Research Trip No. 1: Final Day
Today became all about processing. The last three days gave us so many clues. We were able to visit Sloan Museum and get clues about the history of Flint. We had enough information to draw some conclusions and identify relationships. In our site work, we recognized clues as to how the environment has been shaped by those relationships and the events that have transpired over the last century. Our interaction with young people and their families at our workshop gave us even more clues about how those events and the environment have begun to shape the identity of individuals living in Flint.
Our own perception of how each of these clues connect to one another and what their implications are for the community of Flint on a large scale has yet to be defined by any one individual’s affirmation or denial of their reality. We recognized that in 72 hours we wouldn’t have the time to fully absorb every minute detail and deliver a sound assessment of what we’d experienced and what it means for everyone living and working in Flint. What we could do, though, was process through our own bodies the lived experience of those three days. Three things stood out as key in the development of our work during this research session: body, environment, and time. These three components could be lived and experienced personally and immediately. By reliving this experience through embodiment, we could both draw connections and identify what held value for us. We assembled these ideas into short dance phrases and layered them with the element of environment; making miniature dance films in Carriage Town.
The next phase of research will largely rest in my own focus on where all of this embodied understanding will take me in deepening an intellectual understanding of the social and cultural systems in place that inform and define the lives of the people of Flint. Then this cognitive recognition will be further considered through a second phase of embodied movement practices and reframing of content.