Moving-voicing-remembering resonating embodied memory through performance as research

Jamisse, Adriana Laurel Rodrigues

Moving-voicing-remembering resonating embodied memory through performance as research

Thesis / Dissertation

2025

Publisher

University of Cape Town

Department

Centre for Film and Media Studies

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Abstract

In this written explication, I articulate a process-based MA journey which, through Practice- as-Research (PaR), has explored how the body remembers knowledge within an intentional cultivation of resonance. The emphasis on the textural and aural experience within my own performance practice, offered an opportunity to engage embodied memory as corporeal traces of sound knowledges that live within and are maintained by, a range of resonant relationships. Inspired by the works of German sociologist Hartmut Rosa and Indian American political theorist Anita Chari, I use resonance as a theoretical framework that aids in exploring relationality within a performance praxis. Borrowing from the social sciences, literature, somatic studies and performance studies, I unfold an incomplete conceptual discussion around MOVING, VOICING and REMEMBERING as interdependent, circular, emergent and integrative motions of my body-in-relation. I articulate my re-membering identity by engaging with the interdependence of memory, archive and knowledge through embodied practice. Influenced by South African scholar Uhuru Phalafala's concept of the matriarchive, I understand memory as embodied and relational and thus expand it towards the notion of matrilineally transmitted sound knowledges. The ritualised practices of wandering through ecology, tracing through materials and integrating MOVING-VOICING- REMEMBERING in my performance processes, inform the way that the conceptual discussion unfolds, further revealing the interlinks between body and world, voice and relationality, and memory and knowledge.