Choreographing the Campus at MIT
As a 2020-22 Visiting Artist at the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology and Research Affiliate in the Art, Culture, and Technology program, I explored and shared how dance-based research and creative collaboration across disciplines can create new techniques, lexicons, and conversations within urban design.
With a particular interest in how the city shapes our bodies, and how, in turn, we shape the city, I invited the MIT community to observe and engage with the micro-city where we live, work, and learn.
Link to project Choreographing the Campus at MIT (2022)
Link to article about the work Dance as a language for design by Ken Shulman
Introduction Video
Excerpts from my MIT Choreographing the Campus Project Page
The project utilized the ten-word lexicon I developed during the second year of my residency at MIT. These ten words come from interdisciplinary conversations and movement workshops with people across disciplines, all interested in spatial practices. The lexicon is designed to give infrastructure to interdisciplinary exchanges , understanding that there are interesting slippages of meaning that occur as we use the words in interdisciplinary contexts. The lexicon is partly drawn from the Morning Conversations Podcasts. I write about all ten lexicon words as the subject of my monograph, published with Theatrum Mundi, Navigations: scoring the moment.
The ten-word lexicon is: Agency, Boundary, Connectedness/Separatedness, Four-dimensional-distance, Growth, Improvisation, Power, Preciseness, Resistance, & Score
The Choreographing the Campus movement score videos were designed to invite people to explore the lexicon through a lived experience of moving with the city.
“We must understand ourselves as contributing to our belonging to the city, our belonging to the environment, which is possible through our ability to respond. We are not separate from city or environment, not separate from Place: we are a part of it all.” says Akinleye.
BOUNDARY: stream of water or traffic
Location: 4 Ames Street, Cambridge MA
Parking Lot on north side of Saxon Lawn, west of MIT Building E2
PRECISENESS: walls and fences
Location: 15 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge MA
Along the “Outfinite,” on the north side of MIT Bush Building, 13
Interactive Map of Adesola Akinleye’s Route through MIT Campus
Follow Adesola Akinleye’s path across MIT’s campus and visit the locations where she observed and responded to the campus.
(Also downloadable as a PDF)