Sarah BRONSARD

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Sarah BRONSARD

Participating Project	Institutional Recommendation Program
Activity Based	Canada
City	Tokyo
Period	2020.1- 2020.3

Purpose of the residency

"Bruissement de mousses" (tentative title) is a new choreographic project that will be initiated during my residency at TOKAS. Moss inspire my visual and choreographic practice by its discreet and persistent presence that has crossed millions of years, reminding the fleetingness of our human passage. The residency at TOKAS will be the occasion to explore the symbolic, aesthetic and spiritual presence of moss in Japanese culture. "Bruissement de mousses" will develop around micro-movements evoking slow transformations, in dialogue with my choreographic practice based on Flamenco and visual explorations of micro-environments.

Plan during the residency

・Visit gardens and temples to film and draw moss in Tokyo, in order to feed the creative process of my piece.
・Attend Butô, traditional Japanese dance and flamenco workshops.
・Attend TPAM and investigate the possibility to show my work in Japan.
・Meet with local artists for future collaborations.

Activities during the residency

The choreographer and visual artist recommended by the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec, Sarah Bronsard, explored the symbolic, aesthetic and spiritual presence of mosses in Japanese culture in preparation for a new choreographic project. She met with bryologists and visited numerous places (temples, gardens, wastelands) to photograph and film mosses, while in the studio, cultivating and painting them. Through the shift of posture and perspective required to observe mosses, she investigated how to bring attention to the beauty and sacredness of the trivial.

Overview of the residency

Achievements:

• Start to explore relationships between some Japanese approaches of movement (Butoh, Nihon Buyo) and mosses observation: attention to details, shift of perspective, introspective posture and movement constraint.
• Gather sound and video materials for an upcoming choreographic installation.
• Reconnect with my painting practice and start a corpus of paintings.
  

• Build a series of photographs of people observing mosses in cities, temples and galleries, to explore the passage of verticality to horizontality in public spaces, question where is the sacred, play with the scale of landscapes.
• Discover the art of Suiseki, while visiting the Bonzai museum, and explore in gardens how my body can interact with rock’s cavities the way daiza (wooden base) embrace the rock’s shape, in parallel with the way mosses grows into quiet and hollow spaces.
• Explore the relationship to touch in Japanese culture. The distance maintained between individuals in public spaces, which contrast with the richness of textures in many artistic practices (tiles, fabrics. etc) has intrigued me. I want to investigate this further, as mosses awake the sense of touch.
  

• TPAM attendance in Yokohama to meet many art residency directors, international presenters and artists.

Outcomes:

• Prepare paintings for a future exhibition.
• Pursue Nihon Buyo and Butoh training to develop the choreographic aspect of this project.
• Confirm my desire to come back in Japan for an artistic residency, in a place closer to nature.

• Discover moss places to visit in future travel: Koke no sato village, Yatsugatake forest, Yakushima island, Saiho-ji, Art Biotop Nasu.
  

Creator Information