The Progression of Things

Choreographer: Tilman O'Donnell

The Progression of Things (2011) marked the second commission by O’Donnell for the Out in Context series.

This work was designed for Färgfabriken Museum in Stockholm. The piece was structured in twenty minute performance modules that would repeat and rotate counterclockwise with each iteration. The work was a playful interrogation of time and narrative, composed of a community of those that knew only how to continue in circles.

“The Progression Of Things challenges broadly conceived notions of history, and it’s requisite conceptions of progress, growth and transcendence through myth building, as a linear phenomenon. While nations, cultures, societies, bodies politic and material are in constant search of myths to live by, largely founded on a linear, forward moving conception of time, what seems to take place is something more like a circular constant. That is to say: we move in what we imagine is a linear fashion, while finding ourselves largely in the same predicaments as human beings, facing existence in a series of identical efforts, redefined by constantly varying sets of circumstances.

By presenting a performative model of circular constants, my aim is to posit a light alternative to history as linear progression, with it’s necessary critical ocular-centrism, linguistic hegemony, and linear narrative tendencies. Absent this neatly organized progression of time and history, what other kinds of narratives are available to us?

What is left?”
– Tilman O’Donnell

 

Concept and Direction: Tilman O’Donnell

Light and Video: Thomas Zamolo

Choreographic Assistant: Lisa Drake

Dramaturgical Support: Anna Grip

Uruppförande: 2011

Speltid: 3 tim