COC 1/6
The Choreography of Care
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I don’t really think of myself as a very caring person. I beat myself up about that quite a lot, but I’ve begun to realise that it’s really about what I thought that word meant or represented. As I’ve grown older, and due to the folk I’ve encountered, I’ve had to rethink what the word ‘disabled’ meant, in the same way as what Crip, woman, queer meant… all these words whose meanings have shifted so much over the years for me. I’ve begun to understand that I simply don’t manifest or show care in the same ways I receive it or, more accurately, as I perceive it.
As a disabled person that word - care - is not a straightforward word to embrace, it has a lot of connotations, a lot of very problematic baggage. It feels like something that has historically been done to disabled people (or perhaps not in many cases) but I’ve begun to think it’s part of the canon of knowledge of certain communities. That perhaps those who are the subject (or victims) of something often actually become the real experts in it.
I think for me it has come from growing up in a body that needed to “take care”. That quite literally understood fragility and risk. I needed to pay attention to my environment and how I moved through it, and that grew into developing a care, even a love, of my crutches when we began to dance together as this 4 footed creature. And as I began to make performance, the desire to ensure disabled people were prioritised, were made welcome, meant that I began to place as much care in the world of the work as I do with every placing down of my own crutch.
Claire Cunningham
Design as Care
Time as Care
Communication as Care
Performance as Care
The Complexity of Care
The Choreography of Care
What is care for you?
Over the past 7 years those of us who work with Claire Cunningham Projects have increasingly been talking about the different ways in which care manifests in our practices; in the work of our peers; other artists we admire; and in the wider world. Following the last production - Thank You Very Much - and a series of reflective conversations between the ensemble, creative team and Julia Watts Belser, Claire began to develop a distinct set of frames for thinking about care in their practice: The Choreography of Care, Design as Care, Time as Care, Communication as Care, Performance as Care and The Complexity of Care.
Sharing a desire to further interrogate these ideas with the team at tanzhaus nrw it was decided, to mark the end of Claire’s Factory Artist residency, that we would host and curate a symposium on The Choreography of Care. Inviting a group of guest artists, activists and change makers, whose work we feel speaks to an ethos of care, together to share how they believe care shapes their practice and its influences out into the world through their work.
The symposium is going to be taking place in March ‘22 and between now and then, we wanted to introduce you to all of the artists participating, giving you a feel for who they are, what they do and, along with our own, some of their initial thoughts about care, via this limited-edition print series.
Every month between September ‘21 and January ‘22 a new issue will come through the post to you - as a gift from us - with offerings from each of the invited artists and the curatorial team. The next 4 issues can be combined to form a poster if you wish.
We hope that you will enjoy what unfolds here, and through sharing this may wish to join us at The Choreography of Care symposium in 2022.
Claire, Luke and Bethany
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