the octopus as an allegory for transness
OCTOPUSsy
Jay Yule led a performance experiment at London Performance Studios as part of 12 Artworks of our time, initiated by Ghost and John of Hidden Keileon company and 10 other artists. Supported by Arts Admin and championed by Jo Fong, Jay’s enquiry looked into what we can learn from the Octopus and involved a contact-based movement practice in which the bodies of the people involved create a solid sculpture for others to gradually slip, slide and slither their way through creating an image where bodies are continually disappearing, reappearing, being birthed and eclipsed.
This research has been supported by :
Arts Admin
Jo Fong
London Performance Studio
The Green, Nunhead
Hope Street Dance, Liverpool
Pepa Ubera, Sadler’s Wells London
Siobhan Davies Dance
Goldsmith’s University
Independent Dance
Hidden Keileon Company
TOUCH & CONSENT
The Octopus research began with Anne-Gaelle Thiriot at The Green, Nunhead. This contact improvisation practice was born out of a fascination of how the octopus can collapse its own bodies to fit through holes smaller than it. Jay and Anne-Gaelle discovered that replicating this idea between human bodies brings up interesting considerations about where one body starts and ends, how our bodies can move against one another with tension or release and with all of that how do we feel about touch and consent as move past, through, over and under one another?