Performing Landscape – Swinging Together or Playing with Projections

Abstract

Swinging together is an experiment that involves performing with the projection of an image on the site of its making, including the image of others moving in the same swing at the same site. This text describes these initial experiments with participatory live events of swinging and with moving image projections on vegetation in Helsinki in 2014-2015. The experience of performing is reflected upon with the help of notions like haptic visuality (Marks 2007), and the performances are looked at as a form of expanded ecocinema (Rust, Monani & Cubitt 2013). The material-discursive practices (Barad 2007) in each case defined what mattered and what was excluded from mattering. The experiences of these variations point to the importance of the context for performance as research, and the value of repetition and small changes in circumstances, for generating unforeseen possibilities and meanings.