Artists break down barriers between biology, biography

High above the din of traffic, a Lathrop Hall dance studio looks more like open gym at the Y. In sock-clad feet, 14 students slide across the wood floor. Some launch themselves at the wall, trying to pop balloons; others draw chalk outlines around each other, filling in the heads with a tight confluence of asterisks.

Yet within these seemingly random movements, stories begin to emerge. One student bops around the classroom to a blunt yet playful hip-hop tune, telling his audience how the music lets him speak. Many hands pinch the air around another student’s head to illustrate alcoholism and mental illness.

The organized chaos they have created, a spontaneous yet planned performance, did not exist an hour ago. With laughter — and a stray yoga pose here and there — the group comes back together in the center of the room.

This is Autobiology: a workshop created by the duo of performance artists and filmmakers Helen Paris and Leslie Hill (together known as Curious) that explores the connections between the bodies we inhabit and the stories we tell about ourselves.

The transformative aspects of their work, and the connections they make with their audience, permeate their semester-long residency. From working with students to strengthening bridges between art and science, Paris and Hill hope that their art, in the most temporary of forms, will leave lasting traces once they have gone.

The 14 students selected for this studio class come primarily from artistic disciplines such as theater and studio art. Still, Paris and Hill chose their students deliberately, with an eye toward interdisciplinarity. Katie Schaag, a graduate student in comparative literature, joined the class to add a more physical aspect to her spoken-word performances. Elizabeth Wautlet, studying in the professional French master’s program, wanted to explore body memory and risk in language learning. Other students come from biology and the First Wave program.

Paris and Hill have used many techniques to encourage their students to take risks and avoid self-censorship. From automatic writing — jotting down anything in their heads — to explorations of family portraits and inherited mannerisms, the group has forged a unique community in which to explore their impulses.

Curious’ current project echoes these impulses, exploring the mysteries of “gut feelings” — literally and figuratively. Working with neurogastroenterologists, they studied the physiological responses of pain, fight-or-flight impulses and more.

“The enteric nervous system, in your gut, is sometimes called ‘the little brain,’” says Hill. “It’s a rudimentary brain system in itself. So when people talk about having a gut feeling, the enteric nervous system is doing tons of rapid processing. It recognizes how truly intelligent our bodies are; they’re picking up on so much information that we’re not aware of. We became fascinated by that.”

Just as Paris and Hill encouraged their students to engage in automatic writing, their scientist colleagues used the same technique to map out triggers for chronic pain. By measuring indicators of the autonomic nervous system while a patient listens to an autobiographical story that he or she had previously written, researchers could elicit some of the physiological responses that trigger some of the painful conditions.

The Autobiology workshops, both short- and long-form, fit within this project. Though Paris and Hill have taught weeklong performance-making workshops around this theme, this is the first time that they have expanded it to fit a semester’s worth of classes.

“It didn’t really feel like stretching,” says Paris. “It felt the other way ‘round, as we had so much information. There’s a different energy. Doing Autobiology for a week is intense, because of the terrain that you’re dealing with. At the same time, teaching a five-hour class every week also has its own intensity. With some of the places we’re asking them to go — because they’re using personal material a lot of the time — it becomes quite an intense space. It’s been very fruitful.”

Indeed, the intensely personal aspect of the class has been both an asset and a challenge. As a playwright and scholar, Jeff Casey, a doctoral student in theatre and drama, was used to giving his work a life of its own on the page. Performing about the death of his father and his own mortality gave him a newfound sense of realism. At the same time, the ephemeral nature of his work has shown him new ways of creating and expressing art.

“I’m not writing this down, so I try to make it about interacting with the audience. That’s what’s so enchanting,” says Casey. “I’m not an actor; I can’t project; I’m not good at memorizing lines or maintaining a character. Here, I get to be myself and speak to people as myself. When you connect with people… I had a faculty member come up to me and her eyes welled up with tears. You give someone a piece of yourself, a gift. That’s amazing.”

Paris and Hill know that live performance isn’t always easy to sell. Still, their curiosity about the world drives them to make connections between people and ideas.

“I’m doing a piece about smell for four people at a time, eight times a day, and it’s really hard work for really small audiences,” says Paris. “But there’s something about what effects that can engender and what you can have with audience members in China, or Brazil, or a council estate in Birmingham, that is so moving. You see them transported, and you see the connection you’ve made.

That’s why I’m interested in being an artist: to have that moment of communication with another person.”

Paris and Hill’s residency, sponsored by the Arts Institute as part of the Year of the Arts, culminates from Dec. 4–12 with “The Inside Story,” a festival and symposium uniting performance, biography and biology.

Befitting the interdisciplinary link between science and art, the festival takes place during the grand opening celebration for the Wisconsin Institutes of Discovery (WID), UW–Madison’s new center for interdisciplinary research and collaboration.

On Friday and Saturday, Dec. 10 and 11, Curious themselves present “the moment I saw you I knew I could love you” in Vilas Hall’s Hemsley Theatre at 6, 7:15 and 8:30 p.m. Admission is free; tickets are required.

Dec. 11 brings the Autobiology showcase of student work from 2–5 p.m. in the Mitchell Theatre. At 6 and 8:30 p.m., the Mitchell Theatre also hosts the U.S. premiere of “Sea Swallow’d,” a 20-minute film by Curious and Andrew Kötting.

For free tickets to performances of “the moment I saw you I new I could love you” visit campus box offices in the Memorial Union or Vilas Hall. For a $3.50 fee, reserve them online or by phone at 265-ARTS.

Full schedule of events.

For more information, contact the Arts Institute at 263-9290.