Wild Witness
Somatic Filmmakers
"Mystical experience occurs in the body because we are a microcosm of the whole."
Janet Adler, Founder of the Discipline of Authentic Movement
Janet Adler, Founder of the Discipline of Authentic Movement
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We research somatic intelligence - the wisdom of the body beyond the logic of the mind - through investigation of 800-year-old Himalayan ritual dances performed by Buddhist nuns and monks, and through somatic movement experiments in natural environments.
As filmmakers we allow our own experience of witnessing to draw us deeper into what we are seeing, experiencing what phenomenology calls intersubjectivity. In the Somatic approach to filmmaking the camera and subject are in a reciprocal relationship. |
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Direct Experience
"The witness can experience herself beyond the boundaries of her own personality as she shares in the same energy field with the mover."
Janet Adler, Founder of the Discipline of Authentic Movement
Janet Adler, Founder of the Discipline of Authentic Movement
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Our creative process is based in the somatic movement practice The Discipline of Authentic Movement, which emphasizes embodied witness consciousness where one witnesses both the exterior environment as well as one’s inner world, observing both the exterior subject and one’s own inner experience in relationship to it.
In the somatic approach to cultural research the researcher and subject are in a reciprocal relationship that encourages direct experience without conceptualizing.
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Embodied Awareness
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Our research has two parts which each arise from our exploration of somatic movement practice. Our first area of research explores the interconnected and reciprocal relationship between body and earth and our need for wild untamed spaces.
The second area includes the theory and practice of ritual dance in Vajrayana Buddhist monasteries and nunneries in the Himalayas.
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"[It] is precisely this reciprocity,
the ongoing interchange between my body and entities that surround it.
It is a sort of silent conversation that I carry on with things,
a continuous dialogue that unfolds far below my verbal awareness –
and often, even, independent of my verbal awareness.
Whenever I quiet the persistent chatter of words within my head,
I find the silent wordless dance always already going on -
this improvised duet between my animal body and the fluid breathing landscape that it inhabits"
Merleau Ponty
the ongoing interchange between my body and entities that surround it.
It is a sort of silent conversation that I carry on with things,
a continuous dialogue that unfolds far below my verbal awareness –
and often, even, independent of my verbal awareness.
Whenever I quiet the persistent chatter of words within my head,
I find the silent wordless dance always already going on -
this improvised duet between my animal body and the fluid breathing landscape that it inhabits"
Merleau Ponty
