Clay AD

I am an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and somatic bodyworker. In my practice I honor and explore illness, ecology, science fiction, transformation and the politics of care under capitalism -- by myself, collectively and with my clients. Art for me has always functioned as a way to work through questions that the rational mind can't, and most often shouldn't, form the only answer to. Regardless of the material outcome, my practice always begins with embodiment.

This past January (2021) I premiered through live stream my first solo dance piece, "Indication of Spring at the End of Time" at TanzTage Berlin. For this piece I danced almost everyday outside in a nearby park for three months as a starting point to answer the question, "Why is it so hard to imagine the near future?" The piece follows the short life of a daffodil that blooms in January in 2031, ten years in the future, in a garden, as an attempt to build a micro-world to move through death and grief, seeing it as a necessity in the emotional process of living together on our planet today. I used the dance practice as movement research to write the science fiction text which formed the basis for the performance.

Currently I am continuing an ongoing collaboration with Isabel Gatzke (Berlin) of a workshop called "Writing Bodies as Moving Bodies" which uses somatic and movement practices as a catalyst for writing science fiction.