Emilie Marianne Aurelie Gallier

Title: Reading in Performance, Lire en Spectacle. 

I investigate shifts in spectatorship when the audience reads in the real time of performance. It is about the nature of the document which is read by the audience, and the quality of participation emerging from the act of reading. In examples of reading within a collective frame, I search for practices of attention that appreciate heterogeneity.

My method in undertaking this research is an entanglement of choreographic practices with academic/philosophical practices. I develop performative documentation for the audience. I develop practices of documenting as conversation and practices of reading as being in confluences and experiencing ubiquity. I read theories from the fields of performance studies (i.e. Kunst, Peeters, Louppe, Gansterer et al., Bishop), philosophy (i.e. Rancière, Garcia), anthropology (i.e. Taussig), poetry (i.e. Robertson, Pennac). I hold long conversations with artists (I.e. Edvardsen, Pons and Reschovsky, Llaurens). I observe examples of performances where the audience reads (i.e. Rodrigues, The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, Dominguez).

The main outcome of this research is the thesis, mostly written and partly performed. The thesis contains seven chapters one of which is a live-performance that can only be experienced live: Papier multiforme, papier comestible. Following the example of Nick Sousanis who was the first to publish a thesis in the form of a comic (Harvard University Press), I shape my thesis in a choreo-graphic way. Sousanis argued comic was the most relevant format for a thesis about the inextricable link between words and images in the process of meaning making. Likewise, I argue that choreographic scores, dance notation, and images must participate to my thesis about reading in performance. This way only can my thesis provide multi-layered experiences of reading to its readers.

I am a choreographer researcher based in The Netherlands. Since 2016 I am a PhD Candidate at C-DaRE (Coventry University) and a Research Fellow of THIRD (Das Graduate School, Amsterdam). My research is concerned with movements of reading, readership, spectatorship, documentation in performance and audience participation. My practice centres on choreography; I make live performances, choreographic objects and books, I write, draw, teaches at Universities and Art Academies, I edit, and I collaborate (a. o. Rosie Heinrich, Tilman Andris, Clémence Coconnier, Camille Gerbeau).

Artistic research, poetic documentation, spectatorship, participation, experimental choreography, dance, philosophy