Abstract/Summary

26-27 April 2019 University of Reading First-Step Training, Work in progress/Public Movement New modes of security alert morph city centers into potential battle zones. ‘Emergency Routine’, commissioned for Reading International 2019, explores new choreographies in the field of counter-terror. It analyses and demonstrates bodily techniques which in recent years are being trained and traded jointly by countries and special units. The urgency to return to a ‘body to body’ encounter is staged as a meeting between an audience of one and a Public Movement delegate. It will be performed in and around at the Edith Morly building at the University of Reading exploring and deciphering its architecture and its potential function in an imagined Emergency Scenario. This exchange of knowledge, raising questions about borders between defense and offense, obedience and protest, order and chaos. ‘Emergency Routine’ activates urban areas as both civic arenas and training grounds, where all bodies play a role, knowingly or not. Part of (Un)Commoning Voices & (Non)Communal Bodies curated by Maayan Sheleff and Sarah Spies