Marie Topp
Residency presentation

SOFT SPACE VISION is a series of three works. In this new trilogy I work with the body as an object for the gaze. It sets the premises that if the sight is blurred, other senses are activated in a higher degree in the bodies of the audience, and hereby also the production of other kinds of knowledge. I am interested in the potential I experience in the blurred vision, a gaze that is not able to focus sharply on the body – hence not able to objectify it. In other words in this series of works I will use blurriness as a feminist emancipatory strategy. What can the gaze tell us about the structures and relations we are navigating within? I am interested in the way knowledge is produced through the senses and how one can obtain a critical position towards the knowledge reached by the senses. To be able to do this I will, in this process, claim the position of a haptic critic to search for a field of perception that lay outside the rational knowledge and instead in the bodily sensations generated by the work.

Marie Topp is choreographer and performer based in Denmark and Sweden. Embodiment of concepts is the core interest Topp spins her productions and choreographies around. The last years she has made three solos, all concerned with the body exposed to different forces. Her pieces have been shown e.g. at Dansehallerne (Copenhagen), Kampnagel (Hamburg), Diskurs Festival (Giessen), at Reykjavik Dancefestival as well as at the Nordic Dance Platform ICE HOT (Helsinki). Besides her solo practice she is part of the Copenhagen based collective RISK.