In this talk, we’ll discuss the choreographic practices of Mapped to the Closest Address (MaCA). This time, we will focus on the dramaturgical strategies of “Turn Off the House Lights (ToHL),” MaCA’s atmospheric lecture performance (2022). In ToHL, we aimed to translate landscapes from two-dimensional detached views into sensual aesthetic experiences, highlighting the interplay between human and non-human choreographies. Reflecting on the discoveries made during our collaborative journey with artists, scientists, and local communities, this performance lecture explores how the live narration of TOtHL makes the stories of our artistic research visible, engaging our guests in sensuous experiences of real, imagined, and imaginations-of-real landscapes. Through the lens of “bewilderment” (Halberstam, 2020), we investigate the disobedient movements of earth in modernized society.
Alex Viteri & Shuntaro Yoshida are part of the collective Mapped to the Closest Address (MaCA), together they take care of a horticultural garden in Markendorf, Germany. Combining scholarly readings that reflect on organisms and their material conditions with gardening practices, the collective seeks ways to translate these explorations into notions of choreography. In their related research project “Einen anderen Garten – die Recherche” they document, analyze and map practices within dance that train awareness of the environment in order to draw connections among these many practices and trace how these exist as a school of thought. They’ve shared their work at CORDILLERA (Berlin), FLOATING e.V. (Berlin), Lake Studios (Berlin), PAF (Berlin), and PSi (Calgary).
https://www.mappedtotheclosestaddress.com
Alex Viteri is a Berlin-based Andean performer and scholar working mostly at the threshold of the visual arts and performance. Inspired by feminist decolonial activists and scholars, their research cares for Andean modes of knowledge and the sharing of brown affects. Viteri is a member of the dance collective Mapped to the Closest Address and an ongoing collaborator of the choreographers Juliana Piquero and Marion Budwig. They are currently writing their PhD dissertation on the authentic ways mountains, plants, and other living organisms participate in a dance’s meaning-making and composition at The Graduate Center, CUNY.
Shuntaro Yoshida is a dancer, choreographer, and researcher of contemporary dance and performance based in Berlin. He conducts practice-based research on dance in areas such as participatory choreographic practices, AI choreography, and other species’ choreography. Shuntaro studied dance and choreography at Tokyo University of the Arts and obtained a Philosophy PhD. from Tokyo University of the Arts. Shuntaro is a member of the dance collective Mapped to the Closest Address, Chōri Dance(調理/조리) collective and is currently an associate artist at BAS (UdK).