Petric Bodies, Hanging on to Dear Life

Abstract

Musing with Petric Bodies, Hanging on to Dear Life is an essay that critically reflects on the live performance work “Becoming Boulder”, which occurred on 31 January 2015 as part of the Science Communication Art New Zealand Intercreate Symposium at New Plymouth, New Zealand. I performed a contact improvisation with a large andesite boulder, in a king tide, on a stormy day, at a culturally significant place for an extended period of time. Written using the present tense and as a dialogical text, the essay employs ekphrasis and practices geo-poetry to colour the scene and critically contextualise the potentials and limits of empathetic engagement with another form of organic assemblage. Complexities that come with being a foreigner or immigrant, well-versed in contemporary New Materialist discourse, and dwelling in a land rich with indigenous knowledge are voiced amongst gestures to get close to, identify with, and perform as an ancient, far from dead weight, body. While musing and critically contextualising on the potentials and limits of empathetic engagements, the essay seeks to exemplify the value of material situated learning that occurs in the space of making or doing of durational, experimental, site-responsive performance works.