Performascope

Movement Mouvement

Definition

Displacement of a body in space in relation to one or several points of reference. it can involve different kind of entities including human beings and objects and can be considered between the scales of the human body and its parts, of the individual or its social group, its physical and cultural context. A movement can be described both qualitatively and quantitatively according to various methodologies and frameworks as well as be modelised so as to record, measure or reproduce its characteristics.

Cite: “Movement”, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177563

Perspective

My research focuses on the epistemology and history of geography in Europe. I am particularly interested in linguistic issues and translation, as well as in the contribution of narrative, sensory, or non-representational approaches to contemporary geography.
Movement, within common language and for much of the human sciences, is the positional evolution of an object in space. Geography, among other disciplines, is characterized by the diversity of scales on which this evolution is observed: the sweeping movement of planets and astral bodies that structure earthly life; the infinitesimally perceived and yet inexorable movements of the ground that defines our planet's geology; the regular movements of water and air whose fundamental cycles allow the persistence of life; and finally – and perhaps above all – all the scales of movement characteristic of the rhythm and constant respatialization of human activities.
Following this same thread, I must admit that, while the detours of my journey as a young researcher have often invited me to explore the genealogical aspects of the concept of movement in geography, this specific element had long gone unconsidered, like an implicit and foregone conclusion whose exploration would have forced me to move towards the less familiar fields of terminology or philosophy.
It seems my work has always revolved around this concept, whether in placing myself on the traces of the Silk Road within European geography of the 19^th century or in looking to spatialize the study of language variation in Central Asia. Whether I was investigating as a research assistant in the Parisian metro or working as a translator for a cultural magazine or even as a teacher for migrant youths, what has always been central is the question of movement.
The human propensity to build our lives in a given place or, on the contrary, to pursue a history of displacement has appeared since Herodotus, Strabo, and the Ancients as one of the touchstones of geographical discourse. The contemporary evolution of epistemic cultures has seen the disappearance of the 19^th century's grand theories concerning ‘circulation' – a notion embraced by such German geographers as Friedrich Ratzel or Ferdinand von Richthofen to refer to the great movements of ancient peoples as well as the movement of goods stimulated by worldwide European colonization and the Industrial Revolution. Since the second half of the 20^th century, human geography has clearly preferred the quantitative and qualitative study of transport and its networks, of ordinary ‘mobilities' apprehended through fine-scale surveying, and of migrations that we understand as both integrated and excluded from the contemporary globalized international system. A recent project, for example, has led me to use statistical data to look at the wide variety of flows that cross French borders today: flows of goods, daily displacements of those living along the border, migrant and tourist flows. Spatial analyses of these movements are now part of the continuity of modern geographical thought.
What appears to be strangely evasiveness with this term that is nevertheless omnipresent in a discipline, is that it never fails to stimulate new approaches revitalizing the the emergence and institutionalization of the practical turn and performative turn in the last three decades.
If the appeal of the performative question is so evident among geographers, it is perhaps not so much due to an aesthetic sensibility, but rather because the study of performance allows us to question together the extra-ordinary actions, gestures, and movement of artistic creation, as well as ordinary actions, gestures, and movements of lived spaces in daily life. Incidentally, it is the movement of geographers themselves that the work of Nigel Thrift invites us to examine. By apprehending it holistically as a spatial and social phenomenon and as an implicit part of scientific practice, the performative study of geographical facts and methods, in my opinion, places movement at the heart of the major and minor questions relating to space that mark the legacy of our discipline in a particularly meaningful way.
Felix de Montety, « La Route de la Soie : Imaginaires géographiques », in Asie centrale. Transferts culturels le long de la Route de la Soie, Michel Espagne, Svetlana Gorshenina et al. eds., Paris : Vendémiaire, 2016, pp. 405-418

Quotation

« Movement is not the bodily expression of the subject of dance; movement is created as an object in itself that engages bones, muscles, ligaments, nerves, and other body parts of the dancer in strictly physical activity. »

Bojana Cvejić, Choreographing Problems. Expressive Concepts in European Contemporary Dance and Performance, Farnham : Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p.19

« Various terms are used to describe the three mutually perpendicular intersecting planes in which many, although not all, joint movements occur. The common point of intersection of these three planes is most conveniently defined as either the centre of the joint being studied or the centre of mass of the whole human body. In the latter case, the planes are known as cardinal planes – the sagittal, frontal and horizontal planes […] Movements at the joints of the human musculoskeletal system are mainly rotational and take place about a line perpendicular to the plane in which they occur. This line is known as an axis of rotation. Three axes – the sagittal, frontal and vertical (longitudinal) – can be defined by the intersection of pairs of the planes of movement. The main movements about these three axes for a particular joint are flexion and extension about the frontal axis, abduction and adduction about the sagittal axis, and medial and lateral (internal and external) rotation about the vertical (longitudinal) axes. »

Roger Barlett, Introduction to Sports Biomechanics: Analysing Human Movement Patterns, Oxon : Taylor & Francis, 2007, p.3

« Notez d’abord que le mouvement est la transition d’une attitude à une autre.

Cette simple remarque qui a l’air d’un truisme est, à vrai dire, la clé du mystère.

Vous avez lu certainement dans Ovide comment Daphné est transformée en laurier et Progné en hirondelle. Le charmant écrivain montre le corps de l’une se couvrant d’écorce et de feuilles, les membres de l’autre se revêtant de plumes, de sorte qu’en chacune d’elles on voit encore la femme qu’elle va cesser d’être et l’arbuste ou l’oiseau qu’elle va devenir. Vous vous rappelez aussi comment dans l’Enfer du Dante, un serpent se plaquant contre le corps d’un damné se convertit lui-même en homme tandis que l’homme se change en reptile. Le grand poète décrit si ingénieusement cette scène qu’en chacun de ces deux êtres, l’on suit la lutte des deux natures qui s’envahissent progressivement et se suppléent l’une l’autre.

C’est en somme une métamorphose de ce genre qu’exécute le peintre ou le sculpteur en faisant mouvoir ses personnages. Il figure le passage d’une pose à une autre : il indique comment insensiblement la première glisse à la seconde. Dans son œuvre, on discerne encore une partie de ce qui fut et l’on découvre en partie ce qui va être. [...] C’est là tout le secret des gestes que l’art interprète. Le statuaire contraint, pour ainsi dire, le spectateur à suivre le développement d’un acte à travers un personnage. »

Auguste Rodin, « Le mouvement dans l’Art », in L’Art, entretiens réunis par Paul Gsell, Paris : Grasset, 1911, p.77-79

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Bibliography

John Martin, The Dance in Theory, Princeton : Princeton Book Company, 1989 [1939]

Noé Soulier, Actions, mouvements et gestes, Pantin : Centre national de la danse, 2016

Alain Tarrius, Anthropologie du mouvement, Caen : Paradigme, 1989