The Collective Body

Dancers, musicians & digital artists play telephone…

How do artists connect and collaborate while living in isolation?

The Collective Body (TCB) is an audio/video project that captures a moment in history while inspiring artists from across North America.

1. It all starts with the dancers. Each dancer records themselves separately, creating a video of a particular body part in motion. There is no sound, just the feeling of movement.
2. The video is then sent to the musicians, who use the movement as inspiration for their own soundscape.
3. The new audio recordings are sent to other dancers, who use the sounds as inspiration for their own movement.
4. And so it continues, in a rhizome-like pattern of creative collaboration.

The recordings are gathered, tagged, and fed into a system that merges pieces together at random. The result is a haunting, shimmering collage of diverse bodies projected onto the windows of the Rotary Centre for the Arts, as a cascade of sound washes over visitors outside.

The Collective Body project explores the constraints and unique possibilities of digital connection while reminding us of the deep importance and irreplaceability of shared physical space.

Rotary Centre for the Arts
January 10 – 30, 2021
5:00 PM – 9:00 PM
421 Cawston Ave.

Admission
This is a FREE indoor/outdoor experience.

Please abide by current Covid-19 health and safety regulations.