TheLooseCollective Portfolio

Performing Body ​

The performative body is an hypersensitive and multi sensory tool through which we can make experience of space and of movement. It can be seen as a devise with multiple centers of control, a decentralized system of forces.

Digital Body

The concept of digital body encompasses all the algorithms and data that are able to be transformed into figural embodiments or digital entities that resemble the traits of human body, challenging the conventional definition of human-computer interaction as well as extending its meaning towards the manifestation of imaginary body.

Spectator Body

Elisa Zuppini (IT / NL) is a choreographer and performer based in Amsterdam. She graduated from SNDO- School for new dance development in June 2018 in Amsterdam. Through her movement practice De.sy.re. she creates pieces for different site-specific spaces, such as those of the club, academic contexts, the museum, but also for more conventional places like the theater. Through her research she constantly questions the placement of the human body and its potentiality to change and be changed. In this way, reflecting on how we can think of the body as a part of larger, decentralized and broader systems rather than an autonomous and isolated one.

Yishuai Zhang is an artist and researcher specializing in the demystification of the entanglement between art and science. An overarching concept, "fluid equilibrium," is conveyed by his practices with incorporated media to create an extension of aesthetics: from the perception of visible things with natural organs to the perception of invisible things with the help of computation. He simulates metaphysical reality to bring the meaning of art into more aspects of this current reality. He is currently pursuing the MFA Computational Arts program at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Michael Scerbo works as performance maker, permaculture practitioner and researcher in the field of Neuroaesthetics, inspired by feminist practices of decentralisation, is rooted in principals of care and relationality. A common aspects of his researches and works is the desire for learning, living and sharing invisibilise knowledges, by creating temporary structures of visibility for the praxis of these hidden narratives and worlds, hoping, one day, to rise them to mainstream culture. Michael creates ephemeral ecosystems in non-places where spectators, and other living entities can encounter and co-exist while observing their relations. His practice sits at the intersection of bioart, cognitive aesthetics, and politics; firm believer in the power of embodiment, sensuous knowledges

In July 2016 Elisa was awarded as Young Talent in choreography by Open FLR, Florence (IT). In 2018 she received a scholarship for Danceweb lifelong burning, Vienna (AT). In February 2019 Elisa she becomes one of the supported artists by Amsterdam based Dance Company ICK and she is currently involved in the curation of performance and dance events. Elisa is currently one of the member of the Jacuzzi, a collective of 10 choreographers, in Amsterdam.

“Between” is a technoetic performance that seeks to explore consciousness and connectivity through digital, telematic, and spiritual means, embracing both interactive and psychoactive technologies. A special form of performance will be introduced into the choreography, which combines modern techno dance party movements with a traditional form of Chinese Taijiquan. The audience will simultaneously perceive two sets of visualization while exploring the underlying concept of “between”.

He has a BA in contemporary choreography and performance art from SNDO - Amsterdam; MSc in Psychology of the Arts, Neuroaesthetics, and Creativity at Goldsmiths University London; and a license in Permaculture practices with a focus on Food Forest Design for Urban Green Spaces. He is co-founder of the podcast ‘Spaghetti Aesthetics’ (2019 - ongoing), the platform for the Alternative Performance Art Scene in Amsterdam ‘Untitled’, and an initiator and member of ‘The Loose Collective’ as a challenge of contemporary ideas of Artisthood, while rethinking modes of production and knowledge creation. Michael lives and works in between London and Amsterdam.

Performing Body  :  De.sy.re.  ​

De.sy.re. (decentralized systems of relation) is a relational technology for performative bodies that operates in between actual and virtual, human and non-human elements.The technology functions through logics of sensation and features the body as a transformative material interface (porous mass of vibrant entities with inter-dependent agency of self-organization -open by threshold in its precarious boundaries) and de-centralized system of embodying forces; an hypersensitive and multi-sensory tool for direct experience of its environment which in turn is active and ever moving.

De.sy.re. operates through an idea of space such as relational fields, where all the elements mutually function as performers, events, agents and attractors for each other, even for themselves (being self-related systems). By allowing micro and macro elements to enter into a relational movement a system of systems is initiated, generating unpredictable, fragmented and oblique (mis)alignments through the sensory chaos. The practice thus builds on layered systems of relations of which the outcome is only partially controllable. In order to free the motion the system constantly requires to be bend, to shift hierarchies in the prioritization of relation, to re-configure in form and function and to feature every relation as unique.

De.sy.re. is a practice that questions movement and body though material lents. Through the technology I attempt to rethink dance from a non anthropocentric vision; movement, activation and orientation as a product of re-configurable systems of forces where the entanglement with diverse types of elements comes to be fundamental. It can be seen as a dance-performative (or even choreographic) practice but also as a tool for the every day life: for orienting and relating and for opening our perceptual understanding to our environment. To filter, block or absorb informations, to creatively engage with our material body and to subvert micro power structure. 

Spectator Body  :  VEEM360 --- ​ecosystems in non-places

An environment is more than the sum of its component (living matter, light, sound, temperature, smell, texture…), it’s an intricate organism, which emerges from the relation among all its elements. Environments are around us, within us and ourselves as well. For this project the aim has been to create an environment which can be seen as a turning point in time, a new birth. The environment, which you are witnessing is bringing together the history of the building, of the people who have worked for it, is shaped with and around Veem. It is a space where different memories and times come together and relate. The time of the Graduation Show of SNDO4; the time of the waiting for a performance to start (audience time); the time of the butterflies; the time of the decaying of flowers, next to the growth of plants; the time of the weather changing; the time of the bacterias to grow; the past time of the building coming back through the embodiment of the plants and butterflies that are living and growing and changing together with you right now. We can look at this work as a collection of different times, or even as just one time, the eternal now.

​A space rich of possibilities, if we know how to listen to them. Indeed, listening is space. A space that is generated when there is an encounter. When we meet something else (object, human, animal, plant, insect, mushrooms, spirit) a space in between us takes shapes. It’s a space full of possibilities, a space in potential. Listening means giving time and space to the one just described. The space through the encounter will be contaminated. The other and ourselves will be contaminating each other. This contamination calls for an ethic. By used of the relational space we are imposing ourselves, we take it and use it for our own purposes. We cannot avoid it if we want to explore the relationship, if we wanna be contaminated.

Give time to yourself, sit, walk around and look, listen, wait. There is nothing spectacular, who is waiting for you, there is just life in its most simple form. Observe it and care for it. This project wants to give us a moment to reflect on who we are as humans, and how we want to relate in this fictional-real web of lives.
​
As someone else once said: caring means being contaminated. This is our wish for you from us.

Digital Body : Between --- virtual embodiment of dancing human body & active consciousness 

The concept of "Between" indicates to the ambiguous border line between male & female, physical body & metaphysical energy forms and organisms & machines. The dancing body is simultaneously translated into points cloud which shapes the silhouette of the dancer in a 3D space. Meanwhile, the galaxy system animating at the background is partially controlled by the movement of the dancer. For instance, the motion of the floating objects, the lightening of the 3D space are both influenced by the dancer. This reflects back to the mysterious link between human's physical body and human mind. Do our bodies (in this context, brain should be excluded) influence our mind (brain is here)? The digitalisation of the body blurs the distinctions between two genders as well as evokes the notion of disidentification. "Between" is navigating a spectrum of resonance between dancing body and active mind, using two distinctive visual effects to demonstrate the idea of longing for contigent fusion instead of separation.