Description
“Trebuchet” is an experimental practice that lies at the intersection of oppositional forces and explores unfamiliarity, discomfort, and confusion to engage with problems affirmatively. It seeks to navigate through uncertain pathways and towards places where the practitioners are called to follow, manipulate, and interrupt their impulses, as charged desires that need to be expressed, transforming pre-decisions into decisions of the ‘now’ and turning attention to resilience instead of criticism. The practitioners are physically called to act and observe at the same time, distancing themselves from the pressure of performing and instead observing the experience. At this moment, the happening and the understanding of the happening work as parallel processes while shifting between uncertainty and recognition, in the same way that affect becomes emotion.
“Trebuchet” here refers to the unstable potential of a thrown projectile: the inherent unpredictability of its trajectory encountering another trajectory or an obstacle. It highlights the impossibility of fully forecasting its path and the likelihood of unexpected interruptions. The practice creates a space to allow, and paradoxically embrace this lack of clarity and direction, navigating the tension between orientation and disorientation, and observing the different states of agency and its entanglement with unpredictable forces. It seeks to engage with disruption as a force for continuity that holds the potential for a new beginning to arise, cultivating resilience, adaptability, and creativity.
The practitioners are invited to go through a series of research-based physical tasks to engage in a wide range of ways to become supple and gain tools for shifting the focus to the creative potential of disorder, viewing problems as a vital force for transformation. They move towards becoming self-sustaining power plants with their own ways of enduring and compensating for resistance by either propelling towards it or sinking into it.