Some extracts, fragments from David Will’s book Dorsality: thinking back through technology and politics. I am noticing what he writes (what I think to understand) directly in my body and in my moving, as well as being able to turn short fragments into movement tasks or scores.
a some-one who turns
what turns will be presumed to be something human
in turning, it turns into something technological
the turn – a bending, an inflection, the movement of a limb, articulation
there is technology as soon as there are limbs
as soon as there is articulation, the human has rounded the technological bend, the technological turn has occurred, and there is no more simple human
it turns as it walks
the human being turning as it walks, deviating from its forward path
a detour, a deviation, a divergence into difference
advancing askew [oh yes!]
even if in turning one (the human) deviates from itself in the simplest or most minimal fashion, turns just a little to the left or to the right – say to correct its bearing – it turns, for all intents and purposes towards the back
the animate first articulates, and so becomes technological in the self-division of a cell, in the self-generation of an amoeba.
Wills proposes a bio-technological relation beyond the more traditional understanding of technology as a human-mechanical relation. He mentions the amoeba! In 2003 I made a dance piece called Amoeba Blues and I recently picked up my amoeboid body again in developing the performative presentation writing body/annotating gesture.
My human animate body has an increasingly amoeboid tendency when working with and through the back and gestural articulations that refuse to settle, fully form, give meaning.
NB
An amoeba is a term generally used to describe a single celled eukaryotic organism that has no definite shape and that moves by means of pseudopodia. Pseudopodia or pseudopods are temporary projections of the cell and the word literally means “false feet”.
