December 3 to December 17 2020

Joe Moran's performance film Materiality Will Be Rethought, commissioned by Whitechapel Gallery and Dance Art Foundation, launches on Thursday 3 December at 7pm. A Q&A will follow the premier featuring Joe Moran and dancers Temi Ajose-Cutting, Sean Murray and Eve Stainton. The film will be available to view until Thursday 17 December on the Whitechapel Gallery website.

Conceived as a site-specific work, Materiality Will Be Rethought was developed as a live performance within the sculptural environment, now reimagined as a film. The work forms a dialogue with Carlos Bunga’s exhibition Something Necessary and Useful (on display 21 Jan – 6 Sep 2020).

The piece navigates dance’s potential to animate and disrupt architectural space, the physicality of the dancer’s voice and the moving body as a site of political unrest and complex subjectivities. Moran’s choreography offers new contextual frameworks within which Something Necessary and Useful can be experienced. Moran conducted research for this work at a residency at Wysing in 2018.

Materiality Will Be Rethought is supported by the Arts Council England Emergency Relief Fund and private patrons. The commission drew upon research undertaken during residencies at Wysing Arts Centre, LaunchPad LaB, The Lowry and with postgraduate students at London Contemporary Dance School.