Nomadic Time Lab

Research platform for slow choreographic practices

Galit Criden

Eynav Rosolio 

2017-Ongonig

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Nomadic Time Lab is an artistic encounter between Galit Criden (London), Eynav Rosolio (Tel Aviv), and Alice Van der Wielen-Honinckx (Brussels).

Criden and Rosolio have been creating slow choreographic work, together and apart, since 2013. They met Van der Wielen-Honinckx virtually in the Summer of 2021.

Since then, the three of us have cultivated a virtual, long-distance dialogue on our passion for slow spaces.

 

Through a series of residencies taking place in Israel, England, and Belgium, this project aims at our physical encounter as three choreographers with resonating practices.

We want to exchange tools/insights, and collectively research new ways of generating alternative, embodied, experiences of time.

The idea is to enrich each one of our respective practices, and eventually bring them together in the form of a class or workshop: a concrete and accessible method to take people along in experiences of time being stretched out.

1 st encounter, The Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon, Israël, Winter 2022: getting to know each other,
exchange of practices. 
2 and encounter, London, Spring 2023: expansion, first experiments with sharing tools with participants
3 rd encounter, Belgium, Summer/Autumn 2023: deepening & state of the arts, more experiments,
establishing our common toolbox

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Alice Van der Wielen-Honinckx (b. 1989) is a choreographer, performer and dramaturg based in
Brussels. She holds an MA in Western Literature and a research Master in Literary Theory from KULeuven, as well as a MA in Contemporary Theater, Dance and Dramaturgy from Utrecht University. In her own work as well as through collaborations as dramaturg and performer with other artists, she investigates the embodiment and experience of concepts like deep perception, presence, aesthetic boredom, slow atmosphere and resonant connection.

Her durational dance performance Creatures at rest (2021) was programmed at Dansand! Festival (Ostend), Playground Festival (Museum M, Leuven) and Museum as Performance (Serralves, Porto); and her essay ‘Space as Atmosphere: Floating in a Molecular Bath’ was published in Slow Spatial Reader: Chronicles of Radical Affection edited by Carolyn F. Strauss (Amsterdam: Valiz, 2021).
alicevanderwielenhoninckx.org

Eynav Rosolio (b. 1989) is a visual theater director, dancer and performer based in Tel Aviv.
Graduate of Scuola Conià and Istituto di Ricerca di Arte Applicata, Societas Raffaello Sanzio, Cesena, Italia (2019). Graduate of The School of Visual Theater in Jerusalem (2016). Recipient of the Jerusalem Foundation Prize for excellence (2016). Movement teacher and member of the steering committee at Yasmeen Godder company project for people with Parkinson’s disease, member of Ensemble Miklat 209. Her works were presented in Hazira – Performance Art Arena (Jerusalem), Teatro Comandini - Scuola Conià (Cesena), Neve Shechter Gallery, Maya Gallery (Tel Aviv), Contemporary Venice 2016 at Palazzo Flangini (Venice) and more. Took part in numerous residencies such as Kelim Center for Choreography
(Bat Yam), Miklat 209 (Tel Aviv), Hazira Performance Art Arena (Jerusalem). As a performer she cooperated with Claudia Castellucci, Chiara Guidi, Guy Gutman, Galit Criden, and more.
Eynav is using the body as a visual tool to communicate the human state, together with objects, video and live sound. In her works, she expresses her deep interest with political aspects of nostalgia and corporal identity.
eynavrosolio.com

Galit Criden (b.1986, Israel) is a choreographer and researcher based in London.
She holds a BA from Visual Theater School, and an MA in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths University, London. Her practice examines sculptural physicality, extended duration, and aesthetic precision where the relation between space, duration, and movement is intensely magnified. She is particularly interested in what sort of conversation her work can have with fixed ways of structuring knowledge to enact change. Galit works with choreography, objects, education, and research. Her work has been showcased and acknowledged by the WellcomeCollection Museum, Chisenhale Dance Space, M.A.M.A The Museum of Motherhood, Performatica Dance Festival Mexico, and many others.
galitcriden.com

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Our virtual dialogue led us to the elaboration of a common, slow, vocabulary:

 

“It is not about a furious effort to slow down. It’s about getting out of the way and discovering the pace that was there all along.” (Kae tempest, On Connection, 102). " Deceleration (that is, moving at a slower pace) is an important part of it, to be sure, but the crux of Slow research is less about a register of speed than it is about awareness—and especially about the shifts in perception and positioning that can be provoked when we commit to more expansive ways of being in and of the world. 

That means looking more closely and listening more deeply, noticing fine details and attuning to processes, and at the same time adopting a wider, more holistic view that situates our experiences within larger webs of relations, spaces, and times." (Carolyn F. Strauss, Slow Spatial Research: Chronicles of Radical Affection, 15). 

“The threat today is not passivity, but pseudo-activity, the urge to ‘be active’, to ‘participate’, to mask the Nothingness of what goes on.

People intervene all the time, ‘do something, while academics participate in meaningless ‘debates’, and so on, and the truly difficult thing is to step back, to withdraw from all this. Those in power often prefer even a ‘critical’ participation, an exchange of whatever kind, to silence –just in order to engage us in a ‘dialogue’, to make sure our ominous passivity is broken”. (Slavoj Zizek, Trouble in Paradise, 174-175)

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SLOWNESS
Slowness has many forms and can even be formless. A slow atmosphere, for example, invites to rest, do nothing, and perceive.

The slowness we are interested in doesn’t bore, but rather pulls one closer to what is present here and now. Combining slow movement, breathwork, and observation techniques, we bring
attention to the sensations in our body and mind to release the effects of a busy life.

We become more available for deeper forms of perception, and for being simply present to what surrounds us.

LAB
The goal of our meetings is to facilitate a process of circular, horizontal learning; a generative process where one idea leads to another.

The focus is on research rather than producing any particular outcome.
A first aim is to internally exchange knowledge, tools, and experience regarding slow choreography and this way enrich our respective artistic practice.

Secondly, we want to formulate exercises in slowness, ready to be put into practice in the form of both workshops and performative work, and try them out .

CHOREOGRAPHIC PRACTICE
Our choreographic practice doesn’t only organize movements made by a human body in time and space,
but also attention, space itself, and all aspects that are part of a situation. Our practice is one of embodied expression. Sometimes it is performative, sometimes not. The
performative strength that appears with slow sensory awareness and presence is part of what we investigate. 

The fundamental aim is to always strive for a situation of meaningfulness and presence, from there to investigate the relational body and its potentiality to be together, to share a space and time with others, in each moment.

NOMADIC
To practice, radical passivity obviously has a different cultural and political impact/signification in Tel Aviv, London, or Brussels.

We retreat from fast life into slow practices. Yet our intention in these moments of retreat is not to sever ourselves from a place, but rather to even more thoroughly be in relation with the
sensorial, societal and geographic contexts we find ourselves in. By being nomadic, this lab allows us to experience situations of retreat inside the distinct political and cultural contexts within which each of us spend their lives.

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