ANTART Field/Works Talk #8: Claire Vionnet & Christelle Becholey Besson

Shadows between Worlds results from a collaboration between visual artist Christelle Becholey Besson and anthropologist/dancer Claire Vionnet. The artwork questions movement when it resonates with various sensorial materials and sounds. Human shadows interplay in different sensory environments (water, space, shell and tunnel), addressing ways movements and bodies are affected by specific sound and visual contexts. This installation is a metaphor of broader current social issues about the world we live in. A female dancer thrusts between water and space, playing with the sensoriality of the world, resonating with materials she encounters. The gesture resonates with various faces of the Anthropocene, addressing the environment we are living in. The installation invites the audience to think about the milieus that might be better welcoming our bodies in a more sustainable way. In which environment can bodies move, grow and breath organically? This project is an illustration of participative collaboration between art and anthropology, in which the research question has been formulated together in an ongoing conversation. Claire Vionnet is an Anthropologist, Dance Scholar and Dancer. She wrote a PhD on the creation of gestures in contemporary dance, exploring notions of body, improvisation, senses, shadow/ghost, production processes, autoethnography, phenomenology. She works creatively with dance communities (West African Dances, Contemporary Dance, Contact Improvisation), reflecting on the way art/dance produces knowledge. Marked by her time lived in Africa, she is particularly interested in the role humanities play in society and keen to reflect on better reuniting Anthropology, Art and Society. She develops alternative forms of ethnographic restitution (video-essay, lecture-performance, performative dialogs in festivals) to reach a broader audience beyond Academia. Christelle Becholey Besson was born in 1985 in Switzerland, she lives and works in Vancouver. “In my practice, I like to follow my curiosity, which takes me in unfamiliar places. I then use and misuse art to shape fictional narratives and create atmospheres from parallel times. Collaboration is essential to my creative process. Sharing bring complexity and chaos to the linear thinking and give me more unknown”.