Bodies and Technologies

How do various technologies condition the performance and experience of one’s own body and of other bodies? And, in turn, how do different bodily experiences re-condition, retune and perhaps even disrupt technologies? In this edition we tackle the complex and plural entanglements between bodies and technologies, from experiences of pleasure and intimacy to the ongoing embodied realities of colonial and ableist frameworks.

On this studio page we introduce you to the research fellow for this edition, Devika Chotoe, and her approach to guiding the institutional research undertaken into the field of inquiry Bodies and Technologies. You can also access the material that was selected for each of the six closed reading group sessions.

Interview with Devika Chotoe

For each edition, a research fellow is selected to lead the institutional research into the Field of Inquiry. For Bodies and Technologies (Edition IX, 2022-2023) If I Can’t Dance invited Devika Chotoe (b. 1992 Netherlands. Lives in Amsterdam) a dancer, poet and organiser who researches the ongoing impacts of Dutch colonialism on communities of colour in the metropole, with a special focus on the (queer) histories of Indian and Indo-Surinamese migratory trajectories.

In this interview, Devika speaks about her practice as being situated in queer communities of colour and how art is for her an important site for community building. She shares how her research into modes of darkness has informed how she has approached her role as the If I Can’t Dance research fellow for Bodies and Technologies.

Listen to the interview here. ›››

Reading Table for Field of Inquiry

Mar 30, 2022 · Devika Chotoe · Reading Group – Session 1: Technologies of Perception · To move towards knowledge rooted in queer and decolonial perception, Devika Chotoe proposes darkness as a mode to subvert the visual and rational as dominant signifiers o (..) ›››

Apr 27, 2022 · Devika Chotoe · Reading Group – Session 2: Listening to Images · Devika Chotoe introduces a text by Tina Campt that promotes listening to images to attune to quiet, quotidian practices of black refusal in identification photography. Th (..) ›››

Jul 25, 2022 · Devika Chotoe · Reading Group – Session 3: So... You Want to Queer (..) · KUNCI Study Forum and Collective in Yogyakarta co-founder Nuraini Juliastuti discusses study groups and student press following the New Order Regime in 1998 during Indone (..) ›››

Sep 28, 2022 · Devika Chotoe · Reading Group – Session 4: Embodying Change · Technologies of self-care and creativity can help undermine the intergenerational and sociopolitical traumas and mechanisms perpetuated within the body. Following a discu (..) ›››

Oct 26, 2022 · Devika Chotoe · Reading Group – Session 5: Multiplicitous Self and (..) · Sacred and ancestral interference can advance understanding a plural sense of self.. For instance, M. Jacqui Alexander invokes African cosmologies as a means to make the (..) ›››

Nov 30, 2022 · Devika Chotoe · Reading Group – Session 6: ‘Put Your Mouth On Your (..) · The last installment closes with vocal ephemerality and oral imaginations. Research-based artist Angelo Custodio guides the group into a voice practice in which they coll (..) ›››

Related pages on ificantdance.org

››› Radio Emma Intro to Bodies and Technologies
››› Radio Emma Queer Pedagogy

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