“Cursor, from the Latin root meaning ‘run’ or ‘runner.’ A cursor is a movable, blinking figure that indicates the position on a screen where the next character will appear, or where user action is needed."
Bodies motivated by language,
by users,
by others,
Like the queen piece in chess
they move up, down, forward, back,
across the field of the text,
but they are not the text.
Perhaps they have a will of their own?
They blink in tempo and race the hours.
They speak in many tongues.
They sing. They sound.
They pause and backtrack.
They search and destroy.
They are driven to make mistakes.
They err on purpose.
They misspell our perceptions.
They are fugitive.
They dance.
This project is about the cursor and its many faces.
During his 2018 ISSUE residency, choreographer and performer Will Rawls takes the multifarious figure of the cursor as a guideline to investigate his work that encompasses dance, writing, voice and objects. In this final research showing, Rawls speculates upon the cursor as a kind of body, describing the ephemeral unit as “an abstract protagonist, a messenger in crisis.” In a series of scored dances and vocal performances, Rawls asks whether it is possible to transgress the limits between self, voice, action and word.
Will Rawls is a choreographer, writer and performer. His practice engages dance and multiple other media to investigate bodily states in relation to a poetics of blackness, ambiguity and abstraction. His inquiries into humanity and social inscription aim to shift perceptions of technique and use the personal to redraw notions of power. Rawls has shown work at The Chocolate Factory, MoMA PS1, Performa 15 and Portland Institute of Contemporary Art. He is recipient of a 2017-2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant 2015, and a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency 2017. His writing has been published by Artforum, Triple Canopy, les presses du réel, The Museum of Modern Art. He is co-editor of the Danspace Project catalogue Lost and Found: Dance, New York, HIV/AIDS, Then and Now.
