Participatory workshop and performance for
Space Saloon ‘Fieldworks’ residency in Southern California
Fieldwork involves dissecting and observing sites of interest, often disrupting landscapes through the extraction, ordering and sharing of information and resources. Since at least the European Enlightenment, nature and society have been positioned as two separate sciences and we rely on a reformatting of the “wild” for our gain. But for many, our wild is the city, consumerism and online media, and when we leave our city comforts and temporarily inhabit the harsh landscape of the High Desert, this wild becomes an unfamiliar obstacle.
For the one-day workshop, we began with "anthropological research", observing how participants react to their new wild, comparing moments of ease and discomfort. These reflections were then translated into performance movements: constructing and framing nature through human action (or, in other words, human nature). 
When planning this project I wanted two things – to dance in the desert (how fun?!) and to challenge a group of architecture students to do this with me. I am increasingly interested in how to leverage inexperience as a way of freeing creative output and embracing mistakes, similar to the marks a child makes. 
After a collective brainstorming session in which we discussed our observations (we had been secretly spying on our fellow participants to see how they reacted to each other and to the site), the following scenes emerged:
1. Macho Moves (and the morning after), directed by Anastasiia Budnyk
2. The Shuffle, directed by Senna Hanner-Zhang
3. Aria Walks up a Hill, directed by Aria Ekasilapa
4. Everyone Walks up The Hill, directed by Neal Lucas Hitch
5. Facial Expressions, directed by Weerada Chalermnont (Mint) 
TEAM
Rebecca van Beeck
Anastasiia Budnyk
Senna Hanner-Zhang
Aria Ekasilapa
Neal Lucas Hitch
Weerada Chalermnont
DOP
Zeno Legner
MUSIC
"Hakan" by Sylvan Aztok

Nature is Not our Natural Habitat
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