Justine A. Chambers’ movement practice approaches choreography as both collaborative and cumulative, rooted in close observation of the world and focused on the body as a site of archived knowledge. She considers the improvised dances performed almost undetectably every day, particularly those that tether us to our communities and through which we assert our presence within (and despite) the systems that contain us.
With (As part and crowd) time is a place, Chambers consider questions of time and togetherness. The work began as a response to the artist’s observations of the particularities of the Gibson’s context—a forested mountain university campus in the midst of a metropole; the not-quite completed geometries of the art museum under construction; and the Gibson’s vision and commitment to embrace many different publics. Her choreographic prompts become an exercise in considering the manifold and often turbulent ways we experience time simultaneously—as moment, as season, as epoch—together and apart from one another. Paced with the setting sun, Chambers’ scored performance lecture is framed by such questions as: How do we stay tethered to someone in a different time? What would happen if we could be autonomous in our timing but committed to accepting the friction of being together? How do we embark on shared endeavours while holding time differently?
The work’s title is drawn from the writings of the late Martiniquais philosopher Édouard Glissant, from his book The Poetics of Relation (1990). Glissant asserts the possibility of a radical togetherness within an archipelago of experience: “We know ourselves as part and as crowd, in an unknown that does not terrify. We cry our cry of poetry. Our boats are open, and we sail them for everyone.”
With gratitude to Emese Csornai, Lisa Gelley-Martin, Renee Sigouin, and Joshua Segun-Lean.
