The concept of Dancing-with/in Material first appeared in my writing in 2017–18, within an artist statement describing the process and methodology underpinning Rupturing Object White, a project developed over fourteen years. Prior to this, I referred to a similar process as convergence (2013–14). However, I eventually moved away from that term because it suggested an equal weighting of all elements involved. In practice, this was not always the case. Materials, environments, people, sounds, atmospheres, and events do not meet on stable or equivalent terms; rather, they collide, overlap, interrupt, and transform one another.
I chose Dancing-with because it more accurately describes the movement that takes place within Rupturing Object White. It conveys vibration, uncertainty, responsiveness, and the ways in which life continually leaks into and reshapes artistic processes. The notion of "withness" extends beyond material itself to encompass environments, human and non-human relations, sound, atmosphere, and circumstance. It signals a practice of attending with rather than to. I use this same space when I give tutorials.
As a model, structure, and pedagogical methodology, Dancing-with offers an alternative to positivist notions of knowledge production. Rather than seeking certainty, stability, or the reduction of difference into sameness, it embraces multiplicity, contingency, and emergence. It is concerned with discerning differences and attending to their productive tensions. Knowledge, within this framework, is not discovered as a fixed truth but generated through ongoing encounters, negotiations, and movements between bodies, materials, and worlds. It resists the colonial impulse to flattern difference into sameness, and encourges patience, discernment, respect and love.