Decapod/ THIS MOVEMENT: Library

One of the things I wanted to do in this residency is to bring the books that inform my interest in dance and politics.

As well as looking nice, the books are arranged in colour as a way to disregard the traditional library categories. I tried curating a selection of books about embodied thinking in a public library a few years ago so it sort of comes from there.

I'm also interested in sharing resources (perhaps because I feel like I have few myself), and wondered if other people interested in these things might want to use at a resource for their enquiries. For your enquiries. Perhaps it needs longer than a month to settle in or it needs some activation - maybe you (if you are in Stoke) know some of these books and can offer a recommendation?

Decapod/THIS MOVEMENT: Gifs

One of my research tools for my residency is making gifs although they haven't been featuring as much as I had thought they would.

I like how these short looping images draw attention to small details or movement and, when placed alongside each other they allow connections and comparisons to be made between different situations and scales. Between human and non-human. Finding and imagining the different patterns of movement that run through all things.

Here are some I've made so far. You can follow future ones on my Twitter account.

Decapod/ THIS MOVEMENT: Beginning

Hello. My name is Hamish MacPherson and my Decapod residency at AirSpace began this weekend.

I'm a London-based choreographer who makes performances, installations, workshops, games, writings, images and other things. My work often deals with dance and choreography as technologies for being and thinking together with other people. I'm interested in revealing the embodied aspects of systems like politics and philosophy that might otherwise appear abstract or neutral.

I'll be up three of four days a week throughout March to use the gallery as a base for my practical research project THIS MOVEMENT, working towards finalising a brand new piece of work to be shown at a later date.

My desk is at the back of the gallery.

THIS MOVEMENT is how we use our bodies to make politics. 

It's not affiliated with a political party or even big P politics in general. 

It's more about how we're using our bodies to be recognised, to organise (or disorganise) ourselves or to make change.

I think it's happening all the time: protests, demonstrations, parades, occupations, sit ins, walk outs, illegal raves, clubbing, rambling, folk dancing, playing, running, BDSM. We can think of all these things as being political.

Former Magistrates Court occupied by protesters in Stoke-on-Trent 2014. 

Photo: scfcbushy

The core of what I'd like to do is interview people in and around Stoke who are or have been involved in this kinds of bodily politics. It only takes a little bit of internet searching to find there has been lots of this taking place.

Stoke-on-Trent demonstration and 'die-in' 2003

Photo: Thomas J

During my residency at AirSpace, I want to think about some of these ideas in the particular context of Stoke on Trent. A month is not long at all but when I'm here I'll be using a range of research methods including, interviewing local people, running, swimming, dancing, practicing yoga, taking photos, making GIFs, blogging, facilitating some post apocalyptic dance training and setting up a public reference library in the gallery.

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

On the latter, please feel free to come into the gallery to read the books on the shelf. I'd like them to be a resource for other people interested in dance and politics while I'm here.

If you would like to find out more, be interviewed or be involved in some other way you can visit me in the gallery, leave a note on my desk or email me at info.thismovement@gmail.com