Georgia Gardner

Sospirando – [to be Performed] in a Sighing Manner considers readiness, striving, and fulfilment. It is an idiosyncratic re-appropriation of productivity.

I position preparation at the centre of my performance practice, teasing the neoliberal ideal of striving, and sensitising the construction of normality. I work with gesture, performance, sound, and moving image, to channel my research into an affective and embodied process.

Recognising familiar gestures as glimpses of unfiltered embodiment, habitual action becomes profound. I propose breath as an anchor and means of rebellion. Re- appropriating bodily metaphors such as the economic pulse, and performative conventions such as common time (4/4), Sospirando diverges from institutional rhythms, leaning into the internal metre of breath. Prioritising embodiment - I trust the body as my authority. The plurality of human-ness underpins each performance and is magnified by the contingent context of performance in a pandemic.

Sospirando is a modular performance unfolding through acts of preparation, attempts at attunement, and interactions with interpersonal dissatisfaction. The work fosters an anticipatory energy in both viewer and performer that elevates minute gesture to spectacle.