The term “anthropocene” was popularised by atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen.

The name “Bag of Bones” evokes a non-human image of, or approach to, the body as being composed by bones that are contained by a bag, thus encouraging practitioners to suspend any preconception about what a body is, how it feels, and what it does.

When leading a workshop at an event such as CARPA 4, one never knows the background, the pre-experience and the anxieties that the participants bring into the space. In order to address possible concerns regarding the physical explorations we were going to do, and to relieve some of the anxiety, I mentioned that it was always possible to step out and to just watch.

This summary is based on the notes I took during the discussion. My sincere apologies for any errors or misinterpretation!

Maria Callas (1923–1977) Greek-American opera-singer.

Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842), Italian composer.

See Emily Brady (1998) for a description of how imagination can enhance perceptual and aesthetic experiences of nature by facilitating modes of understanding through identification (pp. 143–44).

For a comprehensive discussion of Actor-Network Theory, see Latour 2005.

Author viewed 26 March 2010.

I wrote this work before I encountered more recent theoretical arguments against animism, although I contend that its emotional knowledges can expand our understanding. For example, see Crusin (2015).

In fact, recent critical proposals on the tendencies in contemporary dance and performance in question tried to connect them to a contemporary line in philosophy, the so-called “object-oriented ontology”, characterized by the attempt to oppose the Kantian idea f or conformity of objects of knowledge to human mind, and therefore of existence and being, trying to undermine it by promoting the ontological equality of object relations. This notion doesn’t describe a stable “school” but divergent proposals and authors with significantly divergent orientations, like the French philosopher Quentin Meillassoux (Après la finitude, Paris, Seuil, 2006), criticizing Kantian “correlationism”, associated retrospectively with this line, Graham Harman, the supposed inventor of the term “object-oriented ontology”, Timothy Morton, Levi Bryant and others, making complex philosophical proposals, exposed in the last years to the risk of somewhat reductive readings in the contemporary art fields.

Thus, the task to rethink things as complex agencies is at the centre of Bruno Latour’s radical perspective. Cfr. Bruno Latour, Nous n’avons jamais été modernes. Essai d'anthropologie symétrique, Paris, La Découverte, 1991.

For more detailed elaboration of the concept of dynamic or transformative ontologies, cfr. Boyan Manchev, L’altéraion du monde. Pour une esthétique radicale, Paris, Lignes, 2009; Boyan Manchev, La metamorphose et l’instant – Désorganisation de la vie, Strasbourg, La Phocide, 2009.

On the notion of performance capitalism cfr. Boyan Manchev, “Transformance: The Body of Event”, in It takes place when it doesn’t, Eds. M. Hochmuth, K. Kruschkova and G. Schöllhammer, Frankfurt am Main: Revolver Verlag, 2006.

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