Sympoiesis : a bio inspired dance performance
Direction and costumes:
Laurane Le Goff (MA Art and Science)
Dancers and co-creators:
Megan Eyles (Trinity Laban Conservatoire)
Aske Ploug (London Contemporary Dance School)
Justine Prignot (London Contemporary Dance School)
Timea Szalontayova (Trinity Laban Conservatoire)
Sound design:
Victor Paredes (PhD sound-music-movements interactions, IRCAM-Centre Pompidou) with the collaboration of Anshuman Gupta (MA Biodesign)
Videographer and editor:
Julianna Persson (BA Film and Television, LCC)
This performance invites you to rethink your relationship with other species. Can we erase the boundary between “us” and “them”? Can we reshape our present and maybe rethink our future by learning about their past?
“Sympoiesis” is a bio-inspired dance performance. Coined originally by Beth Dempster, this term implied ‘multi-species making together.’ The performance emerges from the relationship between myself, a plant, a slime mould, four dancers, and a sound designer.
Highly recommended and shortlisted by Maison/0 This Earth Award.
Accompanying leaflet
Work in progress
Prints for MERCH
This woodblock print has been made for the exhibition MERCH in January 2022. For this occasion, I printed a series of 6 on Japanese paper 80g/m2.
Inspired by my research for the Sympoiesis performance, the print links the patterns of the organisms I was working with: Physarum Polycephalum, Alocasia Zebrina, un unknown fungi, and Homo Sapiens.
Each print: 50£
Earth Quest: Your Ecological Adventure
Monday 29th August at the Barbican Gallery
As the Our Time on Earth exhibition comes to a close, join an eco-inspired journey across the Barbican center to explore the role of creativity in environmental action. Choose your own journey towards a more sustainable planet by exploring the power of your imagination, ideas, and teamwork to bring about justice for all people and our shared planet.
Take part in over ten activities and experiences offered up by the Climate Emergency Network from the University of the Arts London (UAL), as we bring the Barbican site to life and inspire you to take creative action!
Create textiles that help you design together with others. Defend nature through dance. Play games to explore your healthy, beautiful future. Reveal tarot cards that create new stories. Join an investigation of care to shelter humans, wildlife, and ecosystems. Find hope in challenges, power in vulnerability and courage in the face of urgency.
Your quest begins in the Barbican Conservatory, where our guides will help you select your route before embarking on your own journey towards a more sustainable planet.
All activities are on a first-come, first-served basis and entry will be one in, one out if we reach capacity. Filming and photography will take place at this event.
This event has been made possible in part through the support of the AKO Storytelling Institute, UAL.
Sympoiesis: a bio-inspired collaborative performance
Free Stage • Air
A dance piece and collaborative crochet workshop inspired by the relationship between a plant, a group of artists and an organism known as slime mould. As dancer Megan Eyles performs, join in to grow her costume using upcycled thread, telling the story of two other-than-human lifeforms creating together.
Private view: Human Resources Exhibition
Sympoiesis was performed during the private view for the exhibition Human Resources: Creativity as Renewable Energy in Times of Scarcity at the Lethaby Gallery, Granary Square, London.
‘ Human Resources was a London Design Festival exhibition bringing together work by 2022 graduates from UAL from across disciplines. The exhibition proposes creativity as renewable energy in a time of scarcity and asks us to rethink what a resource can be, turning away from planetary to humanity.
Productivity can mean different things. Many of us work to create goods, services and capital within a wider system that measures and rewards our usefulness. Equally, production processes enable an appetite for consumption that benefits some, while harming others.
Mindless, endless production impacts our planet. How can human innovation replenish our relationship with the planet we all share? How can we take less and give more?
Our individual relationship with work is unique. What happens if we uncouple our labour from the metrics of productivity and transaction? Instead of always doing, we might also welcome the very human experiences of trying, failing and undoing, as well as simply being. ‘
Global Design Graduate Show 2022
We have been shortlisted for the Fine Art / Photography / Craft group. Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who voted for us 🙂
