#bestpracticesincontemporarydance

“A queer form of conversation between technology and bodies"

In April 2020, during the 1st COVID-Lockdown, Naoto & Jorge started meeting weekly online to #practice for an hour: to distort and alter the videos of themselves and each other. Another important aspect of the practice is a #chat, a casual discussion that usually lasts for half an hour to reflect on and theorize the practice.

#practice archive

#chat archive

Jorge Guevara and Naoto Hieda met over the internet as part of a series of meetups that Naoto organized during lockdown in April 2020, which turned into focused sessions called “Best Practices in Contemporary Dance”. Since then, on a weekly basis, Naoto Hieda in Cologne and Jorge Guevara in Brussels meet online to “practice” for an hour. We stream, distort and alter the videos of ourselves and each other both using commercial and/or open-source software to blend our bodies in the “pixel space”. We do not define what tools and components are to be used, and the practice might include spontaneous reading, writing, eating or body painting. The project is not intended to produce a performance; the practice itself is the outcome and the objective is to create a fluid, queer form of conversation between technology and bodies. Another aspect of the process is a “chat”, a casual discussion to reflect on the practice. Both the practices and chats are recorded and uploaded on YouTube as a massive online archive. The project was presented at NODE20 Festival (Frankfurt) in PAF (Performing Arts Forum.Saint Erme.France), SEADS (Space Ecologies Art and Design) and IDOCDE (ImPulsTanz, Vienna) as (ever-)work-in-progress.

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