Alexandra Davenport, Plassein (film still)
Taking its title from the Ancient Greek verb meaning “to mold or shape”, Plassein is a choreographic interpretation of neuroplasticity using performance and moving images to explore reorganization, adaptation, and growth.
Echoing ideas that plasticity enables the brain to be simultaneously formative and formable, the body is proposed as a site of both knowledge production and knowledge exchange. The performers are continually forming new connections and pathways, working together to hold, fold, weave, curve & hinge. Moving with the body, the camera too becomes a performer – tracking movement but also creating it. The exchange between performers and the camera creates a new architectural reality which is in a constant state of transformation.
In the age of hyper-productivity, principles of neuroplasticity have been capitalised on with suggestions of how we might ‘rewire’ our brains to become more efficient. Plassein invites an alternative reading that moves away from the unrelenting pressure to produce & consume, with an emphasis on learning, growing & exchanging.
