Filmed Dance: Possession, Disaster and Freedom Tactics is a discursive film course where participants will watch and analyse filmed dance that features trance (altered states), spirit possession and disaster, to determine if and how spirit can be transmitted through film? This course attends to the slippage of power in ethnography, when bodies in movement are captured, and intends to transcend it, by exploring the emancipatory potential of dancing and embodiment. Linking Apocalypse, metaphorically, to environmental instability, the workshop also problematises the concept of historical artifact and the timelessness of film, interconnecting the films to larger geopolitical movements. We will cross-compare a series of film clips spanning contemporary artworks, ethnographies, pop, choreo-documentaries, and Zombie Apocalypses. The films, accompanied by additional readings (framed by Black Queer Diasporic Studies) and automatic journaling, will prompt known and unknown stories, cosmologies, and myths that emerge during our discussions. Once we have peeled back the layers of identity, we can redirect our attention to the more urgent matter: the Apocalypse and our imminent rupture from planetary interconnectedness.
Justin F. Kennedy
