Jonah Bokaer's Blog | Next: NUDEDESCENDANCE
Automimesis
Mimicry is a foundation of learning and teaching movement; dancers primarily learn movement from other dancers, teachers, choreographers, or skilled individuals. In my work, I seek to collapse this foundation, by learning and performing movements from a digital avatar. Yet this avatar performs movement which I've created myself, so the process of mimicry is self-constructed, both doubling and subverting traditional dance conventions. A reverse mimesis is introduced when people copy the information of media, rather than employing media to copy us. In the above photo things are further complicated; I'm copying my movement as transposed onto the body of another figure - in this case, an insect.
Jonah Bokaer
Jonah Bokaer (Ithaca, NY) is a contemporary dance graduate of North Carolina School of the Arts, and is a current member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. While studying Visual & Media Art at The New School University he began exploring choreographic software, and has developed several digitally-created choreographies that address the moving body in relation to contemporary technology. These works have been exhibited widely throughout the United States and abroad, to great critical acclaim. Bokaer is also the founder of "Chez Bushwick Studios," an interdisciplinary arts studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
