Page 26 - radio strainer

Microcultures of place
We begin, three of us (myself, Sarah Knox and Katherine Tate), with close observation of
the city. We arrive with observation notes from the city of Auckland, miniature, scribbled ethnographies of translation and mis-translation, things we noticed on the bus, in conversations between strangers. Translation becomes a kind of choreographic ethnography – a way in which to explore the microcultures of place. In doing so we want to attend to culture as something more-than-human, in “an embodied and receptive engagement with a world full of thing-power, be it unsettling and contingent”(Bennett, 2011, p.91). Instances of translation, mistranslation and misunderstanding arise out of different urban experiences— notes are translated again into other forms—film, photography, writing, drawing. Michael Cronin and Sherry Simon, in their (2014) article “The City as Translation Zone” discuss translation as a “clearing house of possibility” (p. 131), that enables a spill of possibilities and new meanings to arise. We see our rehearsals as such zones. At the core of our practice is carefully attending to and reimagining text, movement, drawing, moving and still/ digital image as they bleed into each other.
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