Paola Crespi | Independent Researcher (original) (raw)

Papers by Paola Crespi

Performance Research, 2022

This essay explores Rudolf Laban's practice-inspired theory through an understanding of temporali... more This essay explores Rudolf Laban's practice-inspired theory through an understanding of temporality and spatiality in terms of the productive tension between movement and form that gives birth to a diagrammatic rethinking of the vexed relationship between writing, movement, and corporeality.

Rhythm and Critique: Techniques, Modalities, Practices, 2020

This chapter locates the practice-inspired approach to rhythm of choreographer and movement-think... more This chapter locates the practice-inspired approach to rhythm of choreographer and movement-thinker Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) in the wider context of critical theory focusing on rhythm and rhyth-manalysis. In doing so, its aim is both to add a signifi cant and overlooked voice to the ongoing debate on rhythm which has unfolded in Western thought, and to argue for the value of a practitioner's insight into this prominently if not exclusively theoretical arena. Laban's attempts to defi ne, analyse and understand rhythm are here discussed in relation to his artistic output and his philosophy through an exploration and analysis of unpublished manuscripts and drawings held at the National Resource Centre for Dance at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. Anticipating what Henri Lefebvre famously argued in Rhythm-analysis (2004), rhythm is for Laban at the same time a quantifi able phenomenon (Takt) unfolding in space and a qualitative variable (rhythm itself), suggestive of what Lefebvre would later describe as 'what is least rational in human being: the lived, the carnal, the body' (9). Laban studied rhythm's intensities in his 'Effort theory' in English factories in the postwar period. This work resonates with but at the same time differs from Taylor's project of time-motion studies, in that rhythm plays the central role of resisting the impact of machine work on individual workers. Rhythm's effects on space and its impact on the dynamics of the moving body are also explored by Laban in his Choreutic theory, of which several models in the form of sketches and drawings are discussed in this chapter. In order to understand and reconcile the inner (Effort) and outer (Choreutics) study of rhythm, Laban, later in life, relied on topological structures such as knots and Mobius strips to devise his theories, something that resonates with the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Jacques Lacan and Michel Serres.

Rhythm and Critique: Techniques, Modalities, Practices, 2020

Rhythm and Critique: Techniques, Modalities, Practices, 2020

Neoclassicism – What is that?, 2019

Rhythm lies at the heart of our experience of shifting dynamics ruling neo-liberal society in ter... more Rhythm lies at the heart of our experience of shifting dynamics ruling neo-liberal society in terms of life patterns, economic growth and decay, and our systems of mediation and communication. Our lives are shaped and partake of rhythmical fluctuations: the regular happening of events and its sudden variations, the negotiations between different degrees of speeds, as in the way we produce and consume food, think and practice art and the balance and alternation between our moods, affects, and desires. Rhythm is nevertheless difficult to grasp, point down, describe. It is more something we feel, sense and intuit. Its study encompasses such diverse fields as cultural theory, psychology, crafts and design, movement arts, music, sociology, literature and the visual arts. Moreover, based on time and rhythm rhythmanalysis was famously introduced by Henri Lefebvre as a new type of methodology. However, both rhythm and rhythmanalysis have fluctuating meanings, something that hinders their understanding and that has limited their impact.
This seminar series foregrounds rhythm and rhythmanalysis by highlighting their relevance and richness as methodological perspectives and practices within the humanities. The six sessions will explore various approaches to time and rhythm as those found in the work of key critical theorists, such as Gilles Deleuze, Henri Lefebvre, Rudolf Laban, Roland Barthes, Henri Meschonnic, Emile Benveniste, Gaston Bachelard and others.

On Showing and Writing Training, Sep 2016

This diagram presents a first step towards a new methodology for archival research in the perform... more This diagram presents a first step towards a new methodology for archival research in the performing arts. The diagram is the expression of a methodology in action and derives from a reflection on how the material might be kept ‘alive’ in archive-based artistic research. The peculiarity of the Laban Archive held at the National Resource Centre for Dance (Surrey) consists both in being the archive of a movement-thinker and practitioner, and in being resistant to a straightforward navigation, due to the nature of its present classification system.

The development of this methodology was influenced by theoretical approaches to the visual diagram, such as those of Gilles Deleuze, C.S. Peirce and Gilles Chatelet. The dynamic, heuristic and kinaesthetic aspects of the diagram and of the act of diagramming were taken as the starting point for the development of a diagrammatic methodology aimed at tracing a collection of research paths (or lines of flight) through the content of the archive.

The assemblage of the traces and connections drawn between documents and thematic areas gave birth to a unique understanding of the elusive nature of the archive. The journey of the archival documents (middle level), from their present classification (top level) to a new one serving the purposes of the PhD research (bottom level), is here visible and ‘palpable’ in this analogue diagrammatic presentation. This diagram is a snapshot of a process of thought and practice offering a new way of approaching research in performance studies, beyond existing qualitative methodologies for archive research.

Goldsmiths College, 23rd April 2016 Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Pascal Michon

The thesis explores Rudolf Laban's practice-inspired theory through an understanding of temporali... more The thesis explores Rudolf Laban's practice-inspired theory through an understanding of temporality and spatiality in terms of the productive tension between movement and form. This repositioning of Laban's work allows us to appreciate his importance for contemporary media philosophy and performance studies. The key claim is that Laban's contribution highlights a co-

For a special issue of Body & Society on ‘Rhythm, Movement, Embodiment’, Paola Crespi presents tw... more For a special issue of Body & Society on ‘Rhythm, Movement, Embodiment’, Paola Crespi presents two previously untranslated texts, Rudolf Bode’s ‘Rhythm and its Importance for Education’ and Rudolf Laban’s ‘Eurhythmy and Kakorhythmy’. In the following interview she uncovers further unpublished and untranslated sources and she discusses some of the main themes of these texts in relation to the more widely known text by Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life (2004), as well as Roland Barthes’ How to Live Together (2012), in which he presents an account of ‘idiorrhythmy’.

Eleni Ikoniadou’s The Rhythmic Event breaks new ground in the field of media philosophy. Her cont... more Eleni Ikoniadou’s The Rhythmic Event breaks new ground in the field of media philosophy. Her contribution focuses on sound and digital art, which she explores from a non-anthropocentric, affective, relational perspective. Re-examining the notion of rhythm and unearthing its discrete continuous nature allows the author to utilise it as a speculative tool to enter the fuzzy zone of the event.

This thought-provoking contribution opens up new avenues to explore both the materiality of the digital and the slippery, shifting dynamics of vibrational bodies. The book comes as a petit and extremely dense contribution part of Brian Massumi and Erin Manning’s Technologies of Lived Abstraction series with MIT Press and shows the extent to which research in the area of affective digital technology and art is steadily progressing.

The translation of Rudolf Bode’s 'Rhythm and its Importance for Education' and Rudolf Laban’s ‘Eu... more The translation of Rudolf Bode’s 'Rhythm and its Importance for Education' and Rudolf Laban’s ‘Eurhythmy and kakorhythmy in art and education’ aims at unearthing rhythm-related discourses in the Germany of the 1920s. If for most of the English-speaking world the translation of Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life marks the moment in which rhythm descends into the theoretical arena, these texts, seen in their connection with other sources, express, instead, the degree to which rhythm was omnipresent in philosophical, artistic, socio-economical and psychological discourses at the turn of the 20th century. Some commentators, such as Lubkoll, have recently highlighted the centrality of rhythm in Modernity, lamenting a lack of scholarship focusing on this phenomenon. This is arguably due to a lack of access to sources accentuated by the language barrier; if, indeed, the ‘rhythmanalysis’ of the turn of the century is not an exclusively Teutonic phenomenon, it is also true that a copious amount of material on rhythm of this period is written in German and remains untranslated. In this sense, then, this translation aims at contributing to the project of a cultural history of rhythm.

The text translated here (first published in Die Tat in May 1921) is an early elaboration of Rudo... more The text translated here (first published in Die Tat in May 1921) is an early elaboration of Rudolf Laban’s polyrhythmic ontology. The phenomenon of rhythm here takes shape through the manifold ways in which it resonates in the text (Ur-rhythm, Eu-rhythm, Kako-rhythm). Besides positing a fundamental co-dependency between rhythm, movement and space, Laban sees rhythm here also as the gateway to a socio-ethical dimension culminating in the Festival, or art of celebration.

Rudolf Bode’s text Rhythm and its Importance for Education (published by Eugen Diederich, Jena, 1... more Rudolf Bode’s text Rhythm and its Importance for Education (published by Eugen Diederich, Jena, 1920) has both a theoretical and a practical aim: to clarify the nature of the rhythm phenomenon in order to lay down the foundations of ‘Rhythmic Gymnastics’. Bode engages with the work of his contemporaries, such as Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Karl Buecher and Ludwig Klages, and comes to identify rhythm with a continuum devoid of rationality. The text is unique in its ability to meaningfully connect such diverse fields as philosophy, gymnastics, anthropology and politics and shows, in this way, the potential of ‘rhythmanalysis’.

Talks by Paola Crespi

Talks by Stamatia Portanova, Yi Chen, Pascal Michon, Sunil Manghani, Paola Crespi and Eleni Ikoni... more Talks by Stamatia Portanova, Yi Chen, Pascal Michon, Sunil Manghani, Paola Crespi and Eleni Ikoniadou

Organised by Paola Crespi in collaboration with the Audio Culture Research Unit (Kingston Univers... more Organised by Paola Crespi in collaboration with the Audio Culture Research Unit (Kingston University) and the Topology Research Unit (Goldsmiths)

Performance Research, 2022

This essay explores Rudolf Laban's practice-inspired theory through an understanding of temporali... more This essay explores Rudolf Laban's practice-inspired theory through an understanding of temporality and spatiality in terms of the productive tension between movement and form that gives birth to a diagrammatic rethinking of the vexed relationship between writing, movement, and corporeality.

Rhythm and Critique: Techniques, Modalities, Practices, 2020

This chapter locates the practice-inspired approach to rhythm of choreographer and movement-think... more This chapter locates the practice-inspired approach to rhythm of choreographer and movement-thinker Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) in the wider context of critical theory focusing on rhythm and rhyth-manalysis. In doing so, its aim is both to add a signifi cant and overlooked voice to the ongoing debate on rhythm which has unfolded in Western thought, and to argue for the value of a practitioner's insight into this prominently if not exclusively theoretical arena. Laban's attempts to defi ne, analyse and understand rhythm are here discussed in relation to his artistic output and his philosophy through an exploration and analysis of unpublished manuscripts and drawings held at the National Resource Centre for Dance at the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. Anticipating what Henri Lefebvre famously argued in Rhythm-analysis (2004), rhythm is for Laban at the same time a quantifi able phenomenon (Takt) unfolding in space and a qualitative variable (rhythm itself), suggestive of what Lefebvre would later describe as 'what is least rational in human being: the lived, the carnal, the body' (9). Laban studied rhythm's intensities in his 'Effort theory' in English factories in the postwar period. This work resonates with but at the same time differs from Taylor's project of time-motion studies, in that rhythm plays the central role of resisting the impact of machine work on individual workers. Rhythm's effects on space and its impact on the dynamics of the moving body are also explored by Laban in his Choreutic theory, of which several models in the form of sketches and drawings are discussed in this chapter. In order to understand and reconcile the inner (Effort) and outer (Choreutics) study of rhythm, Laban, later in life, relied on topological structures such as knots and Mobius strips to devise his theories, something that resonates with the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Jacques Lacan and Michel Serres.

Rhythm and Critique: Techniques, Modalities, Practices, 2020

Rhythm and Critique: Techniques, Modalities, Practices, 2020

Neoclassicism – What is that?, 2019

Rhythm lies at the heart of our experience of shifting dynamics ruling neo-liberal society in ter... more Rhythm lies at the heart of our experience of shifting dynamics ruling neo-liberal society in terms of life patterns, economic growth and decay, and our systems of mediation and communication. Our lives are shaped and partake of rhythmical fluctuations: the regular happening of events and its sudden variations, the negotiations between different degrees of speeds, as in the way we produce and consume food, think and practice art and the balance and alternation between our moods, affects, and desires. Rhythm is nevertheless difficult to grasp, point down, describe. It is more something we feel, sense and intuit. Its study encompasses such diverse fields as cultural theory, psychology, crafts and design, movement arts, music, sociology, literature and the visual arts. Moreover, based on time and rhythm rhythmanalysis was famously introduced by Henri Lefebvre as a new type of methodology. However, both rhythm and rhythmanalysis have fluctuating meanings, something that hinders their understanding and that has limited their impact.
This seminar series foregrounds rhythm and rhythmanalysis by highlighting their relevance and richness as methodological perspectives and practices within the humanities. The six sessions will explore various approaches to time and rhythm as those found in the work of key critical theorists, such as Gilles Deleuze, Henri Lefebvre, Rudolf Laban, Roland Barthes, Henri Meschonnic, Emile Benveniste, Gaston Bachelard and others.

On Showing and Writing Training, Sep 2016

This diagram presents a first step towards a new methodology for archival research in the perform... more This diagram presents a first step towards a new methodology for archival research in the performing arts. The diagram is the expression of a methodology in action and derives from a reflection on how the material might be kept ‘alive’ in archive-based artistic research. The peculiarity of the Laban Archive held at the National Resource Centre for Dance (Surrey) consists both in being the archive of a movement-thinker and practitioner, and in being resistant to a straightforward navigation, due to the nature of its present classification system.

The development of this methodology was influenced by theoretical approaches to the visual diagram, such as those of Gilles Deleuze, C.S. Peirce and Gilles Chatelet. The dynamic, heuristic and kinaesthetic aspects of the diagram and of the act of diagramming were taken as the starting point for the development of a diagrammatic methodology aimed at tracing a collection of research paths (or lines of flight) through the content of the archive.

The assemblage of the traces and connections drawn between documents and thematic areas gave birth to a unique understanding of the elusive nature of the archive. The journey of the archival documents (middle level), from their present classification (top level) to a new one serving the purposes of the PhD research (bottom level), is here visible and ‘palpable’ in this analogue diagrammatic presentation. This diagram is a snapshot of a process of thought and practice offering a new way of approaching research in performance studies, beyond existing qualitative methodologies for archive research.

Goldsmiths College, 23rd April 2016 Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Pascal Michon

The thesis explores Rudolf Laban's practice-inspired theory through an understanding of temporali... more The thesis explores Rudolf Laban's practice-inspired theory through an understanding of temporality and spatiality in terms of the productive tension between movement and form. This repositioning of Laban's work allows us to appreciate his importance for contemporary media philosophy and performance studies. The key claim is that Laban's contribution highlights a co-

For a special issue of Body & Society on ‘Rhythm, Movement, Embodiment’, Paola Crespi presents tw... more For a special issue of Body & Society on ‘Rhythm, Movement, Embodiment’, Paola Crespi presents two previously untranslated texts, Rudolf Bode’s ‘Rhythm and its Importance for Education’ and Rudolf Laban’s ‘Eurhythmy and Kakorhythmy’. In the following interview she uncovers further unpublished and untranslated sources and she discusses some of the main themes of these texts in relation to the more widely known text by Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life (2004), as well as Roland Barthes’ How to Live Together (2012), in which he presents an account of ‘idiorrhythmy’.

Eleni Ikoniadou’s The Rhythmic Event breaks new ground in the field of media philosophy. Her cont... more Eleni Ikoniadou’s The Rhythmic Event breaks new ground in the field of media philosophy. Her contribution focuses on sound and digital art, which she explores from a non-anthropocentric, affective, relational perspective. Re-examining the notion of rhythm and unearthing its discrete continuous nature allows the author to utilise it as a speculative tool to enter the fuzzy zone of the event.

This thought-provoking contribution opens up new avenues to explore both the materiality of the digital and the slippery, shifting dynamics of vibrational bodies. The book comes as a petit and extremely dense contribution part of Brian Massumi and Erin Manning’s Technologies of Lived Abstraction series with MIT Press and shows the extent to which research in the area of affective digital technology and art is steadily progressing.

The translation of Rudolf Bode’s 'Rhythm and its Importance for Education' and Rudolf Laban’s ‘Eu... more The translation of Rudolf Bode’s 'Rhythm and its Importance for Education' and Rudolf Laban’s ‘Eurhythmy and kakorhythmy in art and education’ aims at unearthing rhythm-related discourses in the Germany of the 1920s. If for most of the English-speaking world the translation of Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life marks the moment in which rhythm descends into the theoretical arena, these texts, seen in their connection with other sources, express, instead, the degree to which rhythm was omnipresent in philosophical, artistic, socio-economical and psychological discourses at the turn of the 20th century. Some commentators, such as Lubkoll, have recently highlighted the centrality of rhythm in Modernity, lamenting a lack of scholarship focusing on this phenomenon. This is arguably due to a lack of access to sources accentuated by the language barrier; if, indeed, the ‘rhythmanalysis’ of the turn of the century is not an exclusively Teutonic phenomenon, it is also true that a copious amount of material on rhythm of this period is written in German and remains untranslated. In this sense, then, this translation aims at contributing to the project of a cultural history of rhythm.

The text translated here (first published in Die Tat in May 1921) is an early elaboration of Rudo... more The text translated here (first published in Die Tat in May 1921) is an early elaboration of Rudolf Laban’s polyrhythmic ontology. The phenomenon of rhythm here takes shape through the manifold ways in which it resonates in the text (Ur-rhythm, Eu-rhythm, Kako-rhythm). Besides positing a fundamental co-dependency between rhythm, movement and space, Laban sees rhythm here also as the gateway to a socio-ethical dimension culminating in the Festival, or art of celebration.

Rudolf Bode’s text Rhythm and its Importance for Education (published by Eugen Diederich, Jena, 1... more Rudolf Bode’s text Rhythm and its Importance for Education (published by Eugen Diederich, Jena, 1920) has both a theoretical and a practical aim: to clarify the nature of the rhythm phenomenon in order to lay down the foundations of ‘Rhythmic Gymnastics’. Bode engages with the work of his contemporaries, such as Emile Jaques-Dalcroze, Karl Buecher and Ludwig Klages, and comes to identify rhythm with a continuum devoid of rationality. The text is unique in its ability to meaningfully connect such diverse fields as philosophy, gymnastics, anthropology and politics and shows, in this way, the potential of ‘rhythmanalysis’.

Talks by Stamatia Portanova, Yi Chen, Pascal Michon, Sunil Manghani, Paola Crespi and Eleni Ikoni... more Talks by Stamatia Portanova, Yi Chen, Pascal Michon, Sunil Manghani, Paola Crespi and Eleni Ikoniadou

Organised by Paola Crespi in collaboration with the Audio Culture Research Unit (Kingston Univers... more Organised by Paola Crespi in collaboration with the Audio Culture Research Unit (Kingston University) and the Topology Research Unit (Goldsmiths)

Investigates rhythm from the perspective of critical theory, philosophy and art • Includes newly ... more Investigates rhythm from the perspective of critical theory, philosophy and art • Includes newly translated materials from Rudolf Laban and Henri Meschonnic • Looks at rhythm in relation to theoretical debates, politics and ethics, and rhythmanalysis • Locates the significance of rhythm for the analysis of the everyday and its flow Rhythm and Critique presents 12 new essays from a range of specialists to define, contextualise and challenge the concepts of rhythm and rhythmanalysis. The book begins with a genealogy of rhythm as it occurs through critical theory literatures of the 20th century, enabling the reader to situate philosophical and contemporary readings that further define rhythm as a critical term and mode of analysis. In placing emphasis upon rhythm as cultural technique and locating its significance for the analysis of the everyday, the book offers a clear and engaging overview of a fascinating theoretical field. It helps map a range of histories and approaches and considers how rhythm might now emerge more forcefully and pertinently as a critical framing for contemporary culture.