialogue and within a space of ludic exploration. Rather than exploring motion-captured frames of time, Boermans investigates the relational aspect of movement between three dimensional forms in three dimensional space. Driven by a fascination of movement, ways of thinking (after Bergson and Guattari) and doing (after Manning), EoM presents a pathway to trace-forms of possibility, a “sequence-of-parts”, in the form of affective geometries. By considering “living buildings” as forms of activation within the process of interrelational (reciprocal) exchange, the accompanying research opens potentiality within, as well as beyond the animate world. EoM extends a gesture’s originating (semiotic) boundary, beyond its activated moment that involves defining, then reimagining gesture beyond its residual specificity within a process of translation and/or reinterpretation. In other words, Boermans argues that it is about retaining subjectivity with the relational objectivity of analogy, wherein transformation may be revealed. It involves repositioning materiality in motion into an alternate relational space. EoM is the first frame of future-potential to suggest the concept of affective ecologies to confront the effect of digital media upon the human condition.