Bec(h)oming with Simon Whitehead: Practising a Logic of Sensation

Abstract

Abstract In this text and image essay, I introduce a new concept to the environmental humanities; one which seeks to trouble metaphysical notions of dwelling by combining the idea of home (the oikos in ecology) with a notion of permanent becoming. In this way, home loses its conservative and reactionary connotations with atavistic origins and identities and instead is opened up to nonhuman forces and powers. As I explain in the opening section, bec(h)oming is a matter of affect; it depends upon the capacity of bodies to move beyond themselves, to be impressed and transformed by the environments which they move through, to tap what the philosopher Gilbert Simondon might see as the “pre-individual” energy that runs through all organisms. Humans are no exception; they, too, are caught in the flux and flow. By focusing on bodies, the essay not only looks to depart from conventional narrative-based notions of ecocriticism and theatre ecology, it aims to provide a lexicon, a new idiom for thinking through corporeal ecologies that are attuned to sensations, the virtual play of a cosmic Earth. To do that, the text provides the first detailed account of the work and practices of influential UK movement artist Simon Whitehead, whose Locator workshop has proved pivotal for so many dancers, choreographers, and artists over the past few decades. Integral to the paper is a desire to experiment with alternative modes of writing, a style that would express the enthusiasms of bec(h)omings and give some sense of its somatic potential.