Sarah Fdili Alaoui

What escapes computation in artistic performance is almost everything… From rich experiences, intentions, movement in continuous space and time, computation makes numerical representations, and these are incomplete snapshots of a larger story. Rather than the attempt to capture faithfully the phenomena in stake, computation should be a constrained frame that generates few possibilities and de-familiarizes the body.

What escapes computation in artistic performance is the whole conversation on politics of inclusion. Computation doesn’t like outliers nor special cases. It normalizes based on given data. Computation doesn’t engage in social conversation nor in what our future should look like. What escapes computation is the body, with skin, flesh and bones.

My body that needs to sleep, to eat and to have sex. My body that ages. My body that gets tired. My body that can only flex up to its limits. My body that is not isolated. My body that learns and grows. My body that exists in society for the years it has. My body that took time to become and that will take time to end. My body that beholds my experiences, feelings, fears, skills and weaknesses. My body is where artistic performance emerges. My body is so human with all its cells and their connections. That is what escapes computation.

– Sarah Fdili Alaoui

back to all PROVOCATIONS