Christian Ferney

Before the piece begins, around twenty relative strangers meet with Michael Kliën to learn the basics of the “score” that will govern their movement for the duration of Parliament. The “rules” aren’t really rules at all; a simple proposition for how people might be together sets the tone. Working from a simple premise, everyone can determine how they want to interact. Six hours later, nearly everyone emerges from the shared experience exhilarated, feeling connected in ways they hadn’t anticipated—and not entirely sure how to explain what just happened. Unburdened from ordinary social cues and structures for several hours, participants move into a shared exploration of how to be in community. Parliament, Kliën notes, is embodied ethics.

Associate Professor of the Practice of Dance and new Institute Senior Fellow Michael Kliën has built his artistic career exploring how our thinking and social organization are embodied. Often our image of self centers on our brains as the center of our consciousness. This is limited, Kliën says: “A thought is a physical act.” Thus, if we want to change social institutions or norms, we must rethink how we move our bodies through space. That means reconsidering what different bodies are capable of and with whom different bodies interact.

The implications for this practice are wide-ranging and ambitious. Social choreographic techniques are being used to develop strategies for institutions to become flexible so that they can better adapt and learn; to develop novel (and more functional) ways of engaging in political discourse; and to understand the mostly unconscious social coding that keeps us moving in familiar-but-sometimes-unhealthy patterns. Kliën is currently teaching to his students in a first-year seminar on visionary thinking as part of the What Now? program.

The Laboratory for Social Choreography (LSC), also supported by The Franklin Humanities Institute, will be an incubator and hub for a range of social choreographic thinking and action. This spring, preparations are underway for a series of collaborations and projects to for the coming academic year, including instances of Parliament meant to connect people from disparate parts of the city of Durham and presenting the work at universities across the country; work with the new Master of Fine Arts in Embodied Interdisciplinary Praxis; and a model for collaborative innovation with faculty.

2019-2020 Graduate Arts Fellow Cassandra Klos has an abiding love for nature and science fiction. These influences are apparent across diverse photographic explorations of pain, stories of alien abduction, and her ongoing project focusing on space simulations across the country. That latter series, Mars on Earth, documents the work of scientists and artists as they prepare for the possible colonization of Mars. Klos has been a participant as well as an observer of these efforts. Traveling to remote, rocky sites in Utah, Texas, and Hawaii, Klos and her colleagues work to imagine and (as much as practicable) live as if they have left earth behind.

Documenting this work has at times created its own special challenges. Klos shot most of Life on Mars using a 4×5” large format camera. “I brought the oldest camera to this futuristic space,” she says. Dragging her heavy camera and tripod around, sometimes while wearing a full spacesuit, Klos captured landscapes and people operating in the space between the familiar and the speculative.

As part of her fellowship, Klos is curating an exhibit for the Keohane-Kenan Gallery this spring. Existence on the Periphery is one of her first curatorial projects. Bringing together artists working in illustration, film, and still photography, the show considers the likely impact of the Anthropocene on the environments in which humans persist and might eventually live. “The goal,” she says, “is to imagine different realities than what we’re accustomed to.”

Each artist in the exhibit facilitates that imagining. David Alabo, who is based in Ghana, creates lush illustrations that meditate on possible futures for sub-Saharan Africa. Allison Cekala’s video work of road salt makes visible the ways that resources are extracted and travel around the globe, creating an opportunity to consider the human hands and needs involved. Acacia Johnson’s photographs of indigenous people in the Arctic document the persistence of a way of life at the edges of human habitation—a way of life under existential threat from climate change. Video work by Janet Biggs offers considerations of how we might use technology in new ways. The show also features work from Klos’s Mars on Earth series.

Existence on the Periphery will be on display in the Keohane-Kenan Gallery from February 17^th through March 29^th.

A panel featuring Allison Cekala, Acacia Johnson, and Duke Professor of Cultural Anthropology Ralph Litzinger will take place in the Ahmadieh Conference Room on February 20^th at 5:30pm. Reception to follow.

A film screening of Zhao Liang’s feature documentary Behemoth and short works by Janet Biggs and Allison Cekala will take place on February 24^th at the Rubenstein Arts Center.