Let’s Not Talk About It
“The original proposal for this lab hinged on being together in the same space. We were to rely on proximity and peripheral observation to propose ways of dancing, writing and being together instead of discussion and verbal negotiation. But now that we are actually in the future, one we didn’t expect, of course the situation has changed. When the shared space is no longer the studio, proximity impossible and the mirage of the direct portal of the teensy tiny webcam insists on frontal communication, what to do?
We will do it anyway. Our focus remains the same, how to propose and accompany, to dance and to write, to invent and excavate and notice the nuances of co-presence possible in this present moment and see what they produce in us, in our dancing, our writing and our hearts.
We will gather the byproducts of this, documents, and put them together as a publication. We will do it quickly and get it out there to be received. The act of making and reporting is perhaps not aligned exactly with the capacity for witnessing and receiving right now. Maybe it never is exactly, maybe our production of art and experience of art are never in a supply and demand relation. Maybe we are constructing a letter in a bottle, maybe we are killing time, maybe we are doing our job…
It is not so important to insist on art in this moment, but art will continue to insist on us and this makes us curious. To run this lab now is not to persist despite conditions. It is a gesture to not postpone until the past becomes again the future. Right now, it is not so important to produce art as it is to let ourselves be produced by it, otherwise this is all too much to handle. It is important also to continue to take seriously the economic aspect of freelance contemporary artists and not imagine they will be there waiting on the other side of this crisis intact and ready to engage and co-create contemporary art institutions. We have to do that now.
This lab is still simply about what is to be together but that notion has both contracted and expanded. It’s a mystery, and that makes us interested.”
— Jennifer Lacey
is a US-American dance artist based in Paris. Her constant project is a renegotiation of production methods, generating pieces that are always based in dancing but don’t always look like dance. She creates works that propose an inventive and playful hermeneutics of bodies and their environments.
Often co-signing and collaborating, the products of her activity unbind dance from the spectacular whilst still investing in the multiple ways that the performative can manifest, effect and communicate. Her works have been produced and staged internationally in theatres, museums, galleries, workshops and publications. She is a recipient of a Doris Duke Impact Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship.