All late, all babe – Second artistic part of a doctoral research on the concept of crip time as choreographic strategy and question to collective experience

Application summary

“All late, all babe” is the second artistic part of a doctoral research on time and temporality in bodily relations. Through choreography, the research project looks at the effects the concept of crip time has on the relationships between bodies and ideas of collective experience. Taking serious the idea that different bodies with different constitutions and abilities inhabit time differently, the leading question of this research is: How to share time if we cannot share time? Which experiences of togetherness do spaces of simultaneity create? Conceptual base for the research is disability researcher Alison Kafer’s notion of crip time through which she puts in question expectations of a shared tempo as well as architect Margaret Price’s claim that inclusive planning will always be crossed by disability’s emergent nature. The challenge that both of these concepts pose to performative processes who usually rely on a pre-defined rhythm and composition of actions is the driving force of the research. Understanding choreography as a practice that affects both, the bodies of performers as well as audience members, the research articulates a question to performance formats, the temporalities they afford and the relationships they establish: Can we create a performative framework who radically changes with the people present and which idea of collective experience does that make possible? “All late, all babe” is a performance project within a doctoral research in choreography at the Theater Academy Helsinki. A first practical research period experimented with reorganising spaces as well as times. After the first stage, the concentration shifted entirely towards temporal aspects when beginning to reflect the different speeds with which bodies had moved through the pandemic.