Rituals of Care
boychild with Josh Johnson and Total Freedom: Untitled Duet (the storm called progress)
Untitled Duet (the storm called progress) is a new performance by boychild conceived with dancer Josh Johnson along with DJ and sound composer Total Freedom, experimenting with techniques of improvisation and pressing against a linear unfolding of history.
boychild with Josh Johnson, Moved by Motion, 2017
Photo: Inès Manai
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Free admission, limited capacity
Past Dates
Untitled Duet (the storm called progress) is both an excerpt and expansion of boychild’s work with the collaborative band Moved by the Motion. It takes Paul Klee’s drawing Angelus Novus from 1920 as an opportunity to reflect on the nature of improvisation as it relates to what Walter Benjamin might call the chaos of history. Klee’s angel is propelled backwards without foresight “into the future to which his back is turned,” facing the piling wreckage and catastrophe of the past. Against this dense background, boychild imagines an expansive performance that works with distinct forms: a durational composition of shifting relations across sound, music and movement.
boychild is a movement-based performance artist whose work operates through improvisation as a mode of survival and world building in the liminal space where becoming meets representation. Her performances have been presented widely, including the Venice Biennale; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City; the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco and ICA, London.