XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Site-based Movement Experiments in Embodied Listening: Moving Alongside Afro-Brazilian Spirit Entities

• In Event: Kinesthetic Knowledges: Corporeal Conjurings of Brazil Otherwise

Abstract

Much of artistic research and experimental ethnography is about not-knowing and valuing alongside, affective experiences. Based on ethnographic research and artistic practice (dance) in Bahia and Maranhão states, this presentation explores the relationship between text, movement and landscape through movement practices in domains associated with Afro-Brazilian spirit entities. It asks what discoveries and other ways of knowing does such site-based work invite?

In this performance-presentation, Each site-based movement segment engages with, or references a particular natural force or environment traditionally associated with Afro-Brazilian spirit entities. While influenced by orixá dance movement, it is decidedly not a catalog of orixá choreographies. Rather, resembling a dream sequence, this moving engagement with natural forces is an artistic research experiment in embodied listening. Each opens up a particular sensory experience involving a degree of morphing as alterior ways of knowing (Hunter: 2019) arise out of the interstices: real/unreal, mythical/botanical, body/environment.

This performance-presentation demonstrates that going beyond realist scholarship and argumentative writing, performance research generates other ways of knowing and opens up new strategies for ethnographic research. These other ways of knowing are oftentimes in greater alignment with the ways of knowing practiced by our interlocutors.

Author

• Jamie Davidson, University of California, Davis