seah’s movement language has evolved from decades-long research in Butoh, Body Weather Laboratory, Noguchi Taiso, and Somatic Movement, as well as extended periods of time spent in remote wilderness areas. These movement practices embody Deleuze and Guattari’s nomadology, the shifting terrain of the psyche - a beingness that is fluid, always in transition, “becoming”. As opposed to the static subject of Humanism. This nomadic subjectivity is necessary for becoming-imperceptible, a state which seah describes as a de-centering of recognizable “humanness” that allows for somatic, phenomenological experiences of what it means to be posthuman.
Over the last five years, seah has spent a great deal of time tracing waterways. “Fluvial Traces” follows rivers using feet, bike, or paddleboat and has included the Mae Nam Ping in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the Detroit River, and a river in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. The larger arc of “Water Tracings” includes various waterways in San Francisco/Oakland, Venice, Italy, and the Finnish Archipelago. These intra-actions are captured via machine (GoPro cameras and worn microphones) worn on the body, and articulated in a collaboration between seah and various AI synthesis programs to create audio-visual compositions that evoke an emotional experience of the intra-action.
seah gives lectures on her art practice, Posthumanism, and Nomadic Theory, as well as movement/technology workshops at universities, colleges, conferences, festivals, and culture centers throughout the world.
Website and Links: https://www.seah.space/ , https://www.instagram.com/seah.space/
Proposal:
"Becoming-imperceptible" is an artistic and philosophical posthuman investigation transversing visual, aural, and written modes of expression. The project begins with Benjamin Bratton's chapter on Geologic Intelligence in his book The Stack and then sifts through New Materialist and Critical Feminist Posthumanism as the artist named seah uses their own human body to think/feel through modes of becoming-imperceptible. seah's personal narrative brings them to posthumanism as a way of connecting contemporary philosophy with the indigenous and Buddhist worldviews they were raised with. In "becoming-imperceptible", seah works through the contradictions of inhuman desire for expression, to be seen, and the drive to dissolve into the land. Having studied movement modalities such as Butoh, Body Weather Laboratory, and Noguchi Taiso for nearly two decades, seah fuses the somatic knowledge of these practices to the concept of a posthumanist phenomenology. Through this somatic/phenomenological investigation, seah builds audio/visual compositions that blur field recording/documentation with digitally driven manipulations.