Dream Cellscapes
Cement Fondu, Textbook for Desire — 17th April to 3rd May 2021
Be With performance festival — 24th to 28th October 2022
March Dance — 13th March 2022
Dancehouse — 1st and 2nd March 2024
The cell refers to a contained space. It is also the smallest unit of life. Where there is life there is desire, and while the cell contains/holds/structures — desire flows.
By taking the spreadsheet as the choreographic field, Dream Cellscapes explores this idea of cell as container of desire. Between cells and bodies, desire to spills and overflows, a cellular dream; a cellscape. As performers move across IRL and online embodiments, going slack and reanimating, the work reflects on the ways digital space meets bodies, and asks what flows between cells, both digital and biological.
It’s like watching a sleepover through a bedroom window, except the window is your phone and instead of bedsheets its spreadsheets. They know you’re watching but they don’t mind - which makes you press your face right up.
Corrupting office software for their fantasy, and along with it expectations of time, gaze and presence, Dream Cellscapes looks at digital embodiment and the porousness of desire.
Publication that accompanies the performance and research as an analogue reader available here.
Created by Alice Weber
Performed by Wendy Yu, Juliet Saito, Alia Ardon, Molly McKenzie and Ella Watson-Heath
Sound: Megan Alice Clune
This project is supported by Critical Path as part of Alice’s 2021 Research Residency. Initial development of the work was supported by DirtyFeet with funding from Create NSW. The 2024 Dancehouse season was supported by funding from the NSW Government through Create NSW.
Photos 1 and 2 by Alia Ardon. Photos 3 and 4 by Four Minutes to Midnight. Screenshots from the cellscape by Alice Weber.