dylan – Dylan Spencer-Davidson

WorkExhibition

It’s OK… Calibrating Intimacies 5&6

September 2023

In 2023 Joy Mariama Smith and I started collaborating, researching intimacy and friendship practices. We shared some first work from this collaboration at Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on Aug 24th and Sep 1st 2023.

This circle, brought together by artist and educator Joy Mariama Smith, explores, together with many others, intimacy and how it is intrinsic to the sacred. Consent practice is at the root of this investigation. What is intimacy and how do we experience it amidst vastness? This is the ongoing research question of this circle, calibrating intimacies.

Imbedded in the research practice of the common or commoning of uncertainties around expressions of intimacy and how it is intrinsic to the sacred. The performers will use the Oude Kerk as the primary site for these explorations. Approaching research on intimacy from a multi-modal place to align with the multiple uses of the O.K. Consent practice is at the root of this investigation. Our method and reason for coming together is to research collectively via discourse, vocalization and movement. The yield of the research is understanding the reciprocal relationship between the sacred and the intimate.

The public manifestation is an invitation to witness/support/immerse/engage with our research. We will do movement and vocal research around the collective space of safety/sacred/sanctuary. We will dance with each other and through each other, we will improvise and choreograph. We will speak without talking, we will make nonsense out of sense making. We will vocalize without being verbal.

I use dance here in the literal, and expansive sense, as well as senses that have yet to be revealed. The dance of relation. Human and non-human, space and body, time and space, person to person.   The next circle meeting in this series will take place on Sept 1st. Please bring your own headphones in order to listen to the audio recording.

Collaborators/Cohort/Circle Eroca Nicols (sept 1st) Paca faraus (sept 1st) Philipp Meyer-Hege (aug 26th) Mijke van der Drift & Jay Bernard (aug 26th & sept 1st) Joy Mariama Smith (aug 26th & sept 1st) Justin F Kennedy (aug 26th) Dylan Spencer-Davidson (aug 26th & sept 1st) Ciro Goudsmit (sept 1st) Laura Fernandez Antolin  Alyssa Reiziger.

For more information about It’s OK… look here.

ghosts #4

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WorkMusic

ghosts #4

August 2023

It’s OK… Calibrating Intimacies 5&6

Field of Study

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WorkWorkshop

Field of Study

July 2023

Field of Study is an experimental, residential study week which took place in July 2023 for eleven participants at The Mirror Institution in Öland, Sweden. The project was initiated by Opashona Ghosh, Emmeli Person, Liza Rinkema Rapuš, Dylan Spencer-Davidson, Mirjam Steffen and Iga Świeściak.

The programme’s focus was on de-individualizing artistic practice through peer learning methodologies. It sought to move away from competitive and extractivist modes of artistic study and production. Instead, the programme researched models that create space for artists to share resources. The week included peer-led workshops engaging with improvisational scores, social dreaming, mobilizing theory, documentation practices and labor extraction in the art world. Additionally it hosted screenings of works by Ane Hjort Guttu and Agus Nur Amal PM TOH.

Field of Study was realised with the generous support of Gwaertler Stiftung.

ghosts #4

Positionen – Texte zur aktuellen Musik

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WorkPress

Positionen – Texte zur aktuellen Musik

November 2022

Delighted to have my work featured on the cover of issue 133 of the German contemporary music magazine Positionen. The magazine features documentation from Affective Dynamics Study Group, Age of Majority as well as work in progress. Designed by the wonderful Studio Pandan.

Field of Study

Affective Dynamics Study Group

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WorkVideo

Affective Dynamics Study Group

November 2021

Affective Dynamics Study Group is a video showing a temporary collective exploring issues around interpersonal relations, non-violent communication, vulnerability, complicity and new ways of being and living together. Part consciousness-raising group, part experiential group, the collective meets to perform a series of experimental exercises together, borrowed from the fields of somatics, activism and group therapy. The video’s subtitles are based on interviews with the participants.

Commissioned by Roter Salon, Volksbühne Berlin for NEXT WAVES THEATER/Glasshouse

Screenings
Volksbühne (online), 2021
Next Waves Theater/Glasshouse (online), 2021
XXL Dreams, The Hague, 2023
Viewing Copy, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin, 2024

Positionen – Texte zur aktuellen Musik

Glimpses beyond the violence of normativity

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WorkWorkshop

Age of Majority

December 2019

Born into a dying future, today’s preadolescents are the first representatives of Generation Alpha – a generation likely to be faced with immense global challenges in their lifetime. Too young to be afforded a democratic voice, but born too late to wait around, many of them are starting to take direct action around the world.

Age of majority is choreographic performance by Dylan Spencer-Davidson, developed collaboratively with Dora (11), Effie (11), Ella Belle (11), Josephine (11), Maida (12), Mila (12), Jordan (10), Sidonie (11), and Deva Schubert. By consciously occupying public space and subtly disrupting social codes, the performers adopt »subject rebel positions« and test ideas around autonomy, self-esteem, identity formation, performativity and resistance.
Premiered at Tropez, Berlin

Collective display of affection

PlusX / Cashmere Radio

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WorkMusic

PlusX / Cashmere Radio

November 2019

In this episode of +X, Dylan Spencer-Davidson and Lauryn Youden share excerpts
from recent performances, as well as a collage of references relating to their
practices, taking listeners on a journey through codependency, chronic illness,
care, seduction, heartbreak and therapeutic catharsis. Featuring tracks by
friends including Edward Herring, 5 Reasons Why Foraging Alone Is Better and
Kohwi.

TRACK LIST
Wendy Carlos – Spring
Mica Levi – Interlude 2
Meredith Monk – Quarry Procession
Kohwi – If I Wanted To Tell You For
AIR MAX ‘97 X t.A.T.u – All The Things You Said (AM97 rerun)
Superpitcher – Yves
Lauryn Youden – Doctor Daddy
Ka5sh – I’m Depressed
Jacques Lejeune – Petite Suite
The Whatnauts – I’ll Erase Away Your Pain
5 Reasons Why Foraging Alone is Better – Ugly Species Nobody Cares About
Lauryn Youden – Asking
Zini – If Only
Sia (ft The Weekend) – Elastic Heart
SOPHIE – Splice Sample Pack Demo + Wwwings – Neverland + Ploy – Garys + Edward Herring X Lorenzo Senni – Flat World Revisited (DSD panphobia medley)
Mziuri – Iavnana
Lauryn Youden – Iavnana
Dylan Spencer-Davidson – The Way I Feel Under Your Command (performance soundtrack excerpt)
Dylan Spencer-Davidson – Awareness Exercise
Triad God – So Pay La
DJ Whey Protein – Troy (it has fallen so we are in love)

Age of Majority

The way I feel under your command

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WorkPerformance

The way I feel under your command

November 2019

Inspired by J.L. Moreno’s concept of the ‘therapeutic soliloquy’, the performance is centred around an hour-long stream-of-consciousness monologue, in which autobiographical fragments are shared out loud as a means of exploring and processing accumulated experience. The choreography combines dance with exercises from therapeutic practices such as TRE (Trauma & Tension Release Exercises), a practice believes that humans store trauma in the body’s deep tissue which can be released through inducing involuntary tremors.

As bell hooks writes, ‘to know love, men must be able to look at the ways that patriarchal culture keeps them from knowing themselves, from being in touch with their feelings, from loving.’

Premiered at Cabaret Voltaire, Zurich as part of “Are we bodies?” curated by Vlada Maria Tcharyeva.