The notion of a stable and present performance has long since given way to a rhetoric of absence and representation. Entering this discussion as a practitioner/theorist, Kozel wrestles with the implications of technology on the mutable properties of performance. Concentrating on telematics, responsive architecture, motion capture and wearable computers, she describes a series of performances that have more than aesthetics at stake. Fostering an awareness of her body in relation to a variety of media, her phenomenological approach is ideally suited to fathom the space between bodies and computers. As a choreographer, installation artist and performer, Kozel documents works in which technology is used to investigate bodily or spatial concerns as well as engagement and distance between performers and spectators. Drawing on Deleuze, Crary, Bachelard and Irigaray, it is the later work of Merleau-Ponty that stands at the centre of her exploration.
Kozel grounds perception in corporeality where the body is not merely a biological entity but one that impacts, and is impacted by, social, ethical, kinaesthetic and technological issues. Her phenomenology is one of gaps, entwinements, responses and questions, which provides ample opportunity to address her own emotional and intellectual engagement. Cynics might question her hybrid viewpoint, but she likens her praxis to a performer that is in the moment and simultaneously aware of the moment (p. 51). Here she argues against a detached third-person exploration for the ‘closer’ of the title, constructing a theoretical space in which virtual and real are not a binary, but where the ‘duality between machine and human, between object and subject is muddied’ (p. 188). She suggests a post-digital ‘poetics of responsivity’ (p. 183) in which the intersection of analogue and digital produces ‘a chiasmic aesthetics’ (p. 274).
Working largely with adapted and fickle technology, Kozel documents the instability of computer-generated systems as the nondeterministic element grounding technological performances in real time. Imagining a feedback loop between theory and practice, she states,
We can write about the marvellous overlap of physical and digital bodies, but, without a rigorous understanding of the ideological underpinnings of this hybrid art form, it will take dancers longer to overcome the growing pains and to finally get into exciting and inspiring work of creating new movement vocabularies. (p. 128)
Beautifully presented on black, white and bisected pages punctuated with atmospheric in-motion images, Kozel's visible construction of a true blending of theory and practice is as engaging as it is inspiring.
