Facilitator bios

Asimina Chremos (project lead artist) has been exploring dance-making for over 30 years. They worked with Leah Stein in the 1990's, dancing in her choreographies prior to the formation of Leah Stein Dance Company. While living in Chicago during the 2000's, before the selfie was in full flower and Instagram did not yet exist, Chremos had a daily practice of incorporating self-videography, using a digital video camera and editing with iMovie on a laptop, which is archived here. They briefly revived this practice in a different form, adding voice-overs, during the pandemic, in the form of a Quarantine Dance Practice Diary, recorded and edited using smartphone capabilities and apps. This video came to the attention of Oxford graduate and anthropologist Zihan Xu, who asked to include it in her research on speculative modes of inquiry through the body. It was Zihan's interest that sparked the creation of the Screenbodies practicum as a way to go further and deeper into the experience of self-reflection and communication through digital screens and experiencing "live" action through videoconferencing. As a facilitator, Chremos will bring her varied experiences in improvisational dance, somatic studies, and visual arts; as well as her developed understanding of the current climates for art-making. 

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Shannon Brooks (project assistant) uses performance, movement, and film/video to create textural experiences in strange worlds that experiment with the interstitial spaces between the body, the material world, and the imaginary…..

I remember a largely analogue childhood balancing on the cliff of the digital age. We had a family computer, our first digital camera took AA batteries, and I bought minute cards for texting/calling that I would upload onto the t9-word cell phone that I inherited from my older sister. Still, growing up in the new millennium entwined my teenage years into the rapid growth of personal technologies, social media, and the internet. My relationship to these technologies has evolved - waxing and waning with interest, capacity, and need. In my personal creative practice I understand Disability and accessibility as generative forces that change time, space, and power structures. I am excited by how technology can create more access to communication, sharing ideas, sharing resources, and organizing action. I am interested in what we choose to perform online, the relationships we form, and how the screen/moving image has the capacity to bend time, space, and perception. In fact,  I am assisting Asimina in this process because I commented  “I think about this a lot!” on one of her Instagram posts about screen~body~communication. Now, I am grateful to be assisting Asimina in creating this practicum, diving deeper into the network. I look forward to our research together: stepping into, sharing weight, and taking witness to our screenworld-portel-companions and all its signals.