nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

step those looking at the image could intervene by addingnew characters aiming to change the image’s dynamics.Through this process we were able to ‘discuss’ our readingof the city without primarily talking to each other, but byexploring the imprints of the city we have on our mindsand making them visible through physically printing themonto each other’s bodies, informing each other throughphysically shaping ideas into images by using each other’sbodies. At the same time, these exercises collectivise ourperceptions through our embodying or playing characterscreated by others. In the final stage we started exploringideas of how to change some dynamics and conflicts we seeand live in our city.The MachineHaving shared our London perceptions, we moved onto another Boalian exercise, ‘the machine’. We initiated a‘machine’ of London, building London as machine: oneperson starts with a repetitive movement and a sound that in their associationrepresents London. And one at a time the others add themselves to this bodymovementuntil an image-like machine is created, in which one sound andmovement triggers the next. Body after body plugs into the singular citymachine in construction, a noisy assemblage emerges.Within the nano workshop this felt like a very powerful way of representingor playing back the city as it was marked within our bodies. We felt ‘themachine’ would be a good way for us to bring our thoughts and perceptionsback to the city, to confront the city with our reading of it, to make it rattle,change, break down...Theatre to reflect collectively on trauma, fear and violenceAfter a year of working collectively, and in the different context of studentprotests and a city subjected to austerity measures on top of the usualsurveillance and commercialisation, we came back to using elements of TOPto reflect on our experiences of fear and violence in the protests. We usedtechniques of the TOP method ‘Rainbow of Desires’, 2 a form of theatre thatuses body work and body-mask work to make the spectrum of oppression ina specific situation of conflict visible, and again, aims to reflect and changethese conflicts. This created a strong common analysis - again only partly89