Page 42 - radio strainer

Entanglement
“Resistances ... exist on the boundaries, at the point of intersection of the realms of human and nonhuman agency. They are irrevocably impure, human/material hybrids, and this quality immediately entangles the emergence of material agency with human agency without, in any sense, reducing the former to the latter. This entanglement
is, so to speak, the far side of the posthumanism of the mangle: material agency is sucked into the human realm via the dialectic of resistance and accommodation. Now I turn to the converse proposition – that human agency is itself emergently reconfigured in its engagement with material agency. (Pickering, 1995, p.54)
Agency? What agency? I am at the point where material agency is mangling this project with the power of a tidal wave. In a black box theatre situation, light is a dynamic medium that literally allows bodies and ideas visibility. My creative intention relies on a carefully calibrated lighting design that allows the space of the stage to transform and morph. And as a dancer the idea of performing a choreography without rehearsal in a space with different dimensions, affects, spatial coordinates to the space I created the work in is deeply disconcerting. I do not want to show this work under house lights or flourescents, as the work I am imagining requires darkness, transitions between spaces. My intention is for the world of the work to be written
in light. Without theatre time, this seems impossible. The material agency of the theatre context creates highly specific possibilities and constraints for practitioners, and time is the key element in enabling intentions to be realized.
As far as I know of it is unheard of to give no rehearsal time at all in the performance space. In the dance and theatre industries, tech time is a taken-for granted condition of performance. I’m bewildered that the conference organizer promised use of a theatre rig and sound system, without understanding the need to provide time for technicians to learn the cues for the work or for technicians brought in to familiarize themselves with the operational requirements of the theatre, such as the location of light switches and plugs.
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