Artist Statement
SARAH: My work is situated in post-capitalist ruin and ecological crisis, within which practices of grief, humor, imagination, and storytelling are desperately needed for reimagining collectively sustaining futures. I frame dance research as pathways back toward understanding reciprocal webs of entanglements and look to relationships from the more-than-human world to serve as ongoing models for repairing destructive histories. I research how we can shape our physical movements and relationships towards models of ecological reciprocity— making queer space for differences/identity within a sustaining whole. Living in a time when individualism is collapsing upon itself, our bodies have the potential to offer the wisdom of holism and mutualism; the capacity to connect us to what is beyond ourselves. I embrace the contradiction and complexity of what my body is and does, and create space for non-binary thinking within my practices, teaching, and performance.
AUSTIN: Movement and space are my natural (comfortable) mediums of artistic expression. I find writing challenging to demonstrate articulation; but thank goodness for a thesaurus! Does anyone else find this true? I enjoy viewing film, dance and other artworks with few or no preliminary explanations. I like connecting feelings and meanings in as personal of a way as possible; I like thinking in the imaginary realm that is created between art and a person. In creating work, I find that once the process has momentum, the work has its own voice and starts creating itself. My role then becomes reining the intention and its transparency, to the pulling direction the work is taking us; I prefer collaborations.
Sarah Konner This Lawn is not my Lawn Dance Smith College, 2022