Volition
Volition is an exploration of the body's perpetual movement—a layering of familiar gestures that form a physical vocabulary. This project strives to unlearn these ingrained patterns, seeking a fresh encounter with the body. Three dancers, working within a structured improvised score developed in-gallery, attempt to find this newness. Each trial is documented and projected in the space, inviting viewers to observe and analyze the subtle distinctions among the dancers’ movements.
Every gesture is a unique imprint, a dance. The objects left behind—relics, discarded scaffolding, remnants of past actions—serve as evidence of the encounters between body and sculptural matter. By foregrounding these traces, the project destabilizes ontological assumptions, examining the body as both an archive and an active participant in its surroundings.
Volition reflects on how dance emerges from the values, traditions, and social expectations of its society, with movement shaping and shaped by gender and performative norms. For Bastin, the body serves as a repository of these impositions. Blending choreography and sculptural practices, the exhibition unfolds as an unlearning process—a continually incomplete attempt to disentangle what has been ingrained in each body over time, creating a layered, immersive record of the effort to decode and move beyond the learned.
Volition, 2018
35:00 live performance, single channel video/ installation
plasticine, wax, plaster, clay (sculptures)
Volition was developed by Zoë Bastin and performed by LJ Connolly-Hiatt, Jesse Gall and Sue Hockey at c3 Art Space. Photographs and video documentation by Jacqui Shelton, Madeline Bishop and Chris Bowes. This project was developed with the assistance of Deanne Butterworth.