Residency for Will Rawls

As part of his prize, the Prix Jardin d’Europe laureate 2016 Will Rawls was invited to an artistic residency in the frame of ImPulsTanz – Vienna International Dance Festival:

 Will Rawls and his collaborator John Hoobyar worked from 23 to 30 July on the latest project by Will Rawls:

 “My August 2017 residency at ImPulsTanz through the Life Long Burning Prix Jardin d'Europe program was a productive work period. The residency directly served the development of a solo performance, I make me [sic], that premiered at the Time-Based Arts Festival in September 2017. Spending about 6 hours a day for a week in a studio, exclusively dedicated to my project, allowed for numerous experiments in durational exercises. This durational physical practice, working with objects, developing scores for reading, dancing and storytelling, all served to support the durational performance at the TBA Festival. “I make me [sic]” is a solo choreography adapted continually as an installation and performance. The malleability of the installation from space to space, and its restaging of a menagerie of objects, invites a performing body to reconstruct itself at every moment. The choreography consists of scores for live compositions that engage dance, sound, sculpture, and storytelling. Both a kinetic form of thinking and a deeply subjective approach to biography, “I make me [sic]” amplifies the imperfect capacity of choreography to disclose the self. The installation is populated by the image of a computer cursor, sometimes blinking on video, sometimes mass-produced in works on paper. As a temporal object and symbolic material for further manipulation, the cursor stands in for the performer, offering a reflection on the mobility of bodies that are controlled by language. I am grateful for the opportunity that Life Long Burning provided to expand my creative process.