The ONE as a contact point. How can we become aware of the complicity and singularity of this point of contact between living beings? Not everything touches everything, but everything always touches something. Let's call it contact improvisation. A practice, but also an event, that arises in the midst of two creatures who meet, trying to discover what will serve as their ground. A session of contacts, dialogues, and open discussion.

Emma Bigé studies, writes, translates, curates, and improvises between the fields of dance, transfeminist and environmental studies. She used her PhD in Philosophy (Sharing movement, ENS, 2017) as a reason to curate two dance exhibitions on the histories of Contact Improvisation (Musée de la danse, Rennes, 2018) and on the life and work of dance improviser Steve Paxton (Culturgest, Lisbon, 2019). She is the co-editor of anthologies on improvisation (Steve Paxton: Drafting Interior Techniques, 2019; La perspective de la pomme. Histoires, politiques et pratiques du Contact Improvisation, 2021) and author of Mouvementements. Écopolitiques de la danse (La Découverte, 2023), she is currently working on trans* and ecological studies, translating queer theorists and writers (Jack Halberstam, Sara Ahmed, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Eva Hayward...) and preparing two books on ecosex theory and transecofeminism.

Working with phenomenology, dance, and queer theory, Emma irregularly impersonates the position of art epistemology teacher at visual arts schools and dance schools (head-geneva, cndc-angers, cnac-chalons, etc.).

Sunday, 09/06/2024 — 11.00–13.00 
MAAT Garden
Marta Wengorovius | Emma Bigé

ONE, TWO, AND MANY | The Reading Body, or Infinity

ONE, TWO, AND MANY | The Reading Body, or Infinity is the latest instalment in Marta Wengorovius's plastic and participatory artwork ONE, TWO, AND MANY.* This visual piece is also a method through which the artist explores issues stemming from intuition and the genesis of movement, emphasising the different dimensions of three types of dynamics: ONE as singularity and interiority, TWO as intimacy, and MANY as an encounter with the experience of community.

The Reading Body, or Infinity is an invitation to take part in a slow process of gestation and digestion: over the course of a year, a series of encounters will take place in the form of guided walks between a museum (maat) and a mountain range (Serra da Arrábida), activating the ONE, TWO, AND MANY* Library (a work created in 2012 that serves as a reflection guide for the OTM Method*) at a crossroads between the Book and the Body. Three books have been selected from the ONE, TWO, AND MANY Library. Each will be read over four months by each Utopian Family. The Time of ONE, the Time of TWO, and the Time of MANY. During each reading period, there will be a Stimulus-Encounter, Encounters with the Nomadic Notebooks* (OTM reading and exploration diaries) and Lessons Under the Trees.* [Please refer to the Glossary to better understand these different instalments.]

Designed specifically for maat, ONE, TWO, AND MANY | The body that reads, or infinity is the artwork's fourth instalment. This journey began with OTM — Nomadic School* | Taking the colours where they are most needed (2020–22) at Jardim dos Pintores, Casa da Cerca, Almada, followed by OTM Residency (2020–23) at Teatro do Bairro Alto (TBA), Lisbon, and more recently OTM | If a mountain range were to guide us (2022–23), at Brotéria, Lisbon.